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COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED

Because of spam, I personally moderate all comments left on my blog. However, because of health issues, I will not be able to do so in the future.

If you have a personal question about LI or any related topic you can send me an email at stevecarper@cs.com. I will try to respond.

Otherwise, this blog is now a legacy site, meaning that I am not updating it any longer. The basic information about LI is still sound. However, product information and weblinks may be out of date.

In addition, my old website, Planet Lactose, has been taken down because of the age of the information. Unfortunately, that means links to the site on this blog will no longer work.

For quick offline reference, you can purchase Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog as an ebook on Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. Almost 100,000 words on LI, allergies, milk products, milk-free products, and the genetics of intolerance, along with large helpings of the weirdness that is the Net.

Monday, May 12, 2008

11th Annual Food Allergy Awareness Week

May 11-18, 2008 is The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network's (FAAN) 11th annual Food Allergy Awareness Week.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the
National Institutes of Health issued a joint release, Raising Awareness to the Personal and Research Challenges of Food Allergy, to mark the occasion.

It starts:

May 11-17 marks the 11th Annual Food Allergy Awareness Week, a time set aside to increase the public’s awareness of food allergies and the potential challenges they pose. In an average week in the United States, two or three otherwise healthy Americans will lose their lives, and nearly 5,000 will be hospitalized due to allergic reactions to foods. Approximately 6 to 8 percent of children under age 4 and nearly 4 percent of persons age 5 and older have a food allergy.

Aside from their immediate and sometimes life-threatening consequences, food allergies affect an individual’s health, nutrition, development and quality of life. These burdens disproportionately affect children. For children and their families, severe food allergies are accompanied by the fear of future serious reactions and the stigma of avoiding common foods, particularly in school lunchrooms and other social settings, where others too often do not understand the seriousness of the allergy.

FAAN will present an educational briefing tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

Reports state that FAAN will be starting a new advocacy initiative. More than 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies. That's only 4% of the population, a number far more reasonable than some claims that are thrown around but still a huge number of people who face issues with every bite they eat.

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