The Lonely Plate

A brand new website has launched called The Lonely Plate: The Food Allergy Guide to Fun and Safe Dining.

Founded by former News Coverage Manager at CNN's Washington Bureau, it features (and is actively soliciting) reviews of restaurants, hotels, airlines and kid-friendly venues. One nice feature is that you can select reviews by category of insensitivity - milk, eggs, tree nuts, gluten, etc. I've found a big gap in information about airlines and airports, so The Lonely Plate is one more resource to checkout. It's too early to tell if this will me the ONE that manages to truly consolidate information, or if it's just another drop in the infinite universe of online health information.

BREAKING NEWS: Potential Cure for Peanut Allergy

At the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Andrew Clark, a British physician claims a new NHS sponsored research project featuring desensitization therapy will cure thousands of children of their peanut allergy. Read the story here.

Air-Canada to create nut-free buffer on airplanes

In response to a recommendation by the Canadian Transportation Agency, Air Canada said it is willing to create a nut-free buffer zone on its airplanes. The nut-free zone would encompass the seats adjacent to the allergic passenger's seat, plus those in front of and behind the passenger. Passengers with nut allergies must notify the airline 48 hours in advance. The proposal is in response to complaints by two nut allergic passengers who say they were not accommodated when flying.

Allergy cards

If you have food sensitivities and are traveling abroad, bringing a food allergy card in the local language can go a long way to ease the mind. A number of companies offer these portable cards. A few are available for free with a suggested donation, the rest start at around $8. Laminated cards hold up to more wear and tear than plain paper stock, but it is easy to laminate printed cards yourself.

Common sense dictates that it is advisable to verify that the translation on your card is correct, particularly if you have not dealt with a company before. I cannot vouch for the reliability of any company or translation.

Here are a few of the companies and health programs producing allergy translation cards:

Select Wisely
* Translation into 48 languages
* Strongly worded cards for people with life threatening sensitivities.
* Cards for nuts and shellfish, and multiple food allergies.
* Gluten intolerance cards.
* Lactose intolerance cards.
* Diabetic emergency and pharmacy cards.
* Latex and Penicillin allergy cards
* Vegetarian and Vegan cards.
* Special order customized cards.

Dietary Card out of the UK offers a similar range of service s as Select Wisely.

Allergy Translation
* Allergy translation cards for 175 foods in 27 languages. Costs $8.
These are not laminated cards. You print them directly from your computer.

Gluten Free restaurant Cards
* Celiac / gluten-free restaurant cards in 48 languages, to print out on your computer. Free with $5 suggested donation.

Diabetes Health Record (DHR) Card
* These cards created by the California Diabetes Program are a great self management tool, with space for recording tests and results. Available for free in English and 18 other languages.

Lactofree Translation Card
Lactose intolerance cards available from Lactofree as a free pdf file in French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, and Norwegian.

What's this blog about?

Whether you have diabetes or celiac disease, a peanut allergy or lactose intolerance, you still love to travel. The goal of this blog is to make travel easier for you, when you travel for business or adventure, alone or with family.

The idea came about because I believe that food sensitivities should not be an impediment to seeing the world.

Searching the internet, I found many resources on traveling with various food sensitivities, but even the most polished looking among them was incomplete. Some of the gluten-free travel sites, for example, offer reviews of restaurants in major European cities like Paris or Rome, but no information about traveling even slightly off the beaten path. There are tips and tricks to traveling with ease, and soon they will be featured here.

My intention is not to reinvent the wheel but to aggregate the best information on the web about traveling with dietary restrictions. This will be a work in progress for some time, so please bear with me. If you have a resource to share, I'd love to know about it.

Bon voyage!