Our son is allergic to peanuts and soybeans.
We knew about the peanuts and thought it was fairly straightforward to avoid peanuts, namely checking to see if are there peanuts in the food and finding out if they fry in peanut oil (Chick-fil-a being the only chain that we have found that fries their chicken in peanut oil — the fries are fried in canola oil).
We’ve just found out about the soybean allergy after a trip to the ICU due to asthma. Now the doctors are telling us for the time being (months, years) to avoid soy in all forms.
Avoiding soy is a lot easier said than done.
Fortunately, my wife and I were already very skeptical of the supposedly wonderful soybean*, so for his whole life, we had never intentionally given him soy and always avoided soy whenever we bought items at the grocery store.
Now that we have to consciously restrict soy from all of his food. We were stunned to find out how often soy or soybean oil is used in restaurants. It’s even trickier because often restaurants will have a disclaimer similar to this one taken off of Taco Bell’s allergen page:
Soybean oil is not indicated as an allergen. According to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, studies show that most soy-allergic individuals may safely eat most types of soybean oil (foodallergy.org). If you have any concerns pertaining to consumption of soybean oil, please consult with your doctor.
So what we end up discovering, is that many restaurants will not list an item as containing soy because it merely contains soybean oil and not “actual soy” and “most people are okay with that”. Wow. Thanks for the help. They tell us to consult our doctor, but don’t even give us the information as to whether or not the items in question contain soybean oil. To a lesser degree, we’re finding this is true with soy lecithin, also.
Needless to say that we’re having to do an awful lot of research and making a lot of phone calls. My notes were starting to get awfully disorganized. I figured that if I’m going to go through the trouble of organizing my notes, I might as well publish them online in case it can help anybody else.
If this has been helpful, or if you have any research to contribute, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Bill Forsyth III
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*Having read articles like this series, that talk about how soy contains substantial quantities of estrogens, we were already avoiding soy before our son was diagnosed with a soy allergy. I’ll try to collect our pre-allergy reasons as to why we were avoiding soy, but the one that always stuck with me was that giving a baby a serving of soy formula was like feeding them 5 birth control pills. Along with my allergen research, I’ll try and collect those note and put them on this site.
I have been allergic to soybean oil for more than 25 year. The most deadly problem and I do mean deadly is in the enjection they give you before before surgery. – 10 to 20% soybean. Only read the label because they will LIE to just to move things along. After one of my surgeries I screamed for 5 days and lost several organs
i am recently diagnosed at 47 with soy allergies after increasing soy to help with hot flashes the “natural” way but for the past year i felt like i had the flu everyday. soy allergies needs to be talked about more and as a person with multiple auto immune diseases it can start at any age.
My son has a soy and pea allergy but he can have have soybean oil. Thank you for the info.
As far as the peanut and other allergies, have you seen the new research showing that it could be due to antibiotics or other things that decrease healthy bacteria in the stomach? It was shown that if the bacteria was reintroduced to the stomach then the peanut allergies went away. Definitely worth looking into! 🙂 Unfortunately for our family, we are dealing with genetic causes (G6PD deficiency) and certain foods/medicines can cause severe anemia and/or death. Not many doctors know how to treat/medicate a patient with this disease.
Thank you for your informative site and attempting to raise the awareness of soy allergy. It is concerning how increasingly widespread and insidious the use of soy in fairly common foods is now.
With a teenaged family member allergic to soy ( and other foods in the legume family) it has been very useful to peruse the contents of restaurant food which many teens take for granted.
I’m glad I found this site. It’s helpful. I am 25 and was diagnosed about a year ago…and have been having so much trouble with it. I’m glad I’m not the only one that reacts to soybean oil even though it apparently isn’t supposed to bother me.
My son is allergic to sesame seeds,tree nuts and soy and like your son he can’t have the soybean oil, either. It is amazing how many things contain soy and it is difficult since most people are not that heavily allergic that they cannot have the oil- anything with vegetable oil- which is usually mostly or part soybean oil is a no-no, too. The website is helpful, thanks!