Learning that you're allergic to potatoes can be difficult news to swallow, and you may find that the idea of avoiding boiled, mashed, baked, and fried potatoes in the future may seem daunting. Ideally, you'll be able to look for suitable alternatives to these foods. For example, instead of potatoes with chicken, you might enjoy eating a serving of rice. Avoiding potatoes on their own requires a little bit of care, but you'll need to take more of a careful approach to avoid certain foods that you may not associate with potatoes, but that contain potatoes or potato ingredients. Here are some products to watch out for.
Soups
Many chefs and cooks use potato starch as a thickening agent for soup. Wheat flour is something that people also use for this purpose, but in an age in which many people have gluten allergies or are trying to cut out wheat for dietary reasons, you'll often find that potato starch is used as an alternative to flour. If you're buying canned soup at the supermarket, be sure to assess the ingredients list carefully. At a restaurant, make sure to ask your server how the soup is thickened and whether it contains potato starch — and specify that you have an allergy, so you need to be sure.
Shredded Cheese
Outside of you perhaps putting shredded cheese on a freshly cooked baked potato, you may not think there's much of a relationship between these two ingredients. What you might not know, however, is that when you buy shredded cheese, there's a high probability that there's a small amount of potato starch mixed in with the cheese. It's valuable for preventing the individual shreds of cheese from getting glued together, and it means that you should avoid this product. Fortunately, you can easily buy a brick of cheese and grate it yourself.
Gluten-Free Baking
Lots of people turn to gluten-free baking not only because it's becoming more common in restaurants, cafes, and supermarkets, but also because there are some perceived health benefits to such fare. It's easy to be tempted to eat a gluten-free baked good, but this may be a bad idea if you're someone who has a potato allergy. Lots of gluten-free baked goods contain potato flour, as this ingredient is safe for those who cannot consume gluten. Before you eat any gluten-free baked product, be sure to check the ingredients list carefully.
For more information, contact a company like Allergy & Asthma Centers SC.
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