Growing up in the 70s and 80s was a blessing for someone like me with both peanut and tree nut allergies. Back then, food was simpler. You just didn’t see nuts in dishes in most restaurants and food products, like cereal and bread, so avoiding them was not too difficult. Cross-contamination was much less likely. As time went by, however, peanuts, peanut butter, and tree nuts all became more prevalent in every day food. The world became more dangerous for the allergic.
I experienced this new world first-hand one day when I was in high school. It was the day that my own mortality and how quickly it could all end hit me. I ate a grilled cheese sandwich, French fries, and gravy in the school cafeteria. It was the “treat” I occasionally ate when I didn’t bring lunch from home. I’d eaten there and eaten that food many times before. I had no reason to be worried. That day, however, included cross-contamination by a knife that had been used to make a peanut butter sandwich. I was at the nearby hospital about an hour later. I survived the reaction, but I was scared out of my mind eat anything that didn’t come from my own home and even eating at home seemed more dangerous to me than before.
As an adult who survived childhood with a fatal allergy to peanuts and most tree nuts, I dream of the day where people like me can go out to eat without worry and buy food without fear that it might contain an allergen that will kill me. I imagine traveling anywhere in the world knowing that there will be safe places to let me experience the culture through food without fearing for my life. That day is years away, I know…if it will ever come at all. In the meantime, I wanted to create a web site that helps people with these allergies find those few businesses out there that are stepping up to this growing market of people and trying to give them that experience. These are the businesses that are reaching for that dream.
I salute all these great entrepreneurs and thank them for trying to give us some semblance of what it must be like to be “normal” in this food-centered world we live in. Thank you all!
Kyla Cragg
Founder of NutfreeBusinesses.com
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