That Peanut Butter Has What?

So I bet you never thought I would blog about Peanut Butter, did you? Well, I am - sort of.

Some of you know that I'm on twitter. I really don't tweet much about food allergy (but feel free to follow me!), but my FA (food allergy) friends are on there too and I keep up with them there. And I also keep up on trends like #foodallergy and #peanutallergy. And I also do a search every week or so on peanut and peanut allergy to see if there are any new peanut allergic families to follow.

OK, so enough about building the clock instead of telling you the time. In these searches, there are countless number of people who say things like "I just read the peanut butter jar and it says CONTAINS PEANUTS - duh!". Well, yeah, duh. But it isn't worth replying to these folks, explaining that it's not the obvious stuff FA families worry about, but the hidden stuff (peanut flour in cereal, etc) and that food labeling is invaluable in this regard.

And then last night at the grocery store I saw this peanut butter and looked at the label. Why you ask? Well, because I always look at labels! Oh, you mean why was I examining peanut butter? Well, my good friend's son just passed his peanut challenge (I know??! AWESOME!) and she mentioned looking for PB without tree nuts (since he's still allergic to tree nuts - but when you pass the challenge you are supposed to keep exposing your child to peanuts so they don't become allergic again).

So I'm standing there in the aisle, reading the label, and what do I see? This label:

Look! More allergens! Like Wheat and Egg! And they also produce a tree nut butter and there is a risk of soy cross contamination. That's 4 more of the top 8. Whew. Just for peanut butter!

I'm not knocking this product at all. There up front about their product which is great. And it looks like a fine product. In fact, if B wasn't PA, I would likely buy it. I LOVE wheat germ and who doesn't love honey and peanut butter?!?! But if you simply went with the thought that it's peanut butter, and why would it have anything else, you'd be wrong.

My point is that you never know what you'll find in a product, so keep reading those labels!

Imagine what those folks on twitter would say now?

There's Wh(e)at in that?

As a peanut allergy mom, I read labels ALL the time.

I bought myself some hairspray last week and found myself looking at the label of that too. And I was shocked by what I found!

No. No peanuts or peanut oil in hairspray.

It's not unusual to find nut oils in beauty products. But I did find wheat!

In John Frieda Frizz-Ease Moisture Barrier Hairspray, the ingredients are:

"Alcohol Denat., Hydrofluorocarbon 152A, Octylacrylamide/Acrylates/Butylaminoethyl/Methacrylate Copolymer, Aminomethyl Propanol, Triethyl Citrate, Pentaerythrityl Tetracaprylate/Tetracaprate, Quaternium 52, PEG/PPG 20/15 Dimethicone, AMP Isostearoyl Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein, Ethylhexyl Methoxycinnamate, Fragrance"

Now, we don't have a wheat allergy in our house, but I would feel awful if we did and I was spraying this into the air!

Just goes to show that label reading is important, no matter what the product.