>Hazel Green wrote:
>It is not so much what is in foods in restaurants but also what they are
>cross contaminated with. As a rule the seriously allergic do not eat in
>restaurants the risk is too great unless we bring our own food. But then
>again if you are severly allergic all their furnishings are massively
>contaminated because they do not need to take the care that we do in
>cleaning up.
        Hazel, I hadn't even thought about the "clean-up" or cross
contamination!  Thanks! I'm not as sensitive to casein as your daughter is,
but I do have problems with my throat beginning to close if I get even a
trace of casein in my body. [I didn't know Burger King began coating their
french fries with dairy and I broke out in hives & had itching, swollen
palms within a few minutes after eating a couple of fries--I didn't eat any
more!]  .  Thanks so much for bringing up this point.  I know a wonderful
professor on campus who educates dietitians...she loves to stay "current" on
issues of concern to dietitians.  I will mention cross-contamination for the
severely allergic to her.  Perhaps it is an issue the university and the
American Dietetics Association will begin to teach to emerging
professionals. It is a start in the right direction to make people more
aware of these needs.
        I've always thought that restaurant employees, no matter how well
informed and how willing to check labels, do not know what is and isn't a
dairy product.  Joe, I don't think they are out to do me in, but they don't
__have to__ know about casein and it's "forms" or derivatives.  It took me a
long time to learn all of these things for myself and I had a LOT more
motivation to do so--I don't expect a teenager, in a restaurant to know
these things and to protect me from traces of casein & I hadn't even thought
about the risk of cross contamination. "Hidden" dairy products, in my
vocabulary doesn't mean that the food industry is out to kill me--it simply
means that there is dairy products or a form of dairy someplace I wouldn't
expect it--like spaghetti sauce or rice.  I know mac-n-cheese has dairy, but
I don't expect rice to have dairy in it!  You are right that many people,
including me, are too careless with the word "hidden." Thanks for the
reminder. :-)