I’ve been wondering which way to take this blog for a while now. Our family has always wanted to live a healthy lifestyle, so I am constantly reading about ways to continually head in this direction. I have learnt so much (and will be continually learning) from so many other bloggers who are well on this journey themselves. We are so grateful for them sharing their own journey for us to glean.

Early last year we started substituting whole flour (for spelt, almond and coconut flour), oats (for rolled spelt), and started cooking with quinoa. I also started using almond milk, coconut milk, coconut oil and macadamia oil in recipes. While discovering what didn’t work for our family at the same time – buckwheat, bran and sunflower seed reactions. We switched peanut butter for almond butter (kids love it and tastes much better). We were using raw sugar, honey or maple syrup for sweeteners rather than the processed sugars. Towards the end of last year I read more about rice malt syrup as a substitute sweeter and started using it as well. Recently we’ve switched raw sugar for coconut sugar.

Since our daughter was a baby, she has often had runny eyes and nose. We’d been wondering if it could be an allergic reaction, especially as her brother also started getting the same symptoms since turning one a few months ago.  A week ago our daughter had runny eyes and nose so we decided to have her tested for allergies while she still had the symptoms. She was so brave with her first blood test. The test results came back negative for hay fever and dust mites etc (thank goodness) but was positive for food allergies. This was a broad test focusing on egg white, milk, wheat, soya bean, peanut and fish (cod).

 We are glad to know we can help fix these allergies by eliminating the reactive foods. We are doing an elimination diet, one month of each group starting with milk this month, wheat the next etc. After each month we’ll reintroduce the food to see if there is a reaction.

Have you discovered any reactions with allergies or intolerance in yourself and/or family? Are you still on that journey too?