What are you eating: Food allergy prick test results

Wednesday's What Are You Eating - My daughter's extensive list of unusual and changing food allergies has ruled my food life for almost two years. During these years, I've learned a lot about our Nation's food supply. My hope is to share a little bit of what I've learned so that awareness might increase about our food.

My daughter likes us all to eat the same foods at dinner time. It's really important to her for us all to be the same. My husband and I agree that it's important to meet her request since the rest of the day she's feeling isolated with her food. This results in us eating "carnival food" - you know: pizza, hot dogs, french toast casserole, etc.

After the cashew allergy reaction, RG's eating has been sketchy so we found a new allergist and started re-testing. Unfortunately, there aren't any perfect tests for food allergies. We did a 50 item prick test, and she did great! We also followed it up with blood work. The blood work's not back yet.

(Photo by: robilsameehan)

The prick test results were encouraging - only 4 things came back positive!

Chicken
Rice
Peaches
Pears

Chicken and peaches have consistently tested positive for the past 2.5 years. We've never done a food challenge with  them, and with these results, I'm confident we won't do one soon! Rice came up on last year's patch test, which matched my suspicions. Pears were new.

Since the peaches came back positive, and I've suspected bananas and plums, the doctor ordered a latex allergy blood test. Apparently, they are all related (honestly, I haven't researched the science behind this).

We aren't introducing any new foods until the blood tests come back and the doctor decides if he wants to repeat the patch test. We are the happy owners of epi-pens again.

We'll continue to eat carnival foods for a while! Maybe one day I can cook great food again!