News From Food Safety.gov: By Howard Seltzer, FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Have you seen the news?

• In a study released last week, food allergy rates were highest for children 1 to 5 years. Overall, the study found that children were twice as likely to have food allergies as other groups.
• Another recent study reported that about 35 percent of children over the age of five with food allergies have experienced bullying, teasing or harassment.

If you have a child with food allergies, you know how important it is to educate them and the adults in their lives (including teachers, caregivers, and coaches) about the basics of food allergies and reactions

Read the Label
The first lesson is: read the label. By law, the labels on food regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (that is, all food except for poultry, most meats and certain egg products) must identify whether the food contains any of the eight most common allergenic foods:

• Milk
• Eggs
• Fish (such as flounder, bass, or cod)
• Crustacean shellfish (such as crab, lobster, or shrimp)
• Tree nuts (such as almonds, walnuts, or pecans)
• Peanuts
• Wheat
• Soybeans

The label must also indicate if any ingredient in the food contains protein derived from one or more of these eight foods.

But what about food ingredients with odd names like lecithin? The law requires that, if an ingredient contains a major allergen, the allergen must appear on the label, in one of two ways:

1. In parentheses after the name of the ingredient:
Example: lecithin (soy), flour (wheat), whey (milk)

OR