You Might Also Like: At The Table: The Food Allergy Podcast

**Amanda Whitehouse** (0:07)
Food is one of the most basic ways that we care for each other.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
I'm allergic to shellfish, cashew, pistachio, and pine nuts.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:14)
And tree nut allergy.

**Tyler** (0:14)
My allergy is eggplant.

**Amanda Whitehouse** (0:16)
Severe allergies to milk and eggs.

**Zoe** (0:18)
I'm much more direct about what is at stake.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:20)
Advocating is important. I'm glad I did it for my daughter.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:23)
That's care. That's love.
This is At The Table, The Food Allergy Podcast, a show about food, connection, and living with food allergies. Each episode, we pull up a chair to a different table, from date nights to tables abroad and discuss how to navigate each moment while still eating safely. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can eat, it's about still having your seat at the table.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:54)
This show is brought to you by Genentech and Novartis in partnership with Xolair, a melisma app. Our hosts have been compensated for their participation, though our guests have not. The information shared in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about any questions regarding your health or treatment, and stay tuned until the end of the episode for important safety information.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:19)
Welcome back everybody. Hi Tyler, how are you?

**Tyler** (1:21)
I'm great. How are you?

**SPEAKER_2** (1:23)
I'm good. Thank you. Welcome back to At The Table, The Food Allergy Podcast. It's very exciting to be back with you again for another episode.

**Tyler** (1:33)
Yeah, I'm really excited for this one too. We've got so much to discuss and really dive into, and we've had so much positive feedback already, and I think this is so important.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:41)
Yeah, the feedback has been amazing. I'm really excited to dive into this week's episode of the family dynamics.

**Tyler** (1:50)
That's right.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:51)
Which can be so tricky, right? I think a lot of the feedback that I've gotten when I've talked about family dynamics with friends who have kids with allergies or they have their own allergies is their immediate family is used to this. This is a day-to-day experience for them where they are avoiding, they understand cross-contact, they understand the severity of it.
But the truth is, when you verge into extended family where this isn't so familiar and isn't in their vocabulary, it becomes really important on how you communicate and tell them and set boundaries. I think that it really comes into play a lot with this extended family that I'm talking about in family gatherings during the holidays. When you're meeting somebody's family for the first time or more than the first time. But this was the case for Zoe, who is our first story, who has a life-threatening peanut allergy. Let's hear what she has to say.

**Zoe** (2:54)
Early on in my relationship with my partner, my soon-to-be father-in-law knew I had a peanut allergy. But him and I hadn't talked in detail about what cross-contact means and exactly what that meant in terms of eating. I thought I did a good enough job explaining to him how severe it was and to not have peanuts in the house. But it turns out when he was preparing food for us, he was casually snacking on mixed nuts while peeling the potatoes for dinner, not thinking anything of it and how that could lead to me having a reaction.
After I went over for dinner that night, I had one bite of mashed potatoes and I immediately knew something was wrong, and I ended up going to the emergency room for an allergic reaction. I felt a little embarrassed. It was scary, but I wasn't angry at him. It actually made me realize that I hadn't fully explained the level of caution needed and that I would need to do a better job communicating in the future and confirm with others who I think are on the same page to make sure that we actually are on the same page.
Wow.

**Tyler** (4:03)
Yeah. I'm sure it happens in different situations where they just don't know. Cross-contact is a real thing. It happens when an allergen from a food unintentionally ends up someplace it's not supposed to be, right? And that could happen from pretty much different points of contact. There's direct contact, and that's an obvious one. That's like a peanut butter knife inside of a jelly jar. And then there's the surface contact. And surface contact, that's really kind of sneaky because these are things that you don't see. It's like in a restaurant, if they take a panko breaded shrimp, for example, and they fry that into the fryer, and then they fry french fries, those french fries might be exposed to wheat and shellfish. And so these are the things that you have to be really careful about to keep the lanes clean.