We turned an interesting corner with my son’s food allergies this week. Last November, after uneventfully eating hummus (with sesame paste, aka tahini) for several months, he had a strange hivey reaction to a tahini-based salad dressing. I was fairly certain it wasn’t a cross-contamination issue (i.e. peanuts on the tahini-making equipment or something) because I had been careful to buy tahini that was labelled as “made in a facility that only handles sesame seeds”. I figured we likely had another food allergy to add to the list, and knowing how common sesame allergies were, I guess I wasn’t surprised.
The allergist, however, was surprised, mostly because dude had previously tolerated hummus without a trace of any reaction or issue. So instead of “scratch-testing” him to confirm an allergy (which apparently has a high rate of false positives) she encouraged me to reintroduce the hummus and cross my toes. Continue Reading →
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