Does anyone with peanut allergy risk the peanut oil???

[mymama]

Am curious to know if anyone does risk foods with peanut oil. All of my research and info shows that most peanut allergy sufferers tolerate certain peanut oils as the protein is removed during processing. Example would be Nutella or chinese foods. I am not so brave but wonder if others are.

no I wouldn't risk it

don't deliberately use any products with peanut oil in but neither do I worry about unspecified "vegetable oil" which may include peanut. Refined peanut oil is supposed to be safe but unrefined oil isn't. We don't generally eat Chinese food because I worry about cross contamination. Didn't relaise nutella was refined oil, it's not a product I would ever have thought of using.

Would never have risked it either but was speaking to a mum at school this week who seems to be a little less "educated" in the area of allergies. Her child is peanut allergic and she was saying she is fine with nutella though. She was not aware Nutella contained more peanut oil then hazlenuts until I pointed it out. We eat chinese food ourselves but would not feed it to/eat around ds though.

There are many issues surounding the risk factors of peanut oil/chinese resturants , and nutella spread.

The first ,

Refined peanut oil ( as opposed to pure groundnunt oil) is considered an extremely low risk, due to the high temp , that changes the protein structure of the peanut .
Having taken medical advice , I am happy for my highly allergic son to eat foods cooked in refined peanut oil.

That said, I would not consider nutella as a food which would enter our own 'comfort zone'.
My son has grown out of his tree nut allergies, but remains peanut allergic ( as well as many other foods BTW) , but the risk involved in nutella spread, is not the refined peanut oil , but the risk of cross contamination from the tree nuts.
Nuts are often all processed and bagged on the same lines before being passed on to other manufactuers. This means that all nuts are to some extent cross contaminated, unless you buy them from the shell and eat them direct.

Which is something that we have done on occasion.
Peanut is one of the few foods banned from our house, but tree nuts in shells are welcome.

Chinese resturants are not on our list because of the use of peanuts/oil and other food allergies.
cooking pots and tools are not cleaned between each dish made, so are a high risk for cross contamintion, even if you ask for foods to be removed from a dish.

Indian resturants, well, there are peanut allergic people who have recieved safe meals, but the risk, for our son at the moment IMO is high enough for us to avoid.
Foods bought by catering companys for indian resturants are not as safe as we think.
Recently almond powder , often used in indian cooking, can sometimes contain peanut flour, as a bulking product, as peanuts are cheaper.
Then of course, the risk of cross contamination of tree nuts in the restuarant is still high.
There are a number of deaths in young adults that have been the result of an indian meals, that were supposedly nut free.

For us our meals eaten out of the home are fish and chips ( at certain places locally) pizza express, and big mack and burger king. sadly nothing exciting.

sarah

sorry to hijack this thread,ds has tree nut allergy not peanut.

williamsmum -I'm interested about your son outgrowing his tree nut allergy.When did he outgrow it and what nuts did you know he was allergic to.My ds is allergic to cashews,unsure what others he's allergic to
thanks

william was allergic to hazelnut, almond, brazil and one other I cant remember ( didnt really matter at the time, just avoid all nuts!)
He was tested at hospital and grew out of them around 6-7. However his rating for peanut and beans was higher, and we were told then that he would never grow out of those allergies.
Since 7 yrs we still discovered some new allergies, and some have dropped in rating and others have gone higher.
children have a 20% chance of growing out of peanut allergy, depending on reaction history , but this drops at 7 yrs.
(there are some good studies on the 'research' thread of peanutallergy.com).
I hope this helps.

Fascinating post Williamsmummy. Would agree with you about Indian restaurants in my limited experience. One of our best friends is peanut allergic (thankfully never to the point of anaphylactic shock) but loves Indian food. I saw him the day after he'd eaten a take-away that was supposed to be nut free. He'd been up all night being sick and was still covered in hives and bruised around the eyes. Presumably the food had been cooked in a pan that had previously been used for a peanut -containing meal, or in peanut oil.

thanks williamsmummy.ds has been recently tested for all tree nuts at a clinical trial in cambridge.The skin tests were negative for all nuts except cashews which was quite big!

can't find out any research on incidence of kids growing out of this though.Your son's experience does give me hope though

How bizarre that the mum of a nut allergic child would not have read every single label, and would have seen the peanut oil content in nutella.

no, my attitude is, why risk it. DD doesn't need these food items so why take the risk when there so much else she can eat that is safe. My dd asked me once what a peanut tasted like. I said she wouldn't like it, it tasted like dirt. We had a good laugh.

Well, every family with a nut allergic child has also another member of the family who forget to read the labels or even wonder if the word NUTella is actually derived from "nut".... so, to make the story short, DS is allergic to nuts, although not the anaphilactic kind of allergic and when some stupid member of my family gave him a bread with nutella he DID certainly had a reaction to it!!!

I believe that with peanut allergy is always better to err on the side of caution, even if the allergy is mild, you can't be sure if this allergy is going to make a turn for the worse when you less expect it

bobbybob - agree with you. Her dd is 6 and is only just signing up for testing now. She talked about her reactions being swollen face and frothing at the mouth. I was rather amazed actually. After a few minutes of speaking with her I realised I wasn't going to get any handy advice.

Chandra - funny thing names of products though. We use a dairy free spread for ds called Nuttelex. Friends/family who visit look at me gobsmacked but it only contains olive oil/soya etc.

So does everyone avoid eating chinese (themselves) in their houses?? We have so far as I was worried about the products being cooked in peanut oil. I would never feed chinese to ds due to cross contamination but would love to have it as an option for ourselves occasionally.

This is really interesting my dd 13 has just started reacting to nuts and have just been referred to paediatrician for testing. She has reacted to choc spread wasn't nutella though, also to stuffing. Did read labels on all choc spread in Tescos the other day they all say may contain nuts.

As far as chinese is concerned don't know what we going to do if she has to stop eating that as we quite often have it if friends come round. She likes it other dd doesn't.

Nuttelex amazed me to when we first started down this allergy journey - I was even more amazed when they stopped selling it here!

Now the bread I used to get Bob with no preservatives or anything has been reformulated. Still no preservatives but full of emulsifyers and acidity regulators.

Both companies cited increased petrol costs as the reason - because they have to be delivered more often because they are not fresh for as long.

Could just be an excuse to get rid of a niche line.

we do our own stir fry,using a sharwoods sachet that

is safe.We use the black bean and oyster sauce one.

We wouldn't risk a chinese restaurant or take away,same with indian

I can see life changing a lot in our household then

maybe will be a bit more informed once she sees a paed

yes .its quite a daunting prospect, lonwaytogo.

Where are you based.We go to the southampton allergy clinic,great but a long wait.Ds had to wait 6 mos for his 1st appt.

eating out is definately one of the hardest thing to cope with.

We are in North Wales so Alder Hey is a possibility but I thin we been referred to wrexham

seems daunting at first longwaytogo but it soon becomes "normal". Most frustrating thing is lack of education/understanding from others. I have had comments like "don't feed him nuts then" and "but it's only whole peanuts not peanut butter".

You could try asking to be put on the cancellation list also. Our allergy appointment was 10 months wait and I asked to be put on cancellation list and got in after 2 months. Worth a try.

Wouldn't go to chinese restaurant either but what about at home?? Obviously nothing with nuts in but possibly fried rice or chicken and veges.

We usually go for the banquet. Wonder why she has developed this now - strange thing alergies we can develop them whenever and we can grow out of them whenever.

We are avoiding chinese at home but I believe we wouldn't id DS was only allergic to nuts (the main reason to avoid chinese in our house is that DS is Allergic to soya). There are plenty of chinese food you can cook from scratch and be sure it doesn't have nut oils in it.

Thaks Chandra. I really feel for you having to avoid soya -it is in nearly everything!! Do cook a lot of chinese myself too, but wouldn't mind it as a slighty healthier option for takeaway meal.

Personally, no. I'm not even convinced I still would have an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts, but I'm not about to test the theory!