HEALTHY FAMILY
Making Friends
with Food
Allergies, eating disorders
make food a common foe
BY COURTNEY MCGEE
Food is essential for life. But what happens
when you see food as the enemy?
• Approximately 4 percent
of chlidren and teens
have food allergies,
according to the Centers
for Disease Control and
Prevention. • The eight most common
allergenic foods are milk,
eggs, fish, shellfish, tree
nuts (almonds, walnuts,
pecans), peanuts,
wheat and soybeans,
the CDC says.

atric Hospital, and the parallels hit home.

“I found the irony between his condition
and my past experience with an eating
disorder. Though completely different, I
watched him in the program and couldn’t
help but see similarities, physically and
psychologically,” Mandras recalls.

Making the connection
“My personal history with an eating disorder
definitely ramped up my anxiety level sig-
nificantly,” she says. “When treated for an
eating disorder, I was trained never to elimi-
nate a food or restrict my diet again. So when
Austin was diagnosed with five life-threaten-
ing food allergies, we had to completely give
up those foods for his safety and life. Ulti-
mately, through a lot of hard work, therapy
and resiliency, both Austin and I eventually
overcame our disorders.” Realizing the cor-
relation between disorders inspired Mandras
to break the silence on her background with
an eating disorder, to share her story with
Back to the forefront
Throughout that journey and into marriage others and also to become a voice bringing
and motherhood, Mandras kept her strug- more awareness to food allergies and feeding
gle private. Then, 11 years after addressing disorders in children.

her eating disorder, she found herself facing
food allergies with her young son, Austin. Similar aversions
Having had no previous exposure to food “People with eating disorders typically
allergy symptoms, and with little Austin’s become preoccupied with food and their
inability to express what he was feeling at body weight. I was never thin enough in
just 15 months old, the Mandrases were my mind,” Mandras says. Austin, being a
unaware that Austin’s resistance to eating toddler, naturally did not have body-image
was due to allergies.

issues that drove his refusal to eat. For him,
“Austin was diagnosed with a feed- it was the distress he felt when exposed to
ing disorder when he refused to eat solid allergens that made him fearful of most
foods. He had developed an aversion to solid foods. Avoiding allergens was, of
food because he associated it with pain course, essential to Austin’s health. But not
and discomfort, as we had been feeding understanding which foods were bad and
him allergens all along,” Mandras says. which were good left him resistant to nearly
The toddler was admitted to an intensive everything, and his lack of food intake
feeding program at Mt. Washington Pedi- became dangerous. ■
20 WashingtonFAMILY FEBRUARY 2019
ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS / CHESIIRECAT
Kids and Food Allergies
One mom drew the links between food
allergies/feeding disorders and eating
disorders. The disorders’ shared per-
ception of food as foe may be taken for
granted by someone dealing with only
one or the other. But Erin Konheim Man-
dras has confronted the challenges of
both eating disorder and feeding disor-
der with happy successes.

Mandras was a standout collegiate soc-
cer player at Michigan State when she
began restricting certain foods from her
diet in an effort to lose weight and boost
athletic performance. Before long, she was
consuming less and less while working out
more and more, as her new habits became
an unhealthy obsession and ultimately a
full-blown eating disorder. She tackled
that demon with professional help and
retrained herself to forge a healthier rela-
tionship with food.