Healthy Food Choices for Egg Allergies

Video Transcript

DR. DAVID HILL: Today, we're going to talk about egg allergies. Egg allergies tend to affect children in the first couple of years of life. They can affect as many as two percent of children. But the good news is kids tend to outgrow their egg allergies with time. Diagnosing egg allergies isn't always easy. Sometimes a food diary will help you figure out what food your child is allergic to. An allergist can confirm the allergy by doing skin testing, blood tests or at its most extreme, an oral food challenge. This is the gold standard test for any food allergy that needs to be done under controlled conditions. In case there's a bad reaction the allergist needs to treat. Once an egg allergy has been identified, your best treatment is to eliminate eggs and egg products completely from the child's diet. That's easier said than done because products from eggs are used in multiple foods. Foods manufactured since 2006 are required to have much more accurate labeling and you should be able to tell whether there is egg in a food. However, products such as Albumin, Ovalbumin and others may hide in food labeling. You can look online for resources and complete lists of various ingredients that mean eggs to your child. The most serious egg allergy reaction is called anaphylaxis. This involves coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and even complete respiratory arrest occurring within minutes to even seconds of encountering egg proteins in food. The best treatment for this is an injectable form of epinephrine which a child who has an egg allergy should have with him at all times because you never know when that egg allergy is going to hit him. Anaphylaxis can recur after a couple of hours. So a child who has an anaphylactic reaction to eggs needs to be observed in a hospital setting to make sure it's not coming back. The good news is, kids almost always outgrow their egg allergies and you can work with your doctor to determine when is a good time to try eggs again. To review, egg allergies affect up to two percent of young children but rarely last life long. They can be mild from hives and itching to involving runny nose, abdominal pain, diarrhea to being a life threatening reaction called anaphylaxis. Children with egg allergies should avoid eggs in all foods and they should always have an epinephrine pen available in case they come into contact with egg proteins. That is egg allergies.