You’ve just found out you have a food allergy (or two). Perhaps your child has just been diagnosed. Suddenly, you have to make a lot of changes in your family’s diet. What do you do?

Your primary strategy is to avoid the problematic food. Avoiding a food due to intolerance does not require the same level of vigilance as avoiding an allergen.

The term “allergy” applies only to IgE-mediated immune reactions to an offending food; however, people often use the term allergy to describe food intolerance. This has led to the suspicion that everyone has a food allergy these days! Further creating confusion is the fact that both intolerance and allergic reaction can be either immediate or delayed.

If you or your family member has an immediate reaction, your best bet is to completely avoid the offending food, especially if it’s a true allergy. In the case of delayed reaction, it may be possible to occasionally eat the problematic ingredient, but be warned: if you eat the ingredient, your allergy or intolerance can become worse as your body becomes more sensitized.

So, how do you get that allergen out of your family’s food? The most critical thing for any shopping expedition is to read labels in detail. Many processed foods will contain an allergen under one of its many aliases.

For instance, if you have discovered that you need to avoid dairy due to either allergy or intolerance, you could find dairy in many forms in your favorite foods, including: casein, caseinates, hydrolysates, lactalbumin, lactulose, and a host of flavorings. In fact, you need to become an amateur chemist in order to avoid many allergens these days!

To effectively read a label, you need as comprehensive a list of potential forms of your allergen as possible is a necessary starting point. Try the following links for milk allergy, egg allergy, peanut allergy, soy allergy, tree nut allergy and wheat allergy. If your allergen is gluten as opposed to wheat, there is a much longer list of items to avoid. Sesame allergy, like tree nut allergy, can be very complicated to manage, as a number of non-food products may contain sesame oil or its derivatives. For more information on sesame allergy, as well as a good list of potential sources of this allergen, check out the Canadian Food Inspection Agency information on sesame.

Managing your food allergy will take more than just avoiding the allergen in your processed food purchases. You may have to learn a whole new way to shop. With most allergies, the best way to shop is to go around the outside of the grocery store! In most supermarkets the fresh produce and least processed foods are kept in cooler and freezers around the outside of the store. The inner aisles will be full of processed food. Sticking to the outside edges of the store will generally keep you out of trouble, depending on what your allergens are.

Your next step will be to learn how to prepare and cook food in your own home that uses alternative ingredients. However, while cooking for an allergy, you may also have other family members to please that don’t have allergies. This combination of factors can make cooking for you or your allergic family member a daunting task. Many of us have had to resort to two meals: one for the allergic family member and one for the rest.

Cooking two meals (or two versions of a particular dish) won’t always work. It’s possible that all family members will have to adapt to a new diet! This is particularly true if you are dealing with someone who has an anaphylactic reaction to a particular food.

Cross-contamination is a real threat for anyone with anaphylaxis: in this case, the health and safety of that person will be paramount in any household. When your challenge is anaphylaxis, your best bet is to make as much of your food as possible from scratch, and to really understand the safe alternatives to the offending allergen that you can use in your cooking.

Don’t forget spices: effective use of spices can enhance flavor and make even the simplest dish both enticing and tasty. Experiment with them! Be careful with spice combinations: these products can often have hidden oils or flavor enhancers that could contain your allergen.

In general, the most common allergenic foods are animal or vegetable proteins, so fresh fruits and vegetables with a simple non-allergenic meat or fish can be a quick and easy choice. Simple food is also generally safer and easier than complex dishes with a lot of ingredients.

Dishes with sauces and marinades or other such complications tend to mean even more challenges with substitutions. Not all substitute ingredients will work exactly like the original ingredient so it helps to find recipes that cater to the allergic. Consider a good quality cookbook that deals with the elimination of your allergen.