Michelle's posts
2 Nov
Emma-jane – a serious good news story!
It is always so nice to get good news stories, isn’t it? So, I was chuffed to bits to get an email from a proud gran who had been a subscriber to the Foods Matter magazine way back in 2002. At …
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25 Oct
The mess that is ‘may contain’
As you may know, I’m the editor of Foods Matter, an information and support website for people with food allergies an intolerances. Recently, we’ve been running a survey to find out people’s experiences with food labelling. The results are now …
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18 Oct
Can we blame male trees for the dramatic increase in the rates of hay fever? Tom Ogren says ‘yes’!
The sex life of plants, including trees, is not simple. Some, known as perfect flowered plants, have their male and female parts in the one flower so are effectively self pollinating (roses or apples); some, known as monoecious flowered plants …
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12 Oct
Frustration and anger of ‘may contain’ labelling
A very brief post as I am just off to catch a plane to Dublin to help launch the new Irish FreeFrom Food Awards! As you may already know, we at FoodsMatter are looking at starting a ‘freefrom’ assurance scheme the …
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5 Oct
Alert5 – a really useful app!
I have rather lost count of the number of ‘allergy’ apps that have been launched to help you do your ‘freefrom’ shopping. I am not entirely sure how successful any of them have been – but it always seemed to me …
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1 Oct
The worm doctor
“I achieved remission of chronic urticaria (with hookworms) at 5.5 months and was able to stop the certirizine at that point. Also by that point my migraines had completely stopped, headaches were minimal and I was having pain-free periods for the first time in …
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28 Sep
Electrosensitivity Update
For those of you who are interested in electrosensitivity – either because you are electrosensitive yourself or because you worry about the excessive amounts of electromagnetic radiation we are all being subjected to – a few updates. There’s a letter in …
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21 Sep
Jamie’s sugar tax – no way……..
Did anyone see Jamie’s Sugar Rush on Channel 4 a few weeks ago? Jamie Oliver’s new campaign to tackle childhood obesity by reducing sugar intake through a sugar tax on soft drinks. It was an excellent programme and showed, among …
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14 Sep
Medical clowns help kids with allergy tests
I think I had heard of medical clowns before, but my attention was caught by this report in Science Daily (courtesy of my colleague, John Scott) about medical clowns being used to distract and calm children during allergy testing. What a great idea. Prick …
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7 Sep
Random thoughts related to allergy….
One of the complaints of those who object to the new food allergen regulations is that they are being required to take responsibility for food allergy sufferers. ‘Why can’t they take responsibility for their own allergies? Why should we (as chefs …
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1 Sep
Who lives in the dairy these days?
Yet more on labelling, I fear – but not this time on traceability or ‘may contain’ warnings, but on definitions. And you think gluten or nuts are complicated in terms of definitions and labelling? Just try milk…. So which …
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24 Aug
Electrosensitivity update – EHS recognised as a handicap in France!
Electrosensitivity (being made ill by the man-made electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones and phone masts, wifi, smart meters, fluorescent lights etc etc) has been recognised as a ‘functional impairment’ in Sweden for some years. But in the rest of Europe …
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20 Aug
It’s August so…
The middle Sunday in August and, apart from the leadership row in the Labour party, not a lot to write about so, guess what? Both the Mail and theGuardian dug out the old ‘coeliac food on prescription outrage’ and ‘food intolerance – fact …
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19 Aug
Dragons Mess with Coeliacs…
I do not watch the Dragon’s Den as I do not enjoy ritualised humiliation. I know that it is all about making entertaining telly, but there are other ways. And yes, I know – the Bake Off does ritualised humiliation …
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12 Aug
Emoji-ing food allergens
I have been having an interesting exchange over the last ten days with one of our long-time subscribers who sent me a link to a document on the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) site. (The UTC, for those do not know, ‘is …
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10 Aug
Gluten Sniffing Dogs
Who can ever resist a doggy story? Well, not many of us so, when you combine a dog with a feel-good allergy story, you are away! We first tracked down allergen-detector dogs back in 2006 when we discovered PeanutDogs.com run by …
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4 Aug
Life Before ‘Freefrom’
Paddy J was a subscriber to the original Foods Matter magazine and followed a ‘freefrom’ gluten-free diet long before the term was invented. She does not have much patience with those food sensitive people who complain that there are not enough freefrom …
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22 Jul
Take the kit!!! New Anaphylaxis Campaign film
The Anaphylaxis Campaign estimate that around 20 people a year die from anaphylaxis. Many of those will be 15-25 year olds – and many of those deaths just could have been prevented. As anyone with allergic children will know, life is relatively …
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13 Jul
Allergy awareness – or the lack of it – in high street takeaways
I was interviewed on last night’s ITN 6 o’clock news, thanks to a report from the Royal Society of Public Health revealing that : * Over two thirds of all takeaways visited (55 around London) failed to provide legally required information …
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6 Jul
Do you have a problem with vinegar?….
A few weeks ago we had an email from Joyce who, for some reason, I think lives in the US… I could be completely wrong! Anyhow, she was really addressing her question to Dr Janice Joneja who runs an on-going Q&A series for …
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29 Jun
And how are the new food allergen regulations being implemented?
How have you found eating out since the new food regulations came in at the end of last year? I cannot resist another little salutary tale, this time to do with the implementation of the regulations in the food service industry. …
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25 Jun
‘Alternative’ allergy tests
Sense About Science is a scientific charity whose remit is to inform the public and enable them to ‘make sense’ of scientific and medical discussions. A worthy aim in which they are usually moderately successful. However, they have just tackled allergy …
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22 Jun
Gluten recalls
There was been a huge outcry on social media and elsewhere recently over gluten contamination that occurred in the Genius factory. It triggered a whole slew of products recalls not only of Genius products but of supermarket freefrom lines …
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16 Jun
Precautionary allergen labelling – have we got the balance wrong?
In managing food allergy there are two major hazards: The failure to recognise a food allergen that has been included in a dish as an ingredient and The accidental contamination of an otherwise allergen-free food with an allergen. But while …
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8 Jun
Telling the medical wheat from the chaff
Ten days ago I had an exchange with Dr Janice Joneja which illustrated yet again the problems faced by conventional practitioners when dealing with little understood conditions such as autism. Dr Joneja had had an email from a dietitian who had …
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1 Jun
Accommodating the ageing body!
These observations are offered for the benefit of anyone of bus-pass age who is getting annoying aches and pains and is attributing them to ‘age’ or the onset of arthritis…. A year or so ago my right hip was starting to …
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18 May
Why are we all avoiding gluten?
You may have noticed that there’s been stratospheric growth in the gluten free food market. Here are two suggestions for what is powering that growth: 1. Gluten intolerance is not just about coeliac disease Last year, gluten expert Dr Tom …
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11 May
Gardening and the weirdness of the human psyche
I have just been reading a report of a study on allergic rhinitis sufferers (35-40% of the US population). Despite the fact that immunotherapy has been around for nearly 100 years, is recognised as the best treatment for allergic rhinitis and is …
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5 May
The Problem with Nuts
Well, to be honest, it is not nuts that are the problem, it is the confusion arising from the laudable efforts of regulators and manufacturers to improve allergen labelling for the benefit of allergic consumers. But, nuts being at the …
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9 Feb
Childcare and Hugging Your Non-Allergic Child
On the radio this morning I heard an interview with Dr Aric Sigman, a fellow of the Society of Biology, who has been looking at the cortisol levels (stress hormone) in infants and toddlers in day care as opposed to those …
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24 Jan
Should allergens be banned from a household with an allergic member?
I came across an article from an recent Sunday Telegraph headlined ‘Food fight over allergy ban’ which investigated, once again, the extremely knotty problem of whether or not you should allow allergens into a household with an allergic member. There are …
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