WOW!! Summer camp and food allergies

[Henrietta23]

I finally got around to emailing the church camp DS will be going to for a week, overnight. I registered him before any of the food restrictions and food allergies came about. I just received an email response from the food services director. He says that they are making almost all their food from scratch and that he will email me a menu a week in advance so we can see if there is anything DS can eat. I will provide premade meals and snacks for him that can be kept frozen and heated as needed. The director is bending over backward to accomodate DS! I'm just thrilled. I didn't expect problems but I didn't expect this either. Wow!

 

[noobiechickenlady]

Okay, that is just awesome!
Finally someone gets it!

 

[Henrietta23]

Uh huh. And I am just thrilled in general that they are making food from scratch!! DS and I stayed for a weekend last year and they weren't then. We had hot dogs and chicken nuggets. Blech! Progress is a good thing!

 

[justusnak]

Thats great news! Maybe last year enough people complained about the processed foods that they are now makeing it from scratch. Whatever the cause....thats great news. I know it will ease your mind knowing he will have GOOD food to eat while there.

 

[freemotion]

A word of caution....look at the recipes. I made all kinds of stuff from scratch in the past....from processed ingredients like white flour, Crisco, margarine, white sugar, etc. Only ever so slightly better than a poptart. Barely. "From scratch" doesn't mean what it used to.

I ask for recipes all the time, at potlucks and at people's homes, when they say they made it from scratch. More often than not, that means they opened up a bunch of cans and jars and dumped them into one pot.

Don't meant to rain on anyone's parade, but.....ya know what I'm sayin'. It is still a step in the right direction that anyone is willing to cook. I hope it means they are also peeling and chopping!

 

[Henrietta23]

The main plan is that I will make everying and freeze it. He just offered the menu in case but I'm sure I'll find lots of suspect ingredients and decide he shouldn't eat anything I don't send.

 

[Woodland Woman]

What diet is your son on? We are on special diets also and have to take almost all our food wherever we go.

 

[Henrietta23]

What diet is your son on? We are on special diets also and have to take almost all our food wherever we go.

We recently found out he is allergic to wheat, barley, rye, corn, rice, soy, peanuts, pecans, walnuts, sesame seeds and milk. Since almost every packaged food out there contains wheat, soy or corn syrup these days chances are he won't be able to eat their food. Even if something is made without corn syrup, rice syrup is likely to be used instead.
I will be off work by then and will have time to cook things ahead for him. We'll just bring a big cooler full of individual vacuum sealed meals and load them into the camp refrigerator. All should be good.

 

[Woodland Woman]

Sounds about like us except we can have corn, rice, nuts and seeds. But there are preservatives and artificial colors and flavors, corn syrup, some fruits and vegetables we can't have here. I try and save leftovers and freeze them for when I need a quick meal. It sounds like you have things under control. How did you find out about his allergies? I am working on reintroducing some fruits back into my kids diet and am having some success.

 

[Henrietta23]

Sounds about like us except we can have corn, rice, nuts and seeds. But there are preservatives and artificial colors and flavors, corn syrup, some fruits and vegetables we can't have here. I try and save leftovers and freeze them for when I need a quick meal. It sounds like you have things under control. How did you find out about his allergies? I am working on reintroducing some fruits back into my kids diet and am having some success.

We started seeing a naturopath for his attention issues because we did not want to put him on ADD medications. He also is very small and complains of discomfort after eating a lot. She started by having us take him off gluten and dairy. That made some improvement but he was still having some problems so she ordered some blood tests and that came up. He was experiencing horrible seasonal allergies at the time as well so we nailed down those issues as well. He's allergic to most of the trees in our backyard and surrounding woods and mold. He is not allergic to cats, dogs or dust oddly enough. Must be immunity from exposure!!
I hope that we can reintroduce the milder foods back in at some point. The peanut allergy was the strongest. That one he may not be able to have ever.