By Jenna O’Donnell
Before she was 2 years old, Olivia Moglino was nearly killed by a trace of peanut oil in a sandwich.
Her mother hadn’t known that the 16-month-old was allergic to peanuts until she ended up in the hospital, gasping for air. Moglino nearly died that day, severe anaphylactic shock rendering her nearly lifeless in her mother’s arms. It was any parent’s worst nightmare.
“We knew that my life was not going to be normal,” Moglino said. “There is a huge part of feeling excluded, growing up.”
Moglino, who is severely allergic to peanuts, tree-nuts, shellfish, chickpeas and lentils, describes a sense of isolation in being one of the few kids at her school with food allergies. She had to contend with bullying from other children who didn’t take her severe food allergies seriously. At friends’ birthday parties, she couldn’t have cake or sweets. During lunchtime at school she had to sit at her own table, often separate from her friends.
“I would go to my friends and say, ‘Can anybody come sit with me at my table?’ ” Moglino said, but added there were many days where she ended up sitting alone.
These days, the food allergy tables at schools are becoming more crowded. About 32 million people in the United States suffer from food allergies and that number continues to grow. Food allergy prevalence among children increased by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In a similar period, peanut or tree nut allergies in children more than tripled.
“Over the last 20 or 30 years food allergies have become a bigger and bigger issue for reasons that we don’t really understand,” said Gary Gross, M.D., a board-certified allergist and immunologist at Allergy Partners of New Jersey.
Though the increase in patients with allergies has definitely gone up, doctors and researchers are still trying to fully understand the reasons why. Gross notes that parents living with an abundance of caution toward exposing children to possible allergens has not been a boon.
“We know that limiting exposure to food early on in life kind of backfired,” he said. “We know now that early exposure is a way to develop a tolerance for foods. So that’s made a big impact in the approach.”
When it comes to ensuring that kids are exposed to and build immunity against developing food allergies, Gross has a couple of tips. He recommends that parents assess a child’s family history and background. Sometimes exposing the skin to small swabs of peanut butter or almond butter can also work as a tester, but he notes that some advise against this as it could lead to a false positive. Ingesting food is really the best way to gauge whether a food will lead to a reaction.
“Start with small amounts and watch closely,” he advises. “And keep Benadryl in the home.”
Rather than allow herself to be handicapped by her food allergies, Moglino turned her experience into a career. When her allergies limited what desserts she could eat, Moglino started developing her own recipes in her parents’ kitchen.
By age 19, she had completed a year at a culinary school in New York and launched her own nut free business, Liv Nut Free. Last September, Moglino opened her first storefront in Shrewsbury. During the grand opening 1,200 people showed up.
“It just goes to show how much of a need there is,” she said. “Before we opened I would travel hours to go to a nut-free bakery.”
Moglino has had customers come from as far as Alabama visit her shop, which offers made-to-order cakes, cookies, brownies and more. She also has an online store so she can ship nut-free baked goods, mixes and granola all over the country.
Customers regularly tell her how excited they are to finally have a nut-free option for their child or for themselves. Others, who don’t suffer from nut allergies, come in to buy her cakes or cupcakes so that no child is left out at birthday parties and bake sales.
Making sure that simple things, like cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies are delicious and nut-free for anyone who wants them is important, according to Moglino, who recently launched a line of nut-free granola and hopes it can one day be in local grocery stores and Whole Foods.
Living with severe food allergies can make normal activities, like going out with friends or going on dates, a lot more complicated. “A huge part of your life is sweets,” Moglino said. “When you have these allergies, automatically sweets are a no-no. So to be like ‘you can have this’ – it’s mind blowing.”
