Holidays bring challenges to parents of kids who have food allergies. You want your child to be able to participate in the fun, without having an allergic reaction to one of the “treats”. If you don’t want to make your child “opt-out” of the Halloween fun, then you need to learn ways to provide safe, allergy free, sweets.
Having food allergies is no fun. Halloween is one of the holidays that is based around “food”, (or, junk food, anyway). While all the other kids are gorging themselves on way too many sugary treats, kids who have food allergies are having to show a great deal of restraint. Halloween can be scary. Having a serious allergic reaction to something you eat can be terrifying!
Parents who want their allergic child to experience the fun of Halloween are going to need to find safe options for the treats that your child will be surrounded by. You may want to get online, and read over some of the resources that have been created exactly for this purpose.
Sure Foods Living is a blog created by Alison St. Sure. She and her family “live a happy gluten-free life”, and she has a daughter who has food allergies. She has an incredibly detailed blog that lists the ingredients of many, (if not all), of the Halloween candies that could be handed to your little trick-or-treater.
Indie Candy makes naturally gourmet sweets that are allergy friendly. They are really good about creating holiday themed candies. This year, they have small packages of “Halloween Gummies” in a variety of flavors. They come in a bag with a pumpkin drawn on it, (just like typical Halloween candies do).
You can also get hard candy lollipops that are shaped like ghosts, pumpkins, and Frankensteins. There is a larger bag of Halloween Gummies that are shaped into pumpkins and fall leaves. Or, try some dairy-free chocolate lollipops (shaped like a bat or pumpkin).
Is your child going to be attending a classroom Halloween party at school? Talk to your child’s teacher, to see what the school’s policy is regarding homemade treats that are sent to school parties. If you are allowed to send along something that you bake, at home, yourself, then you have plenty of options.
There are gluten-free flours that can be used to make cookies. Use a cookie cutter that is shaped like a ghost, pumpkin, or bat, and you have created a treat that is safe for kids with gluten allergies to consume. When you bake at home, you can control what ingredients you use. This is one way to be sure that there will be a treat that is safe for your child to eat (whether he is allergic to gluten, dairy, eggs, or all of the above).
Image by TheCulinaryGeek on Flickr