cross contamination of foods

[boheime]

How important is cross contamination?

Background: My body crashed when I was eleven. I had no immune system and was homebound (minus doctor appointments) for a year. It was finally determined that I had so many severe allergies that my body couldn't compensate and my immune system crashed.

Fast foward, and I was headed down this road again. I was retested for allergies and am in the process of cutting things out of my diet. So, really how much do I need to be worried about cross contamination? If I buy gluten free flours from Azure because they are more affordable but milled on the same machines as wheat, what am I looking at? If I buy dairy, soy, and corn free chocolate that is made in the same plant where other products are made which have dairy or soy in them, what are the ramifications?

Is it doing any good? Logic tells me that avoiding an allergen 99% of the time has to better than not, but what do I really need to be worried about?

[scsigrl]

Hate to say it, but just like with kids, every persons different.

Your level of deal with with CC vs. any other person totally depends on your body. Sorry it isn't helpful but that's the truth of it

Good luck!

[deditus]

Do you have IgE allergies to these things, or celiac disease? I would avoid if you have celiac disease or an obvious IgE allergy. We seem to do fine with things from Azure, but we are dealing with intolerances not allergies.

[tanyalynn]

We're also dealing with intolerances (not IgE, not celiac), and over time I've noticed that we can all deal with a lot more trace x-con than we could at first. At first we had to be pretty careful, DS and I reacted to pretty small amounts of x-con, but these days, I am buying stuff that's made on the same equipment as wheat or dairy, and I think it's no more than a minor, unnoticed irritant to our bodies (best guess--I'm not seeing any reactions anyway).

You may want to be extra careful for a while and give your body a rest, and then try new products.

[boheime]

There was no mention of Celiac's. I had IgE reactions and IgG reactions to the major allergens, and some type of reaction to everything (which is why I'm concentrating on the things I had major reactions to and rotating everything else).