Inaccuracy of Food Labels Put Allergic Individuals at Risk

Filed in archive Food Allergies , Living with Allergies , Product Alerts on November 24, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Gabor Izso

Like many parents of food-allergic children, I've become an semi-expert on reading ingredient lists on food labels. These days, I only have to watch out for peanuts and other tree nuts, but there was a time I had to look out for eggs, milk and shellfish as well. The Food Allergen Labeling And Consumer Protection Act of 2004 was updated in 2006 to make it easier for consumers to spot the top 8 major food allergens on the ingredient list. So instead of simply stating "enriched flour", the word "wheat" should also be explicitly indicated, and where there is "whey", it should be indicated that this means "milk".

All's well and good. It's not possible to do this kind of labeling for all the 160+ foods that are known to cause allergic reactions, but it's already a big step, considering that the 8 major allergens (milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans) account for the majority of food allergies, in terms of both numbers and severity.

But what if a product you believe to be allergy-safe based on the ingredient list turns out to contain the allergen you've been avoiding? Production mistakes happen and that's why there are product recalls. If you're lucky, you get notified of the recall before you consume the product. But what if you don't get notified in time? What if no announcement to the public was made? Or worse, what if the companies do not issue a recall at all? According to this Chicago Tribune report, these are very real threats.

In one case, a girl, 14, with a known milk allergy was taken to the emergency room after eating muffins made from Duncan Hines chocolate chip mix. The illness was reported to the FDA, but the distributor, Pinnacle Foods, did not recall the mix until seven months later.

Read more such cases from the report and try not to hyperventilate. If we can't trust the accuracy of food labels, what else can we do as parents to protect our kids?