The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook: Over 350 Natural Foods Recipes, Free of All Common Food Allergens: wheat-free, milk-free, egg-free, corn-free, sugar-free, yeast-free [Paperback]

Marjorie Hurt Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 2001

The most comprehensive kitchen resource for overcoming food allergies-now completely revised and updated!

Since its original publication in 1984, The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook has helped thousands of people overcome their food sensitivities and intolerances. Now, the tips and recipes have been entirely revamped for 21st-century cooks with little or no time to spare! Includes:

* Extensive breakfast and dessert chapters
* Updated nutrition information
* New recipes using ingredients such as Kamut flour and quinoa pasta
* How to help allergic children eat right and feel better
* Complete guide to new allergy-free products
* Tips for creating an allergy-free kitchen and home

With your doctor's diagnosis in one hand and this book in the other, let your new allergy-free life begin!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Marjorie Hurt Jones, R.N., has more than 20 years experience in health and nutrition. She has devoted her life to helping people cope with food allergies. She is the author of Superfoods: Allergy Recipes and Cooking for the Health of It, as well as co-author of the Yeast Connection Cookbook. An educator and frequent speaker, she published the newsletter Mastering Food Allergies for more than 10 years and now manages the website of the same name. She is president of Mast Enterprises, Inc., a company dedicated to helping people recover from food allergies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; Revised edition (April 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157954276X
• ISBN-13: 978-1579542764
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,174 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

150 of 158 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Most recipes contain nuts, seafood, or grains, August 20, 2004

By 

Charlene Vickers (Winnipeg, Manitoba) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook: Over 350 Natural Foods Recipes, Free of All Common Food Allergens: wheat-free, milk-free, egg-free, corn-free, sugar-free, yeast-free (Paperback)

Although this is a very useful book for anyone with an uncommon food allergy, those who are allergic to peanuts, nuts, and shellfish (and those who are gluten-intolerant) would not find this book as useful. Most of the recipes feature nuts or peanuts as main ingredients, and there's no real help given as to how to make a substitution. As the most common allergies (and the most serious, sometimes even leading to death) are to nuts and peanuts, I'm surprised that these ingredients are featured so prominently in a supposed allergy cookbook.

The same could be said with respect to the seafood recipes and the many recipes featuring grains that contain or (as is the case with oats) may be contaminated with other grains that contain gluten. Even a trace of gluten can bring grief to someone with celiac sprue.

I did not find this book very useful. However, those with allergies to rarer items or whose 'allergies' are merely intolerances (ie. no hives, throat swelling, cardiac arrest, etc.) might find this book useful. I can't recommend it to the average food allergy sufferer, though.

80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Free of Common Allergens -- and Ignores Risks of Soy, July 16, 2005

By 

Hugh Victor "Naturopathic Doctor" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook: Over 350 Natural Foods Recipes, Free of All Common Food Allergens: wheat-free, milk-free, egg-free, corn-free, sugar-free, yeast-free (Paperback)

As an allergy sufferer who counsels many allergy patients, I am disturbed that this book bills itself as "free of all common allergens" yet contains many recipes with soy, peanuts or tree nuts. It is well known that peanut and nut allergies are among the most severe of common allergies. Less well known is that reactions to soy are increasingly prevalent. Indeed people who are allergic to peanuts are often allergic to soy as well though they may not know it. Deaths from soy in children who had not previously reacted to soy have been reported in Sweden and the Ministry of Health there warns that children who are allergic to peanuts and have asthma are at very high risk. I've also found that those who are allergic to dairy who start drinking soymilk will, in all likelihood, soon be allergic to soy as well. Finally, people who eat a lot of soy often develop digestive problems and "leaky gut" syndrome, causing further problems for allergy sufferers. Yet this book includes lots of recipes with soy. I recommend that people educate themselves as fully as possible on this subject whether they think they have soy allergies or not by reading the book "The Whole Soy Story" by Kaayla Daniel. The book has been endorsed by Dr. Doris Rapp, a leading authority on allergies who has a great website drrapp.com.

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book has been my bible ever since I bought it!, March 11, 2003

By 

Melissa Cheok (Fremont, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Allergy Self-Help Cookbook: Over 350 Natural Foods Recipes, Free of All Common Food Allergens: wheat-free, milk-free, egg-free, corn-free, sugar-free, yeast-free (Paperback)

My review pertains to the version of the book that has 350 recipes. But I would assume that this version is a similar quality.

This book has really been a great resource for me. My son (who is 3) has multiple food allergies (wheat, rye, corn, eggs, soy, dairy, chicken, foods in the night-shade family like potatoes, tomatoes, bell pepper....the list continues). It has been quite a nightmare to know what to get for him. And he also started developing sensitivities to the food that he ate all the time (oats, pork).

When I got this book, I learnt about the rotation diet, about how one could get sensitive to foods if exposed to them for an extended period of time. It provided me with alternative foods, information about food groups (which is essential when planning a rotation diet), lots of alternative things to use instead of sugar (agave nectar, maple or date sugar), how to use alternative flours (amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, teff) which have all been so much help.

I have been using the breakfast and better breads section extensively, and also the snack and dessert sections. With the range of allergies that my son has, those have been the hardest types of food to prepare. The main course sections have some good suggestions as well.

I would highly recommend this book if you need to deal with multiple allergies and are at a loss as to where to start. I found the recipes in this book much better to use than the recipes from the Food Allergy Network, which is rather strange. The recipes from the FAN mostly had wheat flour in them, and provided no information on rotation diets, food groups or alternative flours. Some of the other books that I have bought are also not very strong in these areas. This book is particularly good if you have the type of allergies that I listed earlier. If you only have one or two of these allergies, perhaps you might find the recipes too esoteric and it might be unnecessary to go to such lengths as I have had to, to find the right food.