Here’s our press release from today. Look out Grammys, here we come!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GRAMMY STARS READY TO TAKE A BITE OF NONUTTIN’

DUNCAN, BC – What snacks would you feed hungry music stars at the Grammy Awards this Sunday? Organizers of the dressing room snacks were asking themselves this question while trying to juggle all of the special dietary needs that many artists require. To solve this dietary challenge, they gave Vancouver Island’s own Nonuttin’ Natural Foods a call.

“With artists from Sir Paul McCartney who is vegetarian to Lady Gaga who eats a gluten free diet, it’s not easy to provide food to the world’s greatest music stars. That’s where Nonuttin’ granola bars and trail mixes came to the rescue,” says Alana Elliott, President and Founder of Nonuttin’ Natural Foods. All Nonuttin’ products are free of 9 of the top 10 food allergens and are certified gluten free in the US.

Elliott sent over 500 granola bars and trail mix packs to the Staples Center in Los Angeles where Sunday’s Grammy Award Show will take place. With 50 dressing rooms and a green room, Nonuttin’ products will be available in all of the rooms whether they hold a single artist or a band and their entourage.

“My two daughters are the ones who are most impressed with our involvement in the Grammys,” laughs Elliott. “They thought their mom wasn’t up to date on the latest music trends. Now they can’t wait to see if their favourite artists, like Adele, will be enjoying our snacks.”

My husband and I watched a fascinating documentary on David Suzuki’s, The Nature of Things on CBC this weekend. It was about the latest in autism research that shows that gut health may be the link. Some parents are already putting this into action with gluten/dairy free diets for their autistic children.

This documentary also brings up illnesses in infants and the onset of autism with anecdotal information from different parents of autistic children. It is especially poignant for those whose children were developing normally and then autism took over.

Rob has always felt that our youngest daughter’s life-threatening food allergies were created by an unknown illness just before she turned 1 when she was in Pediatric Intensive Care in the Isolation Wing and she was dosed with massive amounts of antiobiotics. Her food allergic reactions showed up shortly after that. Watching this documentary just gave him even stronger feelings that he is correct.

Here is the link to watch the documentary online at CBC:
Autism Enigma

If you’ve been following our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nonuttin-Natural-Foods/159162014110203, you’ll see that I’m heading off next week to a trade show for a Canadian natural foods chain.

After the trade show, I get all of the owners and managers of those stores for an hour and a half to provide them with an overview of food allergies and gluten free diets, what the needs are for consumers and what they need to do to earn the confidence of those of us looking for special dietary foods.

I certainly know what gains my trust in a store. And putting the peanut butter alternative (ie. soybutter, sunbutter) smack dab in the middle of all of the peanut butter isn’t it. I don’t really expect any service or knowledge about food allergies when I go to a mass chain grocery store (even if they have a natural or gluten free section) but I certainly do when I go to a smaller natural foods store or health food store. But any major grocery chain that did come up with a better understanding of special diets, such as putting a dietician in their natural foods section, (as one of our clients in the Midwest, Hy-Vee does) would have my business in a heartbeat. And please, clean up the bulk sections so that potential allergens aren’t spilled all over the floor!

So what do you need? Special sections? Items placed throughout the store but with good signage? Special dietary tours with samples and coupons so you aren’t stuck in your same old rut? Would you prefer a trained specialist in the store? Do you appreciate contained bulk bins? Do you want the store to have product documentation on special diet products? How about demos – do you run from them when they’re in an aisle?

Anything that you share with me will be added to my presentation next week (without names of course) so that these store owners/managers can hear from the people that count. Food allergies and gluten free diets are here to stay; let’s begin the revolution with willing stores who want to serve you better.

An article published earlier this month indicated that a recent UK study shows that food allergic children and their families feel isolated, stigmatized and unfairly excluded. To read the total article, you can link here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/17/kids-nut-allergy-teased-excluded_n_929809.html

I would have to say that overall, we’ve been lucky not to have many issues happen with our allergic child but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t been there. There was the time that a good buddy at school told our child that she couldn’t have her to her birthday party because her mom didn’t want to deal with her peanut allergy. It took all of my strength not to phone that mom and have a little discussion. I didn’t in the end since I didn’t really think it would change anything except mortify my child even further.

There was also the time that one child wiped his hands down all of the bus seats as he got on the bus, telling everyone that he’d just had peanut butter. We were really pleased with how that got handled by the students on the bus themselves, many who had been riding that bus with our daughter for years and were very protective of her. Every child on that bus turned on that young man and kicked him off until he spoke to the bus driver. We then let the principal know when our child got home and told us what happened but peer pressure really made the difference that day. He never tried anything like that again.

But it’s also the incidents that aren’t so easy to quantify; when everybody else gets the birthday treat in the classroom or someone’s sharing candy with all of their friends but my child can’t take it. It’s definitely isolating, even when there is no evil intent. All kids need to learn (often the hard way) that life isn’t fair and sometimes bad things do happen to good people but there are plenty of opportunities to learn that out there without the added exclusion that food allergies can certainly bring.

After last week’s voluntary recall for possible sesame in our 5 new products (see explanation on our Allergen Declarations Page)we wanted to provide you with a follow up to let you know what the sesame testing verification showed and what next steps are being taken.

We have now received the results from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA):

CFIA Testing Shows ALL Negative Results

Since sesame is a top 10 declared food allergen here in Canada, all samples went to a CFIA lab that is specifically accredited for sesame testing.

Rob and I decided on the voluntary recall last Saturday before verification could be made because we felt it was in the best interest of all of our customers to err on the side of caution. Even though these results are negative, we would take the same action again based on the information we had to go on at that time.

We are going to continue with both the voluntary recall and labelling with May contain sesame for 2 reasons

1. The information that is communicated out there right now is that anyone with sesame allergies should be looking for a “May contain sesame” warning on the label of those 5 products. This information will continue to live on the Internet for a very long time and would just be too confusing as to what label is correct if we don’t have the warning on those 5 products listed in the press releases.

2. We want to monitor and verify sesame testing over a long period of time to ensure that we keep getting negative results before we remove the May contain sesame warning.

We are asking all of those with sesame allergies to heed the May contain sesame labels until further notice.

Thank you so much for the outpouring of support that we have received from so many customers. It helped us get through a very stressful time for both our team and our family.

Sincerely,

Alana and Rob Elliott, Founders, Nonuttin’ Foods Inc.

Did you know that this week is Food Allergy Awareness Week? Because of this, you may find that your inbox is inundated by information about the prevalence of food allergy, the latest in treating food allergies and more.

I like to think of this week as an opportunity to review how we handle food allergies in our family and to fight against getting complacent. I’ve found over the years that it can be easy to get complacent without realizing it, especially when you’ve been doing everything right and you haven’t had any emergencies.

So think of this as an annual reminder to review your approach to food allergies, just like we use the time change to upgrade our smoke detector batteries. Here are my 3 Rs for Food Allergies as follows:

REMIND your family and your child’s caregivers about the signs of anaphylaxis
REFRESH your skills and those caring for your allergic family member for using the epi-pen and;
RESOLVE to educate more people about the very real and growing threat of food allergies

Simple, right? It’s time to get started right now!

I learned something new today about probiotics that I thought was important to share, particularly with those who have milk or soy allergies.

Probiotics are the new wonder product in our society these days as science begins to address our gut health. Many scientists now recognize that what happens in our intestines affects all of our body functions and has a role to play in autoimmune disorders including Celiac Disease and Type 1 Diabetes. Many health professionals recommend the use of probiotics, gut friendly bacteria that helps intestinal health, along with prebiotic heavy foods that feed the probiotics and keep them healthy (i.e. oats, soybeans and inulin).

The amount of natural foods products that contain probiotics has exploded, primarily in the yogurt category. But for those that can’t eat yogurt, taking the probiotics in capsule format has become very popular.

Unfortunately, probiotics need to grow in a protein rich culture which may be milk or soy based, a fact that I was not aware of until today. While most of that culture is removed when the probiotics are freeze dried, there is potential for trace amounts of that culture to remain, potentially causing anaphylaxis for those with milk and soy allergies.

Health Canada issued a recall of 2 products today that may have this issue (no one to date has had a reaction) but they also included an advisory as part of that recall that explains about the cultures used for manufacturing probiotics. This is rare for Health Canada and therefore should be shared with anybody you know with either milk or soy allergies.

To link directly to the recall/advisory, see this link: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/advisories-avis/_2011/2011_53-eng.php

I don’t want this blog to be a rant on other companies, truly. But I continue to see practices that you all need to be aware of out there while I’ve been traveling to various trade shows over the last month or so.

For example, at the biggest trade show, Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, “gluten free” was everywhere on booths and products. The funniest one was on chicken, yes, chicken. I realize that some chicken has seasoning added and so ingredients still must be looked at. But the kicker on the chicken is that they were frying it up in the booth for tasting, after dredging it in wheat flour!

I saw the same thing happen on a gluten free spread that was being offered on regular wheat bagels to sample. It wasn’t until a Celiac pointed it out to them that they realized that there was a problem with this practice. It’s kind of scary since they were attracting many of the attendees who were Celiac, not just because they were there as store buyers.

In some cases, when the person demoing a product is hired for the day, they don’t always know the ins and outs of special diets but in both of the above companies, the owner of the company was doing the demoing.

And that’s in addition to continued products I see that have a claim like “nut free” on the front with a disclaimer “made in a facility that processes tree nuts” on the back. To me, you can have one or the other, not both.

So for you, the consumer, all I can say is really check your items. Check your ingredients even if there is a “free from” message on the front, don’t assume that demos are safe, and contact companies if you have any questions. This really is a buyer beware situation where you have to take control.

Did you know that agricultural cross contamination is a common issue in North America? In fact, it is considered so commonplace that the US Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require agricultural products to list contamination with other crops, even if they are a top food allergen.

Case in point: we are bringing out raw, shelled, unsalted sunflower seeds tomorrow as part of our new Fab 5 Products. Sunflower seeds can be cross contaminated with soybeans, corn and wheat. While millers/producers of these agricultural products have cross contamination procedures in place to identify and eliminate unexpected seeds/grains, the reality is that crops are taken off the field with the same machinery and trucks and are often stored in bins that previously contained another crop.

This is the same reason why pure, uncontaminated oats are controlled from the field to machinery to storage to milling. Otherwise, cross contamination is a real potential along the way.

Our new sunflower seeds do have a “may contain: soy” warning on them but this is also because we package them on the same line as our chocolate chip/chocolate chunk pouches (soy lecithin) and Energy Explosion trail mix (soybeans). We test ALL ingredients that come into our facility for wheat and gluten before they’re released to the production floor so you know that our sunflower seeds have been checked for that allergen.

For corn, we do not test nor do we have an allergen warning as corn is not a top food allergen. However, we will be adding a note into our corn declaration on our allergen declaration page regarding the sunflower seeds.

We provide this information to you, not because our sunflower seeds are more cross-contaminated than others, simply that we let you know about this potential cross contamination in the interests of keeping you informed about your food choices. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our team.

One of the many food allergy research projects being funded right now is a Chinese Herbal Formula. In the last several years, it has been quite well publicized, especially since the Food Allergy Initiative raised a significant amount of money to provide a research grant to the project.

It looks like that money has paid off as peanut allergic mice who were given the formula have shown no peanut anaphylaxis compared to the control group. It appears that the formula was successful for up to 6 months. It is very promising news and now the research can enter phase 2; human trials for those with peanut, tree nut, sesame, fish and shellfish allergies.

To read more, see this link: http://www.faiusa.org/?page=Chinese_Herbal_Formula_to_Enter_Phase2_Trial