Food Allergy and Your Kiddo
If you are the parent of a child with food allergy, then this podcast is made for you. Join board-certified allergist Dr. Alice Hoyt, MD, as she dives into all things food allergy. Hear interviews with other allergists, advocates, and food allergy families, just like yours. Listeners have come to this podcast for years for answers to their food allergy questions and for strategies to live with less stress and more joy. Welcome!
Food Allergy and Your Kiddo
Diet Diversity Matters?! Carina Venter, PhD, RD, Talks All Things Nutrition and Food Allergies
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In this episode, Dr. Alice Hoyt interviews Dr. Carina Venter about expanding our understanding of food allergy prevention and management. They discuss diet diversity, the gut microbiome, food ladders, and innovative products like Grow Happy to help families introduce allergens safely.
Find Carina at carinaventer.com.
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Welcome And Guest Return
SPEAKER_02Hello and welcome to Food Allergy and Your Kiddo. I'm your host, Dr. Alice Hoyt. Excited to have someone back on the podcast today, who, when we checked just a few minutes ago, was last on February 25th, 2021. That episode was Pearls of Food Allergy and Nutrition Wisdom from world-renowned food allergy and nutrition expert, Karina Venter, PhD R D. I'm so excited to have Karina back on the show. Welcome back.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you, Alice, and thank you for having me back. I always enjoy talking to you, and I'm very much looking forward to the discussions and during the podcast.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, me too. Um, and I can't believe it's been five years since you were last on the show. And so if you're not familiar with Karina, um, she's amazing. And today's episode is all about really expanding the way we think about food allergy prevention, some on food allergy management, too, um, because it's not just about what foods we introduce, but really how we feed our kiddos overall. And so, Karina, she has a PhD, she's an RD, she's a professor of allergy, she's internationally recognized. I mean, she's amazing. Um, and I love how her work focuses on feeding practices. So, a lot of like the practicality of like, okay, we know kids need to eat certain foods, but how do we actually get some kiddos to eat some of these foods? Um, and then diet diversity, which I think is just a total, total underdiscussed, but should be like a total hot topic. The value of diet diversity, I'm gonna ask you like all about what that means. But she's an advisor for Grow Happy, which is a very cool range of products designed specifically to help families introduce allergens. Um, and she is the recipient of the 2026 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology's Allied Health Professionals Recognition Award, because she is an absolute boss. Welcome back, Karina. Thank you, and thank you for that introduction. You're very welcome. You're very welcome. Well, well deserved. Um, and it was so lovely to see you at the Quad AI a couple months ago um and enjoy dinner with you and your friends who are awesome. I mean, birds of a feather. I felt very special to be in that that group of just so many different people, different backgrounds, but such expertise in their niches. Because it certainly I don't know, was there were there any other allergists there? There were there were lots of different allergy-focused professionals. And it was just, yeah, there were allergists there from Mexico, amazing, amazing people. Um it was awesome. And I think the the that level of awesomeness of professional and just clearly just the wonderful human beings, it's a testament to you and who you are. So I mean, hats off to you.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. I was very blessed to have you there, as well as everybody around the table. And there was also another Alertus, although he probably, you know, also functions as an immunologist, Pete Smith from Brisbane. Um, you know, who has taught us so much about advanced glycation products and feeding babies. Um, yeah, so um very, yeah, very fortunate to have some amazing people around the table. You had lots of continents covered. I think maybe just no one from Antarctica. I don't think I know somebody from Antarctica. An uncle of mine used to work in Antarctica at some point. But um, I don't know an artist in Antarctica.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so happy to have
What Diet Diversity Really Means
SPEAKER_02you back. And, you know, I opened talking a little bit about diet diversity, and I want to talk about that because it's it's very important when we're talking about supporting the immune system and making healthy food choices. So could you just start off by describing like what really is diet diversity?
SPEAKER_00So, you know, that's very interesting because in about 2013, I'd go to allergy conferences and, you know, everybody would just talk about diodiversity and how important it is for allergy prevention. And that was really based on another good friend of mine's who are Caroline Rudet from Switzerland. And then I'd get up and say, but what does diodiversity mean? And everybody would be quiet. Um, then somebody said to me, But you're a dietitian, um, you should know what diodiversity means. And I said, actually, I don't know either. But um I got, as I do, I got a group of international experts together, 33 of them on the paper from across the world, to really do a systematic review, look at every paper ever published, not just in allergy, outside of allergy, on diodiversity in infancy and also pregnancy, and then how that affected child um health outcomes, and then with a more specific focus on um child allergy outcomes. And the bottom line of three years of work is dietiversity means you can count any food, but you have to be very clear. So are you counting diversity of fruit? Then you're just counting fruit. Are you counting diversity of vegetables? Then you just count vegetables. You can count diversity of overall diet, then you literally can count every single thing a child ate in the last week, in the last month, in the last six months, or everything a pregnant woman ate over the course of pregnancy. But you can also count the unhealthy foods. And I know today we are working on and talking about, you know, infancy, but um, in my pregnancy data where I did have information on the less healthy foods, if you want to call it that, that the pregnant woman ate. When we counted the diversity of unhealthy foods, we significantly saw more allergies in the children, particularly atopic dermatitis. So, bottom line is count any type of food, be clear what you're counting and over what period you're counting, and you can call that diadiversity.
SPEAKER_02Very interesting. And what was some of the what were some of the biggest findings from your paper with your multiple colleagues? Anything in particular that surprised you?
SPEAKER_00Um, yes, I I have to say, and I often say this when I do talks, that paper, you know, we only really summarized a few studies up to that point looking at diodiversity and allergy outcomes. But since then we published um another two systematic reviews. And the the interesting thing is in terms of food allergy in particular, it doesn't matter whether you count 80 foods, whether you count eight food groups, whether you count fruit intake, whether you count vegetable intake. As long as whatever you count is healthy foods, and whether you count it in Asia, whether you count it in the UK, whether you count
Research Findings On Allergy Risk
SPEAKER_00it in Europe, whether you count it in America, as the number of foods increase, so does the risk of food allergy decreases. And I think that's fascinating. You can really count any kind of diet variety. You can look in any country, and obviously, children in Asia, it's so different from children in America or the UK, but but it stays true. Open up variety, don't focus on a limited number of foods, and the risk of food allergy comes down.
SPEAKER_02And do you think that has to do with the gut microbiome?
Microbiome And Butyrate Explained
SPEAKER_02Meaning like the bacteria. Could you talk about the gut microbiome?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I can't talk about the gut microbiome. Yes, um, you know, so like you've already said, I have friends all over the world. I and I've worked with some very, very intelligent people. And this particular immunologist from Switzerland said to me, How can diodiversity reduce allergy? Because there's no particular allergen involved with any specific T cell binding. And so I said to him, I think really it's via the gut microbiome. And so I'm gonna try and cut a long story short. So as we're eating more food and our diet gets more diverse, so does the diversity of the gut microbiome get more diverse. And it doesn't work in every study, but for the most of it, if I can summarize, when we have a more diverse gut microbiome, often characterized with more bacteria that produces butyrate, then we see less allergies. Now, butyrate is just a chemical that the healthy gut microbiome produces, and butyrate directly tells the immune cells to calm down. So when we have more butyrate, we make more T cells called T regulatory cells. T-regulatory cells say to the immune system not to stop working because nobody wants to stop their immune system from working. It also doesn't boost the immune system. I always look at these, you know, advertisements on social media saying this is going to boost your immune system. I definitely don't want to boost my immune system any odd way. What I want my and it is an immune system that's calm and where everything is um working well together. And that's exactly what butyrate does, if I can summarize a complex science. It says to the um the the immune cells to just calm down and be in peace and harmony. I love it.
SPEAKER_02That's that's what I talk about with families when I'm talking about what regulatory T cells do is about calm down, peace. They're kind of like like the hippies of the immune system, but carry a lot of a lot of weight. I also say they're like the conductors of the orchestra that is the immune system, because they're the ones essentially telling the other cells what to do.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I love that, the hippies of the immune system. I'm I'm gonna use that, especially when I talk to my teenagers. Although I wonder if teenagers nowadays know what the hippie is, but it sounds cool at least. There we go. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Um, what what really got you interested in like kind of going down the rabbit hole on diet diversity?
SPEAKER_00So, um, you know, in this paper by Caroline Rudet that she published in 2013, she showed these beautiful graphs that literally showed that as diet diversity was increasing, so was allergy risk coming down. I absolutely fell in love with those two figures or graphs in her paper. And I I promised myself one day I'm gonna publish my own paper with graphs that looks exactly like that. And it took me almost 10 years, actually, to get that paper published, but I did. And so um it it really was the graphs, I have to be honest, that was the biggest trigger. But then also, you know, I, as a dietitian, I find talking about counting calories and weighing portion sizes um so restrictive. And I love the whole concept of diodiversity because I am not saying to a mom to have a diverse diet, your child needs to eat five and a half ounces of apple and two ounces of banana, and you know, I don't know, three ounces of chicken. All I have to say to a mom is that every food counts, every food brings the risk down, every food makes the gut microbiome healthier. And in your baby, it may be a handful of blueberries, half an apple. Next week we're gonna get some chicken and meat in the baby's diet. In another baby's diet, it may be 20 tablespoons of 20 different fruit and vegetables. Um, you know, so the portion sizes differ, the number of foods differ, but the one thing that's clear is variety counts, and every food counts. So five foods are better than two, ten foods are better than eight. And the reason I will say this is because I often get moms coming to the clinic, and you know, nowadays people read about you on social media, and they say, I don't want to talk to you. My child is a really picky eater, and we're only on about three foods, and you're gonna say we have to have a diverse diet. We are not gonna get to a hundred foods in 100 days. And then I can say to the mom, you know, we're gonna be on four food next week, and perhaps the week after we'll be on five or six, and that's great because every food makes the diet better.
SPEAKER_02Every food. And as we talked about a little bit before we started recording, you're caring for the patient in front of you. You're treating the patient in front of you and using the tools, the resources in your toolbox and applying those very specifically based on the
Making Diversity Work For Picky Eaters
SPEAKER_02patient in front of you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and that is really just um so important.
Food Ladders For Milk And Egg
SPEAKER_00And I know today we talk about, you know, um diversity, but but as you know, I love food ladders, you know. And um Can you talk? Can you define what a food ladder is? Yes, so I've actually now got an international group together, and we're gonna write some international guidelines on food ladders to clearly define them. But the bottom line is if you will give me two minutes to explain. When you long form podcasts, you take as much time as you want. Okay. So when we look at the allergens of egg and milk in particular, um there there's allergens that sort of like like bendy strings, and then there's allergi allergens that look like a ball of wool or a ball of yarn, as people say in America. And when you heat these allergens, the bendy strings become straighter and the ball of wool or yarn sort of like unravels. So you you don't destroy it, but you change how they look to the immune system.
SPEAKER_02You're talking about the protein structure, how the allergies are very micro, like the protein structure. And like, as listeners know, protein structure is the core of allergy because it's that protein structure that allows it to bind to the allergic antibody to activate the allergy cells. If we're talking about anaphylactic food allergies.
SPEAKER_00Yep, exactly. And so if we strain change the structure, because we can't destroy proteins, but we can change their structure a little bit, and then you can still feed it to the child and somehow develop tolerance, but it doesn't cause the allergic reactions because it doesn't look to the immune system the way it expects it to look. And so with a ladder, we start literally where we've straightened out the the bendy strings and we've straightened out the ball of wool or the ball of yarn in tiny amounts, and we give it to the immune system. And as we go up the ladder, we bake it less and we increase the amount so that by the time you get to the top of the ladder, and I'm gonna make that more practical in terms of food in a minute, we're back to actually feeding the immune system that bendy string and the ball of wool, and the immune system is totally okay because over a period of time we we taught them that um this allergen is actually safe to eat. And so, in terms of milk, you know, the the first ladder, I published the first milk ladder um in 2013. We started with a cookie, followed by a muffin, followed by a pancake, and then some yogurt, and then some milk. That was actually a 12-step ladder, but there was a lot of British food in there, which I'm not gonna mention today. And also, um the cookies and the muffins were loaded with sugar. And so the parents actually contacted me and said, You're a dietitian, you should know better. Feeding these young babies all this amount of sugar. And so then we actually condensed the ladder into a six-step ladder, more international foods. We got rid of all the sugar in the recipe. So even though it's still a cookie, there's a sweet version with fruit in and a savory version with vegetables. It's similar with the muffin, the pancake has got no sugar in, and then we have the yogurt, cheese, and then eventually milk. Similar foods with the egg, but of course, with the egg, we end up with a boiled and then a scrambled egg. Um, although I've got some exciting data actually showing that perhaps rather than having a boiled egg, we could just um do boiled um egg pasta, but boil for about 10 to 12 minutes. And so, really, you know, getting back to my interest in caring for the family um is that I have children who will just not eat a boiled egg. Well, I'm telling you. It's a specific texture. And I am never gonna eat a boiled egg. You can mash it up as much as you like. This is not a food that I'm going to eat. But I love egg pasta, and most children love pasta. And so, really, you know, but some kids just don't eat cookies. Some just do not like the texture of a muffin or a pancake. And so I'm constantly working with other dietitians. I have to definitely say I rely a lot on the dietitians in my little network to develop recipes and and also portion sizes. You know, trying to feed a big muffin to a nine-month-old is not gonna happen today, probably never gonna happen. And so we we we keep changing the recipes to work around the child's portion sizes or volumes as well as their food preferences. Treating the patient in front of you. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Um, the ladders are of a lot of interest. I definitely use ladders when a kiddo can tolerate baked egg or baked milk, especially if they're if that's their only food allergen. But it'll be interesting to see where the data go regarding doing a ladder on kids who don't even really tolerate much in the way of baked egg, right? So traditionally we'll do an ingestion challenge to a muffin that contains egg baked into it. And then if they don't tolerate even that muffin, meaning they can't even eat egg
Ladders For FPIES And Safety
SPEAKER_02baked into products, then in those kiddos, those are the kids that I would recommend oral immunotherapy or sublingual immunotherapy for. Um, because we don't have as much data on doing a ladder for those kids. So it'll be very interesting. And and what's so nice is that there is so much movement in food allergy right now. Yeah. And a lot of it does center on improving the quality of life. Like the treatment, the therapist that works with us, she's amazing. And one thing that she is is very often saying to our patients is you know, the treatment plan cannot be worse than the condition itself. Quality of life absolutely matters. And so when we're looking at the different ways to approach food allergy, what's so nice is that now we have so many evidence based ways to approach it. Whereas even when we last talked on the podcast five years ago, we didn't have as much data as we have.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know, I I I do want to say with the ladders, um, it's definitely not something that should be done without an allergist. I work very closely with allergists, but to to get to your point, we actually particularly put those kids that do not tolerate the baked challenge on a ladder. Because um, you know, the ladder, depending on how you start, but this morning I started a kit with um F buys to egg, um, who failed the baked egg challenge, which uh which is about um depending on the recipe, it could be somewhere between a thousand to two thousand milligrams of egg protein. But we actually started this kit on um 30 milligrams of egg protein. And so, uh, but again, I work very closely with an allergist. Right. Um, it has to be done safely. Um, you know, they cannot live in the melon.
SPEAKER_02In the perspective, 30 starting a desensitization protocol at 30 milligrams, depending on the kiddo, is a high start. That's a high start. Um and doing it for F-Pies. Okay, I'm really excited to hear you say that. Um because I was talking to one of our colleagues, amazing, amazing Dr. Sarah Envari, who's at Texas Children's expert on F-Pies, right? She's amazing and just such a lovely human.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and we were talking about decent protocols for F-Pies, which is what we have started doing in our practice, in part because I'm able to just like you phone your friends and you, you know, listen, you read the data, you stay up to date with the journals, but the people writing those articles and the people involved in the research are like the people who we, you know, we try to be friends with. They're our colleagues. Um, not just they're scheming up with the data, because like allergists and allergy focused people tend to be nice people, I find. And so whenever I have an F Pies question, like I'm reaching out to Sara. You know what I mean? And so we can stay the most up to date to provide our patients with with what could be the best option. Option for them and have shared decision making about where is the evidence, what are our options here? And isn't it so nice? I mean, you've been in this space a very long time. I imagine it's very nice to see that there are options now to discuss with families.
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. Um, because again, this family, they were given options of OIT slit, you know, but but this was their choice. Um but I I do want to reiterate, please don't do this without an allergist, you know. Um because we I I work, I've done this for 20 years. I will I will definitely not do anything like a food ladder without an allergist right by my side. Um so we need to think about that. Just getting back to what you've just asked, and now I've forgotten.
SPEAKER_02Oh no, I you know what, I don't even know what I just asked, but that's okay. Because I mean, this is just such a good conversation about where allergy was, where it is now, what got you interested in diet diversity, microbiome, food allergy, how how you got interested really in in food allergy.
Karina’s Origin Story In Allergy
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Because that goes back, allergy and you go back a ways.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So that that is actually an interesting story. So um my um we moved, I studied in South Africa, um, and I got my degree in dietetics at the University of the Free State, um, which is actually the same university where Mae Musk, Elon Musk's mom, studied dietetics. Oh, wow. And um, you know, in South Africa at the time, you know, our issues were uh tuberculosis, um, malnutrition, um, quash your core, people with extensive burns, um, wounds, and um, and and that was really what my training was based in. Then we moved to England because my my husband wanted to go and see what it's like to live in England. And um I I desperately want to go back home. And then he said, okay, but we could just need to go and go to the Isle of Wight, which is an island just south of England, on our way to South Africa for six months. Well, that six months turned out to be 20 years. Um, because what happened when we arrived on the Isle of Wight was um the dietitian Carol Gantt, who actually was the first person to teach me about ladders. So we really should, you know, thank Carol for the whole concept of ladders. But um, she retired and they asked me to do a clinic on the Isle of Wight. My professor Arshard is one of the top allergists in the world with multiple NIH grants. Um, and I did the clinic with him. We got to the end of the clinic and I just burst out in tears because I was thinking, I've never heard anything like this. This will mean music to your ears. Some children come in with a really big skin prick taste, and he says, Oh, don't worry about that because they actually drink milk, so they can continue to drink milk. And then the next kid comes in with a much smaller skin prick taste or blood level to milk, and he tells me the kid needs to avoid it and needs an epipen or an adrenaline auto-injector because this kid's severely allergic to milk. I got to the end of the clinic thinking, I literally said to him, I've never seen anybody making things up as I've seen this morning in clinic because I had no knowledge of allergy, and every patient he came in and told me a different story. And by the end of the day, I thought, I'm not coming back. This is like he's a very kind, very humble man, and he was just smiling. And one of the nurses said to me, You do know he's one of the best in the world. I said, Yes. And if this is one of the best in the world, I I I have no hope for allergy, but I'm not coming back. Um, and then he said to me, Well, you seem to question me a lot. Do you want to go and do um the masters in allergy and immunology at Southampton? And um I uh sort of like reluctantly agreed. And I mean, there wasn't a lot of malnutrition on the Isle of Wight, you know, there's no TV on the Isle of Wight, so I thought, well, I may just as well go do this course. And I I I literally fell in love with immunology within seconds um doing the course, and that is how I started my master's, which then ended up in my PhD in allergy and immunology. And um, yeah, so I'm I'm particularly thankful. And I became a dietitian really because, you know, of my two grandmothers, and they've always cooked all their food. I don't think they've ever eaten anything out of a packet. And I, you know, my I I really had this huge interest in good nutrition. They both turned about 100 years old, you know, and my one grandmother would still climb a peach tree in her 90s to get the best peach at the top of the tree. And so allergy then actually, and particularly diodiversity, then actually offered me that opportunity to use the immunology and the allergy that I absolutely fell in love with. We have a lot of allergy in our family as well, and all of a sudden that made sense to me. But I could then combine that with my my love of good nutrition, and and that for me, and not having to tell people to weigh off certain portion sizes to lose weight. Um, it's it's different. We have portion sizes for OIT and ladders, and but that's different than telling people to weigh everything they eat um before they can just enjoy their food. So, so that sort of like brought my two worlds together.
SPEAKER_02That's an amazing origin story, as the cool kids call it today, right? Your origin story. That is that is very cool. And so that kind of like brings us into where we are today, where you have significant expertise, internationally renowned, and recently it began advising and helped with advise in the development of Grow Happy, which is another way to help introduce allergens um to little kiddos and keep them in their diets and babies, right, to help prevent food allergies.
Building Grow Happy For Real Life
SPEAKER_02So, how how did you get involved and what what what was really important to you in bringing that product to market?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, again, talking about caring for the family in front of you, you know, um, and you and I were both guilty in this description. I'm gonna give, you know, I'd see these um moms or parents in clinic, they want the best for their kids, but you know, they've got full-time jobs, they're great at what they do. And now I'm saying to this mom, you have to get the peanut butter, and then you have to sort of like boil an apple and then mash up a banana and mix it all together and feed it to the baby, and the mom would go, I hear you, I really want to do this. Time is a little bit of an issue here. Um, and so then I talk about regularly getting the peanut butter in. Again, two gram dose is important based on the leap in the eat study, but the most important thing is to get a proper portion in and to keep going. And so, um, and also, you know, my love for diversity. I didn't just want them to feed these babies, not butter some boiled eggs, I wanted them to feed them fruit and vegetables alongside that. Um, and so I then um was contacted by um Stephanie Wibbum. She came from London where she was um being cared for by Gideon Lack's team, and she learned all about the early introduction of allergens, and she said, you know, we've moved to America, and I had a child with food allergies, and the team in London really helped me to prevent other allergies and also helped my child to outgrow the current allergies. I would like to offer something for parents, and I said, Well, you know, I me too. I I want to offer a healthy, easy way to parents to get the allergens in in the right door uh format, in the right dose, as well as a diverse diet. And it took us five years to actually develop this range because you know, I had so many restrictions. I wanted it to be the nut butters because my data shows that nut butters change the gut microbiome much more beneficially than using nut flowers. Um and so I wanted to preach. Yes. So I wanted the butters, then I wanted the fruit and vegetables, but I didn't want pouches because pouches have a very low pH. And I actually published a paper with the wonderful Pete Smith from Brisbane on this topic. And putting low pH down a baby's esophagus is not really what you want when you try and prevent, you know, food allergies and particularly eosinophilic esophagitis. Then I had so we then had to find a way to get fruit and vegetables in there that's not low pH. Um and so, but we also didn't want it to be something that had to be kept in the refrigerator or a fridge because parents are on the go. So we then actually thought perhaps we should do use freeze-dried fruit and vegetables. And I then did a study where I found, and I published two papers on that, that if you give babies freeze-dried blueberries in a six-month randomized controlled trial, you change the gut microbiome to be more diverse, you reduce the inflammatory microbes, you you increase the butyrate-producing ones, and we also upregulated IL-10, getting back to the cool kids, and you called them the um the the cool kids that tell the T-regulator rate the cells to function better. The hippies is what I want to say. The hippies, they upregulated the hippies in the gut, and they downregulated IL-13, which actually tells the human body to become allergic. So I was very happy that the freeze-dripe fruit and vegetables was going to be the best choice. And so that, and then I I know from my data, every food counts, but the American gut study showed that 3-0, 30 different plant-based foods is the best um way to feed your gut, to have a diverse healthy gut. Um, and so in this product, we have the the nut butters, plus so three nut butters: peanut, walnut, and cashew. Then we have a sesame butter and we have an egg butter, um, and we mix that with um uh fruit and vegetables so that in total, over the week, the child will eat 16 different plant-based foods, which uh it gets them over halfway to that 30 different plant-based foods. So that is really how we developed it. Um there's no emulsifiers in because you know emulsifiers. When it gets into the gut, it turns into a soap and it just destroys, destrips your gut lining. So we wanted no emulsifiers, we wanted a diverse diet, we wanted the nut butters, and we didn't want a product that had to get into a fridge. And I specifically did not put milk in there because I really want children to eat yogurt, whether it's plant-based or cow's milk-based. Cow's milk-based if they're not cow's milk allergic, and so we suggest that they scoop it out, mix it with yogurt when they feed it, and so we actually have another allergen in there as well. So I know it was a mouthful, but I love the range. I think it really the range cares for particular families. I know you and I talked about alternative products out there as well. For some families, some other alternatives may be better. And I still have the moms who say to me, I actually have a video that I that I share with my families, they make their own nut butters. I have moms that say, I make my own butters. It's no problem for me to just mash up a banana, and that's good too. It's really working with the family. But this I think is a very nice product. And we're also, after the six months of eating the Grow Happy purees or um paste, actually, we want to call it. Um, we um now have three bars, and so one has got peanut in, one has got sesame in, and then we have a mixed nut bar um with um a range of of tree nuts that children can eat. So it just helps to continue um with that continued intake of of nut butters in particular and sesame.
SPEAKER_02It's amazing, and and yes, it's so nice for families to have options because also kids don't necessarily want to eat the the same thing all the time, or they're like they'll want to eat a lot of the same thing for like a week, and then they're like, nope, none of this anymore. And you're like, no, we were doing so well. So having those options is is amazing. Um, oh my gosh, Karina, I could talk to you for ages and ages, as my daughter would say. Um, but to wrap up, like what have we not discussed that you really want to just like share with our food allergy parent audience?
Follow-Up Care And Where To Find Help
SPEAKER_00I think um you already touched on that. Don't just accept that allergy diagnosis and never come back to see us. There are so many options. There are so many amazing allergists around the world that can offer you different options to treat your cal's smoke allergy or your food allergy. Yeah. But you know, and if you are scared for treatment, don't give up on us um as well, because we can just nutritionally and you know, psychologically help your child to manage their food allergies better. I I don't have to tell you this. Clearly, the calcium and the vitamin D requirement of a baby is so very different from that from a teenager. The the psychological needs of a toddler is way different from a student just going to university. And so if you don't want treatment, please still come and see us regularly so that we can work with your needs and your child's needs throughout the whole lifespan. And so I think that's what I would say is don't don't just get the diagnosis and never come back. Um, there's so much we can do for you.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Karina, you're amazing. You're amazing. And I will say that at the time of this podcast, you you are having your own, you started your own private practice too, right? Because you're, I mean, you're a boss in academia, but I know you're you're making a transition, and part of that transition is including being able to take care of patients across the country. It's just amazing. So, where can where can people find you online?
SPEAKER_00So they can find me on www.and then one word karinaventer.com. Um you can just contact me via the the contact um information. I do like to have a 10-minute discussion with every family before I offer them an appointment because I want to be clear about what I can offer you. And I always give you the chance first to tell me what you want from me. Um, I can work in 26 states, and my uh license with Louisiana should hopefully come through in the next two to three weeks. But contact me. Um the other thing I want to say is that between myself and Mary and Groach, we have now trained over 200 allergy specialist dietitians in America. And so if I can't help you, because you live in a state where I don't have a license, I can definitely recommend a highly trained dietitian that can help you with any questions you may have.
SPEAKER_02Karina, God bless you for the work you're doing. I mean, seriously, because of the work you're doing, it makes my work so much easier. It makes it easier for me to be able to serve these families and my colleagues. It just taking care of food allergy families, caring for food allergy families, it requires more than just medical, it requires medical knowledge, but it requires more than that. And because of your work, and I love how you totally like dropped all of these publications that you have. So thank you for doing all that. And thank you again for coming on the show. You're awesome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. I'm very blessed. I have amazing colleagues around the world that support me, and I love what I do every minute of every day.
SPEAKER_02It shows. It shows. Come back soon. I will.
SPEAKER_00Thank
Closing Advice And Subscribe
SPEAKER_00you.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much for tuning in. Remember, I'm an allergist, but I'm not your allergist. So talk with your allergist about what you learned today. Like, subscribe, share this with your friends, and go to foodallergy in your kiddo.com where you can join our newsletter. God bless you, and God bless your family.