<div class="block">Courtney Mullin, founder of Safe4Kids, joined &#39;beWell&#39; to talk about safe snacks, particularly those that don&#39;t contain major allergens like milk, eggs, fish, and tree nuts. </div>

beWell

Be Well: Safe Foods Review

You really know all about this because all three of your kids have allergies. They do. All three of my kids have allergies but not the same one. No, the old ones. So I've been in this allergy world for 12 years. Yes. Ok. So now as a mom, my kids don't have allergies, I want to make sure if somebody comes in my home or goes to the class party that they can have fun and that they don't feel like they have this special snack that makes them out. Right. That's what I think is the most important thing. There's so many great options and it shouldn't be intimidating. There's 5 million Children with food allergies. It's roughly two in every classroom. So it's really important that the kids who have these allergies are included in the class celebrations and the parties and make it feel like just as included as everybody else. I love it. Ok. So let's start with what you have in this basket here. What's this? Ok. So these two baskets are what we call allergy friendly baskets. That means that they don't contain any ingredients with the major food allergens. Ok. So everything in here. Not free, not free dairy, free, peanut, free tree nut, free fish, free, like everything. So you're covered, you have granola bars, you have cookies and they all taste just as delicious. Like you would never know the difference. And even here, I mean, this is, you know, skinny pop and potato chips. Tostitos. These are things that kids, they're not. So you don't think of it. So it's the most major fun snacks. Like you have your Tostitos and you have like the popcorn, I would say like the number one way to keep our kids safe is prep packaged food and labels. Labels are everything you wanna see what's in the food that you're eating and you'll find these ingredients are like almost like less is more, it have a lot of stuff, right? When you take a look at like this is called uh you know, this is a right, but you take a look at the back and there's not a lot of things in there and again, it comes in its own, you know, wrapper. So you don't have to worry about anybody that did have a peanut butter. And my favorite thing is they actually sneak a little, a couple um healthy ingredients in here. So you have vitamin C and D. So they put like a little extract in here. They sneak a little like good stuff in here. You have no idea. It's hidden under, tasting good. OK. Now what about this. One of the most common food allergies is tree nut and peanut. And we all get that letter home that there's a class, you know, somebody in the class that has a peanut or tree nut allergy, there's so many great options. So you don't have to feel like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna send in? You know, that these, everything that we're seeing here you can find at any local supermarket, right? So it's not that you have to go to a special specialty store and it doesn't mean that you can't have fun. These are all snacks that kids would like to have the Children that have the allergies, they know what they can and can't have. Exactly. And then I feel like it's just really like um reading the labels. So I feel like um usually what a teacher will do is like, send out a notice explaining that there's one child or two child, sorry, Children, two Children with food allergies in the class. And it's just a matter of like now the parents getting like a list of snacks that would be safe. So I always do that with my kids. Like I'll send something into the school and I'll give them like um a sheet of like the safe snacks that would be suggested for school parties. Great. So now we know we can stay safe and have a good time, Courtney. Thank you so much. Of course.