How to Live With Allergies to Corn

Video Transcript

"My name is Christine Marquette and I'm a registered dietitian with the Austin Regional Clinic and I'm going to talk to you about how to live with allergies to corn. Corn allergies are actually quite a challenge because you'll find that corn is in a lot of different products. You're going to have to do a lot of label reading and you're going to have to become familiar with different words that mean they have corn in them. For example, a lot of manufactured products use high fructose corn syrup. It may not always have it completely spelled out, it will just have the abbreviation "H. F. C. S." So, you need to make sure you know that. Void anything that has that. You also want to be wary of foods that say they have starch in them. It could be any type of starch. It could be corn starch. It could be rice starch, wheat starch. They don't always reveal that, so it's helpful to locate the number of the manufacturer on the particular item and call them and ask them "Is this corn starch? Is this rice starch? What kind of starch is this?" And again, if it's corn starch, you need to avoid it. Of course, you need to avoid anything that flat out says it has corn in it, which is in a lot of products. Corn chips, tortilla chips, corn meal, a lot of things that are made with corn flour. If you see the word "corn" or "maze" in the ingredients, you definitely need to avoid it. There are a lot of different vitamins, minerals, calcium, medication, lots of different supplements have corn in them as a starch or a modified starch, so again, you really need to look at that list of ingredients. If you're not sure, call the manufacturer. Pretty soon you'll have a running list of food items that you can have and food items that you need to avoid. A very useful source of information is the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, and they do have a website as well. That's foodallergy.org. It's a very useful website to help you when you're trying to avoid corn. So, those are just some basic tips on how to live with corn allergies."