Allergies and Intolerances, missed opportunities?

In our family we have multiple food allergies (Blueberries, Bananas, Fake Sugars, etc) and a child with Milk Soy Protein Intolerance (MSPI). Why does this matter at all? For one thing restaurant's and fast food joints are missing out on our business. If we can't identify at least one product on the menu that our MSPI child can eat, we don't eat at the location.

The typical scenario goes something like this;

My wife or I are too tired to cook something for dinner. We would consider going out, but since none of the local restaurant's or food joints can tell us whats in their products we can't go to them. Instead, one of us sucks it up and makes something for dinner.

It would be easy enough for most food chains to at least provide the information that we need to make our decision (the government makes all those primary manufactures distribute ingredient lists with their products). Simply take the listing on all of the primary ingredients used and cross reference it with the top 10 allergies and intolerances, then use that information to generate a listing.

In fact, a few companies already do this; Yum Foods places ingredient listings for all of their companies (A&W, KFC, Long John Silvers, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell) as a downloadable word document (as long as you have MS Word installed your ok) and Churches Chicken places a listing of "Potential Food Allergens" on their website:

Unfortunately, all that this does is make it known to us that we can't eat at these locations (notice that Milk or Soy is in just about everything).

What these companies fail to realize is that they are missing out on a very large market share of people that would become buyers if they could. It is a well known fact that most families will eat out 2-3 times a week when there is a provider of foods that they enjoy near by.

For an Allergy Aware family this drops down dramatically (about once a month if not less). Why, simply no one wants little Billy barfing all over the place or worse yet having to make a mad dash to the hospital because their peanut allergic child ate fries cooked in peanut oil.

Many establishments have changed their cooking oils to a Vegetable Oil instead of Peanut Oil, but this only resolves one of the major allergy groups. Most Vegetable Oil contains Soy and even though "common belief" is that Soy Oil doesn't contain active proteins that affect MSPI individuals, it does in many cases (it all depends on what protein your allergic/intolerant to).

There are some solutions though, if food providers would switch to using Canola Oil or Vegetable Oil that doesn't contain Soy this would take care of many of their products. In the listing from Churches anything marked X** (in the Soy column) would be safe for my child to eat (as long as it doesn't have Dairy in it).

Up till this point I've talked about my family and our points of view. The fact is that we are strong members in Allergy and Intolerance groups online and in our community and we hear the same stories over and over again.

We are taking a trip to [Insert Destination] and would like to know where we can eat along the way. Our family has the following list of allergies/intolerances: [listing]

The group then has several responses depending on the listing of allergies/intolerances. If, say for example, only peanuts are listed you will see many locations listed. If MSPI, Milk, or Soy are listed then the listing is usually in the range of "your screwed unless you know specifics".

There are some good restaurants out there though. Best in show (in my mind at least) is Texas Roadhouse. We have been to Texas Roadhouse's across the country, and the story is always the same:

We tell the waiter/ress that we have a son who is allergic to Milk and Soy (always followed by some sort of what does he eat dialog). He/She realizes that since Texas Roadhouse makes ALL of its food on site they can accommodate the issue and we place our very specific order for the youngest on a separate ticket so it gets attention: child's Steak no Seasoning AT ALL, Steamed Veggies with no Oil/Butter, Side Salad with vinaigrette (please check the oil type first and let us know) and Juice.

The food always comes exactly as we ask for it, and we have never had a problem. This means that when we go out, we eat at Texas Roadhouse. We spend a LOT of money there, and we tip our Waiter/ess and the cooks very well (usually in the range of $15 since we are a family of 4 on our $30-40 ticket).

If you think we are crazy, just remember, its the only place in town we can go out to eat. Problem is, we would love to be able to go out to more places and have a few fast food joints added to our listing.

Enough ranting for now, hopefully someone up the food-chain reads this and understands what I mean :).


- Jeremy