Flip Side

I was wandering through the grocery store and I realized that I’ve started to read labels out of habit. It could be because I am thirsty for knowledge and want to share my findings on this blog. It could also be the fact that I am constantly on the search for “safe” foods for my boyfriend and every time I look at a product, I wonder “Could I eat this with him?”

I had one such moment while looking at Amore brand paste. If you haven’t seen it, it’s ingenious. They have a variety of common Italian ingredients that people might not want to hassle with, such as anchovies or tomatoes. Instead, what they do is turn it into a paste so all you have to squeeze a little onto a measuring spoon and you’re good to go. I was especially intrigued by the tomato paste because my boyfriend is very committed to buying fresh food in season. This means that if we want tomatoes, we have to find someone selling locally-canned jars so that we can make sauce. Buying it in paste form would make it so much easier!

Looking on the back of the package, I saw something amazing. Not only were there no “unsafe” ingredients (YAY!), but they were extremely honest about allergen potential. They stated that the product was made in a plant which also processes fish and tree nuts. I know that this is fairly common among food labels, however they went on to define tree nuts as cashews and pine nuts and the fish as anchovies. Most of the time when you get the “processed with” line, they don’t get that specific.

Although I was ecstatic about this honesty, I can see why this might have been so easy. This company only makes these pastes and therefore wouldn’t be processing anything like gluten or corn. Since they don’t process a wide variety of products, they can afford to be more specific.

On the same shopping trip, I also got some dishonesty. I picked up a bottle of Sambazon Acai juice just to see what the heck acai tastes like. Perusing the label I had my hopes up. It was made mostly with pureed fruit with added apple and cane juice. Hooray for them! And here I was thinking that they would put in….hang on! At the very bottom of the ingredient’s list, almost like they were trying to hide it, it said “less than 0.5% of: organic natural flavors, organic soy lecithin, citric acid”. Why do they think that putting the less than “0.5%” bit makes it okay? Alright, alright, I know that some people only have reactions to allergens in large amounts. My boyfriend says he can tolerate corn in small increments, and I can see how simply putting “soy lecithin” on a label might lead someone to think that there was more than there actually was, but I was just taken aback by the whole look of the thing.

I think I might be a little too nit-picky about this. If there was less than a half of a percent of the “unsafe” ingredients, it makes sense that they were put last; since ingredients are listed in the order of how much presence each one has in the finished product. Still, I was still a little happy from the Amore encounter and hated having my hopes dashed by less than 0.5% of natural flavors. It may not have been dishonesty, but I definitely didn’t like the attitude.

http://www.sambazon.com/products/juice_strawberry

http://www.amorebrand.com/

(images taken from websites above)

Ghee Almighty

While wandering through a local health food store, my boyfriend and I stumbled across a jar with “casein-fee ghee” on the label. This warranted a double-take. For those who don’t know, ghee (or drawn butter) is simply butter with the fat solids removed. It’s a staple of Indian cuisine and I have been trying to find excuses to use it in my normal cooking. My boyfriend was still a little skeptical, and as this discussion brought up, there is no surefire way to make sure that 100% of the casein is out of the product. However, I did tell him that if he did have a reaction despite the fact that the product is labeled “casein-free”, he could probably bring it to court and get a pretty cushy settlement to cover those pesky college debts and the cost of grass-fed beef!

Another blogger had a different solution. This blog suggests cutting the ghee with some other fat like coconut oil to make it stretch farther and reduce the use. This is a great idea because although any trace amounts of casein could technically be considered “low exposure”, my boyfriend is worried that a lot of low exposure might eventually lead up to a rather big reaction. Using less ghee and more coconut oil could be the answer. Plus, as the blog states, this stuff can get pretty pricey. Adding the coconut could also make it last longer!

Perhaps my special Mexican cookies are in the future?

Sweet tooth

Here’s another thing I hate about corn (aka the ninja additive): it’s in confectioner’s sugar. I know that I should probably look to more natural sweeteners like maple syrup or agave nectar; however there is just no substitute for confectioner’s sugar in some recipes. For instance, I have a Mexican Feast Day cookie recipe which I eventually make for everyone in my life. However they aren’t safe because, apart from the massive amounts of butter involved, it also requires you to roll the finished cookies in confectioner’s sugar. Needless to say, they are pure heaven, but not when cornstarch is added to the sugar to make it not stick together (not unlike condoms. I need to get my mind out of the gutter…) Even if I could get around the butter and gluten issue by being creative with coconut oil and rice flour, only confectioner’s sugar could melt around the cookies to give them a sort of pseudo-frosting.

The reason I’m peeved is that I probably couldn’t recreate the sugar by just putting regular sugar in a food processor for a few minutes. Sure, it would get fine but I’m not sure it would have the same effect. Curse you, cornstarch!

---one Google search later---

I just found out that there are corn-free varieties of confectioner’s sugar!
https://www.navanfoods.com/baking/miss-robens-corn-free-confectioners-sugar

This particular company does process the sugar in a plant that also uses corn and soy products, however they state on the website that they clean the equipment each time they are used for a different product to reduce the potential for cross contamination! Yay! Now that I know that this is out there, I feel better. Now if only I could find a casein-free butter substitute. Could ghee be the answer? To be continued...

(image from here)

Knight in Shining Armor

I’ve realized that I haven’t really posted about gluten. That’s probably because it is fairly easy to avoid, at least in comparison to corn or casein. Bread is obviously out, and I’ve already discussed the alcohol issue. The thing that gets pretty tricky is vinegar. Vinegar can be made from a number of things, including grain. Since most ingredient lists only say “vinegar” without any reference to what kind it is, my boyfriend usually assumes that it is a grain variety.

However, this has been pretty easy to avoid too. Most of the things with vinegar added to them, like ketchup or other commercial sauces usually have other allergens, so the issue of whether or not there is gluten in it doesn’t really come up. Pickles he gets around by buying lactic acid fermented varieties instead of ones that add vinegar. For recipes that require vinegar, we rely on rice or apple cider kinds.

Gluten can also sneak its way into things that are processed alongside grains. Oatmeal, although naturally gluten free, is sometimes contaminated with particles from other grains during the harvesting process. Regular table salt can also be a bit tricky, so he uses sea salt.

Although gluten can generally be avoided, it is sorely missed. I’m used to a diet which relies on grain products. I am a bit of a pasta fiend in my own right and I love bread and other baked goods. That’s the thing that distresses me most. There are gluten-free bread recipes that we can/have tried out, but nothing can really ever compare to a good hunk of sourdough dipped in soup. Although we can use rice flour or other unconventional varieties, you can sort of taste a difference. On the upside, this gives me a chance to futz around with recipes I already know and make them even better with creative, gluten-free solutions! Also, for when I feel like an easy fix, there is a gluten-free line of King Arthur Flour mixes which I am pretty sure are free of the 8 most common allergens found today:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/mixes/special-diet

Not only that, but the mixes are produced in an allergen-free facility! Now that’s the kind of thing I want to see more of in today’s packaging. It says right on the box that it is allergen-free and on the website they even provide a PDF of the packaging for each product so you can double-check the ingredients.

When I found that King Arthur had this, I was ecstatic. My mom is a huge fan of this brand, so I was automatically trusting of it. I was also happy that they had pizza and brownie mixes. I have found that pizza dough is extremely versatile and can be made into many things, so I think it would be a good thing to keep a box of this handy at all times. Of course, my boyfriend would still prefer to make everything from scratch, which I can agree with. However, in a pinch if we needed dough we wouldn’t have to worry about how many yams we have or how depleted our stash of guar gum is for the recipe he found.

(image from here)

Why do people make it so hard?

I may seem to be a bit obsessed with the “natural flavors” companies generally put in their products, but they are such a cause for confusion. Recently I bought a box of Yogi Mayan Cocoa Spice tea. Out of habit I checked the label to see if it would be “safe”. Ingredients include:

Organic cinnamon bark, roasted chicory root, organic cardamom seed, stevia leaf, organic ginger root, organic clove bud, organic black pepper, organic cocoa shells, natural chocolate flavor, natural cocoa flavor, cocoa powder, natural vanilla flavor, natural cinnamon oil, natural cardamom oil, natural ginger oil.

Three “natural flavor” ingredients. It gets even more complicated on the website, because on the page for this particular flavor they only list the first nine ingredients and clump the others under “natural flavors” and “essential oils”. When I wandered over to the ingredients page, they defined their natural flavors as being “…derived from natural sources such as spices, fruit, herbs, roots, or many other plants or foods, whose significant function in food is flavoring”. The box states that the company is devoted to using all natural flavors and does not have laboratories where the flavors are concocted. Well, at least that’s promising. But as I’ve come to realize there is potential to use plant extracts which are potential allergens in certain foods (see my various rants about corn!)

I’ve written Yogi asking about the potential for allergens, and as of yet they haven’t written back. Well, I can’t expect everyone to be like KeVita.

http://www.yogiproducts.com/products/details/mayan-cocoa-spice/
http://www.yogiproducts.com/ingredients/N

(image from here)

*snap!*

You may remember my edit to the condom post about cornstarch being used to prevent the latex from sticking to itself when packaged. Apparently this is common with latex gloves as well. I’m not very comfortable with this because I don’t think that most people would think about corn being in latex. But then again, that’s what this blog is about.

Most of the concern with powdered latex gloves is that latex proteins stick to the powder and are released into the air when the gloves are touched or moved. Therefore, if you have a latex allergy and your doctor uses “safe” gloves on you but uses powdered gloves on other people, there’s a possibility you could still get contaminated through the air. I recognize that this is rather unlikely in real life because of a sort of hyper-awareness that comes with allergies. Anything that could potentially get contaminated is washed if it needs to be just to double check, and it makes sense to simply use non-powdered gloves instead of washing the office from top to bottom.

However, what about the non-latex powdered gloves? Some medical websites do tote “lightly powdered” options (although I think powder-free is the mainstay), so isn’t there great potential for contamination there? I know that the issue is probably under control and that I may be making more out of this than I should be, but I just keep worrying about what if someone with corn intolerance goes to a dentist or something and ends up with corn starch in their mouth?

http://www.aafp.org/afp/980101ap/reddy.html

(kickass Frankenfurter image from here)

Where's the corn?

This will probably be only one of many posts about corn products. Corn is everywhere in the American diet. I’ve mentioned this with my last post about how many ingredients are derived from corn, but it gets even more difficult than that. In the case of the beef industry, it seems that cows are what they eat, and what they eat is corn. Traces of corn were found in fast food burgers in this study

This is in part due to the amounts of corn oil used in preparation; however there is also evidence which suggests that cows raised for beef eat so much corn that the nutrients can be detected in the meat itself. Although my boyfriend wouldn’t eat fast food on principle and would also avoid it for the amount of corn oil used to cook the food, just eating regular meat from the grocery store poses the same amount of risk of corn exposure.

Most commercial beef is fed corn in order to get the cows to the desired weight as fast as possible before they are slaughtered. The cows aren’t able to receive the nutrients and corn is not easily digested, so it just collects in the animal. This causes a slew of health problems for the cow, which I won’t go into but can be found here

This ticks me off not really on a basis of ethics, although I don’t agree with corn-feeding beef. For the context of this blog, I am more outraged by the fact that the corn is literally hiding in the meat itself. When people think “beef” they don’t worry about what the cow was eating before it got to the table. I understand why the meat industry doesn’t acknowledge the fact that corn is detectable in their product. If I was them, I wouldn’t either. There’s a lot of backlash about how corn isn’t a sustainable method of feed and how it isn’t anything close to a cow’s natural diet. Putting “contains traces of corn” on the packaging would only bring more attention to the issue.

Luckily, grass-fed beef can be found relatively easily, at least for my boyfriend and I. We’re lucky enough to go to college in an area where there’s a local farmer’s market. All of the places that sell meat are pretty dedicated to the grass-fed practice. However, it is expensive. It’s a little sad when $6.50 per pound is considered the “cheap stuff”. Luckily we only buy it one pound at a time!

(image from here)

And now, it's time for Kay reviews...

Despite the complaints I may have about the confusion of today’s food products, at least we’ve come a long way from 100 years ago. Although it was a work of fiction, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle describes quite gruesome scenes about the manufacture of products around the turn of the century. In fact, the descriptions were so shocking that they partially influenced the formation of the FDA and the “Pure Food and Drug Act”.

If you are interested in worker’s rights, early immigration, or food manufacture from around this time, definitely give this a read. A humanitarian work through and through, it shows the journey of an immigrant Lithuanian family and their struggle in the Chicago stock yards. It follows their rise, fall, rise, and fall again as they are cheated by the system of political machines and wage slavery.

It relates to this article because there are several descriptions of how the food is doctored. Milk is watered down and has chemicals added, which makes the children sick. Various undesirable cuts and bits of meat are mixed together and given several different labels, even though it all comes from the same mixture. Old and sour meat is given chemicals to hide the rotten flavor and sold as fresh, and even lard is made out of the sludge on the river. That particular description holds some morbid curiosity for me. The lard isn’t made from anything even close to the original. Even the rotten ham came from a pig at some point. No, instead a man goes out onto the river where the sludge is so think you can stand on it and cuts out blocks. Although the chemical usage may be bad at now, at least it isn’t being fished out of a river.

If you are considering vegetarianism or veganism, this book will definitely make the decision for you. There are rather graphic scenes from inside the slaughterhouse and even a suggestion of cannibalism when two workers fall into a vat full of what eventually becomes potted ham.

Although this book sounds disgusting, it is definitely worth a read. The story is excellent and funny when it needs to be. It’s heartwarming when the family gets a break and then heartbreaking when an opportunity is taken away. It’s also ironic at one point when a group of intellectuals is discussing the wonders of mechanized farming. They praise the fact that machines will soon be doing all the work, saving people from backbreaking labor. Now that we are living in that time, it’s starting to create more problems than it is solving. I wonder what those intellectuals would think about the modern movement of home gardening.

In any case, read The Jungle. But never while eating!

(image from here)

Corn= Ninja

Remember my surprise when I found on the Celestial Seasonings website that citric acid can be derived from corn? Well, I didn’t think too much about it until I was looking at a shelf of delicious jam. My boyfriend and I are jam fiends and plan to make hundreds of kinds once berries and fruit are in season, but for now we are sticking to buying the stuff other people make. I’ve been trying to find a safe variety of boysenberry because the kind I usually buy contains corn syrup. The varieties I was looking at in this instance looked safe for the most part, except for the addition of citric acid.

I sincerely hope that the makers were using citric acid made from foods other than corn, but I didn’t risk it. It nearly broke my heart to leave the pomegranate jelly behind! Apparently, citric acid can be found in various berries and a few vegetables like tomatoes.
http://www.foodadditivesworld.com/articles/citric-acid-foods.html
As an additive, it can be found in soda, ice cream, and sauces. I plan to take a look in my kitchen to see just how many products have it listed!

My boyfriend said that he has eaten other foods that have had citric acid added and believes that it wouldn’t contain “whatever it is in corn that he’s related to” (the uncertainty is in his words, not mine!). Still, he tries not to take that chance. That’s smart of him, but for other people with corn intolerance simply avoiding corn products is hard, especially since so many additives can be made from it. Here’s a scary list I found of all the things that are made from corn:
http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php

Although I’m glad that we’ve been able to find so many uses for corn, I’m also a little intimidated by it. Sure, the chemicals are coming at least in part from a natural source and at least they aren’t being synthesized in a laboratory. However, most people just glance over the ingredients on this list. Most of those things on the list I barely can pronounce, let alone state the origin. How much money would it cost to add a little line at the bottom saying “Includes ingredients synthesized from corn” or something to that effect? This is the sort of thing that is really ticking me off about the confusion on today’s labels. There is nearly no indication about the potential for allergens except for the occasional “this product processed in a plant which also processes soy, wheat, etc” Even that is a little less frequent than I would prefer. At least it’s better than nothing.

(image from here)

PS: I encourage you to visit the link to the website above. I just Googled a picture and wound up with a rather interesting walk through how often corn hides in unexpected places!

And what about gluten?

Even though my boyfriend and I are still too young to drink, we sometimes seem to get into conversations about alcohol. We aren’t really a part of the party culture that takes place in college, so we don’t come in contact with alcohol that often (except for the trace amounts in kombucha). Apart from the technical illegality of underage drinking, my boyfriend also has another viable reason for avoiding it: gluten intolerance. If you think about it, almost all the alcohol on the market is derived from grain. Beer is the most obvious example, as well as the various kinds of whiskey on the market. However, we found that most alcohol is derived from grain. Vodka, for example, although it has a sort of reputation for being made from potatoes or beets is actually made from grain. In fact, the varieties made from potatoes and other vegetables are sometimes considered low-quality. Gin is also just a form of alcohol flavored with herbs and the like still can have a grain base.

There are some drinks we could try, like rum or tequila, but it could still get a little dicey. I don’t really know how willing the alcohol companies would be to post their generations-old recipes for people like me to pick through. Although it will be kind of a stumbling block in the future, I’m not going to worry too much about researching it now. I have a couple of years until it really becomes an issue.

What’s an issue right now is my perfume. Perfume is made by mixing essential oils with alcohol. My boyfriend is concerned that if he were to kiss any part of me I might have spritzed, he would get some gluten contamination. Personally, I think that since I usually see my boyfriend hours after I’ve put on perfume, by then the alcohol would have evaporated. But then again, the gluten molecules could still be left behind on my skin…

If you have any insight on this, please let me know!

(image from here)

Lec..lethe....lecith....whatever

When I first heard that my boyfriend couldn’t eat milk, I immediately assumed that he ate soy products. It seems like you can get soy anything nowadays, including soy milk. And then I remembered that he had soy intolerance. My initial thought was “So what do you eat?” This is a very good question, but one I will get to some other time. For now, let me focus on soy itself.

Although not as sneaky or omnipresent as gluten or corn, one ingredient that I have seen a lot of is soy lecithin, which I mentioned in my last post. Apparently it’s a common emulsifier which can be found in gum and tea. I’m sure there are other things, but I can’t think of them as of this moment. Luckily it’s pretty easy to pick out, except when I came across the ingredient “lecithin” in a list of ingredients in Good Clean Love’s Body Candy product. The company totes natural products so I assumed that the lecithin they described was a plant product, but I wasn’t sure which plant.

Curious so I was, I contacted customer services and they wrote back with almost KeVita-like speed (everything from now on will be judged in comparison with KeVita). The services-rep said that lecithin can be derived from several other plant sources different from soy, and she believed that this was the case with the product. This wasn’t 100% guaranteed, but I took some comfort that this supposed non-soy lecithin was just listed as “lecithin”. Hopefully that’ll help me make some decisions in the future.

Although, I have to wonder: is it just called “soy lecithin” because of how big the soy industry is? America is the number one producer of soy in the world, and therefore it sort of makes sense that the only lecithin people seem to come in contact with is soy-based. What did it take to corner this market? Is soy lecithin easier to produce or just easier to come by? If you have these answers, please comment.

(image taken from here)

I'd expect nothing less.

I love herbal tea. In fact, one of the first appliances I bought for college was an electric kettle so that I could make it in the comfort of my own dorm. It also proved handy for making Cup Ramen, but I digress.

Since my boyfriend and I share good food so often, I wanted to make sure that he could drink some of my favorite brews. I almost exclusively drink Celestial Seasonings because of their wide selection of herbal teas that are just downright yummy. I horde their CandyCane Lane flavor so that it lasts me until the next holiday season and guzzle down Bengal Spice to no end. On top of their excellent teas, they also have an excellent website.

They list the ingredients on the box, however they still use the dubious “natural flavors” term which kind of sets me and my boyfriend on edge. After looking at their site, the first thing I found is that they state quite clearly which flavors are gluten-free. This is a good start and I was happy to find that my favorite flavors were safe in that respect. I jumped over to the FAQ page and found that some of the teas contain soy lecithin, however they are “calling out on both our packaging and on our website those teas that contain soy lecithin”. Also a good sign, since my favorites didn’t contain those either. The only thing left was the “natural flavors”, which surprisingly they had an answer for.

“Several of our teas are enhanced with natural flavors. The natural flavors we use at Celestial Seasonings are concentrated substances of some of the same fruits, herbs, and spices used in our teas, such as cinnamon, citrus peel, oranges, almonds, mint or apples. Celestial Seasonings flavors have never contained monosodium glutamate (MSG).
If you have allergies or sensitivities to certain flavors, we recommend you avoid all products with added flavorings.”

Well, that seems pretty straight forward. My boyfriend is still a little suspicious and says that he won’t drink the flavors that say “natural ingredients” during stressful times because reactions seem to make him even more stressed, however I think that he will eventually try some.

Coincidentally, when I was looking through the FAQ page I found that they sometimes add citric acid to the tea, which is derived from corn. I’m a little surprised at this because I thought that citric acid was primarily found in citrus fruit (makes sense, doesn’t it?). I guess not! Luckily, my flavors don’t use any citric acid, but I’m still glad that I found this. I like that it’s up on the website, but I would never have expected corn to be hiding in there. But then again, corn hides everywhere these days. But that’s another post.

http://www.celestialseasonings.com/about/faqs.html

(image taken from the Celestial Seasonings website)

Condom Update

I received an email from the Trojan company regarding casein in their condoms. Their words were:

"In regard to your recent inquiry, the following Trojan® Condoms do not contain Casein.

Trojan® Bareskin™
Trojan® Ultra Thin
Trojan® Thintensity®

We recommend speaking with your physician for more information regarding the use of condoms that contain Casein."


Not exactly a complete answer, however it's good to know that there are some domestic condom options that don't include casein and that I won't have to order some from the UK or Germany.

I'm Pro-Probiotics

Kombucha: fermented tea. Lately this has been rising in popularity, however it does take some getting used to. My boyfriend is absolutely in love with it (and is even considering brewing his own) and even I have begun to like it, although it did take a few months. Luckily, I found a milder alternative: KeVita. It’s made from the same culture as kombucha, however instead tea the fermentation medium is coconut milk. I tried the plain coconut flavor and it really wasn’t that special, but then I tried the strawberry acai flavor. Pure heaven. This may sound strange, but it’s like drinking strawberry yogurt. That statement may turn a few of you off, but just give it a try. If you don’t like it, give it to me.

I wanted my boyfriend to try it since his favorite strawberry kombucha was taken off the market due to a kombucha recall:
http://www.walletpop.com/2010/08/05/kombucha-tea-after-the-recall-its-back-and-still-controversial/

The problem was that the KeVita label listed “natural strawberry and acai flavers”. My boyfriend informed me that this can be a catchall term for possible allergens and was therefore hesitant about trying it. I went onto the KeVita website and they stated that it was soy, casein, and gluten free. Corn, however, was left out. My boyfriend’s corn intolerance is rather mild and he said that he would risk it just to have a brewed strawberry beverage; however I went ahead and contacted the customer service people just to make sure. My efforts were rewarded. Almost immediately I got a response stating that there is no corn in KeVita, and in fact that there are no known allergens (except coconut) in it. It’s also vegan, if you’re one of that set.

My love for this product is not only due to the fact that it’s delicious, but also that the customer service people were able to answer my questions very quickly and thoroughly. All of the allergen information may be up on the FAQ page of the website, so I’ll keep checking. For now, I’ll continue to drink this awesome product knowing that it’s completely safe for my boyfriend.

http://kevita.com/

http://kevita.com/faq

(image taken from the KeVita website)

---Correction---

It turns out that KeVita is not made using the same culture as kombucha, just the same idea. They are made using a SCOBY, or Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. I was under the impression that KeVita and kombucha were made using the exact same variety and only different fermentation mediums, but I guess they use different strains. Sorry for the mix up!

Got Milk?

I’ve been finding that casein is found in many unexpected places. Casein is a natural protein found in milk which is used sometimes as a binding agent. Lately I’ve found out that casein can be made into knitting needles, various plastics, and can even be spun into yarn! One disturbing thing I have found, however, is that latex is sometimes made with casein. Latex allergies are somewhat well known, but if you know that you aren’t allergic to latex most people wouldn’t wonder about whether or not it was harmful to them in any other way.

The casein content of latex has sparked some outcry from the vegan community since casein is derived from milk. This has caused a search for vegan-friendly condoms made from all natural latex. My problem is that all of the articles about casein and condoms tend to lead to this topic. I am not particularly interested in the ethics of using milk products in condoms, I just want to know if they will cause an allergic reaction.

Finding the answer to this question is extremely hard. The leading condom websites don’t have much information as to what goes into their condoms. Trojan claims that they receive raw latex at their factories, but then describes how they add “chemicals”, which is probably the casein among other things. I tried to find a FAQ section, however all of the questions were related to the reliability of the product and were most likely created by the marketing team instead of actual curious people (like myself). In the end I had to contact the parent company, but still have yet to hear back. I will try and post any results as they come.

I wasn’t really expecting to find any statements like “the casein content is safe” on the site because frankly it isn’t an issue most people need to worry about (unless you’re vegan). The thing that got to me was just how hard it was to find a place to ask a question. Hopefully the companies I contacted will actually reply, but I think it is more likely that my question will disappear into the void.

I found some other websites that address the safety of casein in condoms, and the future doesn’t look bright:

http://www.foodsmatter.com/allergy_intolerance/latex/articles/safesex.html

http://whatallergy.com/2011-01/condoms

I wish these sites had more information, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. Alas, it seems that German-made vegan condoms are in my future. 

(image taken from here)


Edit:

In addition to the casein issue with condoms, apparently one of the websites I linked to in my post mentions that condoms are packaged with cornstarch to keep them from sticking when they are rolled up. Why does it make its way into so many things?

However, it seems that lubricated condoms are not using this on the product, according to this site:

http://cornfree.ca/life.htm

Of course this raises the question of just what is in the lubricant, but at least it shuts the corn issue down. But then again, it seems that condoms are "washed" with cornstarch during their production, whatever that means. Curses!

http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/booksReports/latexcondom/condmanuf.htm

 

"intro"= into, "ducere"= to lead. To lead into. Introduction.

It seems like allergies are becoming more common. In middle school we had the “peanut free” table, we had to be careful what food to bring in for birthdays, and almost everyone knew what an EpiPen was. Yes, peanut allergies have had their fifteen minutes of fame, but recently I have become better acquainted with other allergens.

My boyfriend has gluten, casein, soy, and corn intolerances, as well as allergies to various molds. For people without these intolerances, it’s difficult to imagine a day without these ingredients. They seem to slip into everything, even things you wouldn’t expect. Since I have started dating my boyfriend, I’ve had to read labels, make inquiries, and brush extra-carefully to make sure that he doesn’t have a reaction. To my surprise, the food industry doesn’t make it easy.

That is what this blog is about.

This is my journey through a relationship and my efforts to make sure that my boyfriend is safe around me. I hope to shed some light on how difficult it is to find “safe” products that we can share. I truly think that food companies should be honest on their labels, listing the potential for allergens if not their ingredient’s list. If that is not on the label, they should at least make it readily available on the website. I plan on presenting the issues I have with the labels and how I resolve them. I will try to post reliable links to websites I find, and I encourage comments that do the same. I don’t claim to have any answers, but rather I want to find them. And if possible, I’ll post recipes when I find clever ways to get around label confusion!