3 ms·

My son has a handful of food allergies (peanuts, Cashews, pistachios and unfortunately milk). When you say "traces" is that like the equivalent of "Made in a f

My son has a handful of food allergies (peanuts, Cashews, pistachios and unfortunately milk). When you say "traces" is that like the equivalent of "Made in a facility with X"? IMO, this could be very useful for people ordering phone online, but the packaging and definitions should probably be pulled directly from the manufacturer. For example, "Made in a facility with X, but we clean our machines every day to ensure no cross contamination" is a lot better than "Made on a shared machine with products that contain X".

brlewis 7y ago
I would not trust any online source for this. Some years ago I was buying chocolate for my daughter who has a peanut allergy. On a single grocery store shelf, some Hershey bars had peanut warnings and others didn't. I called the company and learned that some of their facilities are shared and some aren't, so you always have to check the packaging, even if it's the same product you've bought before.
- scandinavegan 7y ago
  That's true. Two other situations that can trip you up is when a company changes the ingredients, without clearly advertising it, and restaurant chains with different preparation procedures. An ingredient change in Sweden that was minor, but still led to some confusion, was when the Marianne candy [1] changed the text from "May contain traces of milk" to "Contains <0.05 g of milk". Some vegans eat products with traces of milk, but the latter made it sound like it was something that was specifically added. Dairy products can also be completely added or removed from products without any other notice, which is something I'm not too bothered by if I make a mistake, but if I had a real allergy I might need to be more careful. Fast-food chains sometimes prepare the food differently between restaurants. The Max hamburger chain (or if it was Burger King, I don't remember) usually prepare the vegan options separately. But in some restaurants, due to space constraints, they fry the vegan products together with chicken products, or use the same counter space for preparation for vegan options and cheese. So if you care about this, you need to ask specifically in each restaurant, because they can't guarantee that they never come in contact in all restaurants. It's not enough to just look at the list of ingredients. [1] https://en.fazer.com/collections/marianne/products/marianne-120-g-original-bag https://en.fazer.com/collections/marianne/products/marianne-...

brlewis 7y ago

I would not trust any online source for this. Some years ago I was buying chocolate for my daughter who has a peanut allergy. On a single grocery store shelf, some Hershey bars had peanut warnings and others didn't. I called the company and learned that some of their facilities are shared and some aren't, so you always have to check the packaging, even if it's the same product you've bought before.

scandinavegan 7y ago
That's true. Two other situations that can trip you up is when a company changes the ingredients, without clearly advertising it, and restaurant chains with different preparation procedures. An ingredient change in Sweden that was minor, but still led to some confusion, was when the Marianne candy [1] changed the text from "May contain traces of milk" to "Contains <0.05 g of milk". Some vegans eat products with traces of milk, but the latter made it sound like it was something that was specifically added. Dairy products can also be completely added or removed from products without any other notice, which is something I'm not too bothered by if I make a mistake, but if I had a real allergy I might need to be more careful. Fast-food chains sometimes prepare the food differently between restaurants. The Max hamburger chain (or if it was Burger King, I don't remember) usually prepare the vegan options separately. But in some restaurants, due to space constraints, they fry the vegan products together with chicken products, or use the same counter space for preparation for vegan options and cheese. So if you care about this, you need to ask specifically in each restaurant, because they can't guarantee that they never come in contact in all restaurants. It's not enough to just look at the list of ingredients. [1] https://en.fazer.com/collections/marianne/products/marianne-120-g-original-bag https://en.fazer.com/collections/marianne/products/marianne-...