Allergies and Cost of Living

[abbs1]

For parents of children with allergies, how are you coping with the cost of living? My food bill is skyrocketing and struggling to feed my children.

My son has a gluten allergy- still waiting on tests to see if it's just wheat so he's having to have gluten free food until the tests can be done.
My daughter has multiple allergies milk, soya, oats, rice and egg which makes shopping a nightmare. We can hardly ever have the same meals as a family apart from a roast dinner.

How is everyone keeping food costs down? It's getting ridiculous now and I need to find ways to save money. I try my best not to buy the ready made/processed food as it costs a lot but even fresh meat/fish etc is expensive.

20 allergies here. It's almost a blessing as it pretty much removes everything in a packet. The only replacement foods we buy are oat milk (subscribe and save on Amazon to save 15%), oat yoghurts and occasionally oggs cakes and chocolates at Christmas or if she is going to a party. Everything else is whole ingredients.
I have a histamine intolerance which means I struggle with some packet foods so we had been doing whole foods for me already.

It stresses me out every month. Its not our child's fault they have allergies but how are we just supposed to suck it up and pay when if you have a mental health or disability you can get help. I'm not saying people like this shouldn't as they should but so should our children. I'm not buying this stuff as a luxury it's a serious issue.

We kind of do meals like that already so like sausage with potatoes and veg or homemade meatballs with pasta, burgers and things. Chicken chicken in a pasta sauce etc to stetch the amount for 4 people. I will give mash another try but my kids aren't keen 🙈
My daughters allergies are quite severe so not sure at the moment when/if she will. Shes got food challenges over the next few years to see if shes making progress. My son we're awaiting more tests but I hope he does in the coming years.

Oh gosh that is a lot. It does definitely make cooking whole foods easier but sometimes I just want to grab and go instead of always having to think one step ahead. I do freeze leftovers if I can or theres any left.
I need to see if I can find some coconut milk as the alpro one has soya in it. We currently use the Koko one but it's £1.85 a litre and my daughter can easily get through 4 cartons a week.

Sadly had no prescription as a household for coeliacs for years, my children never had anything on prescription.

Sweet potato mash more popular here

Even things like sausages can be too much for us to buy. There is 1 sausage in Tesco and one in Sainsbury's that are safe the rest have either paprika/pimento in for colour or onions for flavour. She can't have beef casing as she's allergic to beef and the label doesn't always tell you if it has beef or pork casing

Oatly barista is £2.10 a litre in the supermarket and due to other allergies is the only milk available. We typically pay £1.70 on Amazon sometimes £1.30-1.50. We get 4 boxes of 6l delivered every month plus her multivitamins which gives us 5 subscribe and save products so we get 15% off. I don't know if they have the Koko products but it's worth checking

I remember when I was breastfeeding and eliminating the same foods my mil wanted to treat us to a takeaway. We tried for ready meal instead but there wasn't a single safe option as a lot of her allergies collide - all the regular stuff has dairy or beef in and all the vegan things were full of tomatoes and coconut. We only had about 10-12 identified allergies at the time too!