“I started myAllergy for precisely this reason. We want to bring the food allergy and intolerant community together to share ideas and their experiences.”

Name: Mittun Sharma

Occupation: CEO myAllergy & Allergy dad

Home city: London

Allergies or intolerances: Personal, Lactose and celery. Daughter, Wheat, gluten, eggs, nuts , Milk, Dairy, sesame seeds, Avacado

Tell us a bit about yourself; your interests and hobbies: learning about startups, meeting and talking to interesting people, helping people with food allergies and intolerances

How do food allergies or intolerances influence your grocery shopping? Immensely, we try to buy more and more foods that are free from food allergies so that we can all eat together and not let my daughter feel segregated. This has now also started to spread amongst close friends and family when it comes to events and parties as they have become very aware of her allergies and try to be as accommodating as possible.

How do food allergies or intolerances influence where or how often you dine out? Again it has a huge influence. We now only go to restaurants that cater for people with food allergies. Finding them is another issue

What is your favorite meal to cook and why? Gluten free pasta with homemade vegetable sauce. It tastes amazing, healthy and the whole family can enjoy it

Have you ever said no to a social event due to food restrictions? Not yet, we always get around it by taking our own food for now.

Have you ever experienced bullying or social intolerance regarding your dietary restrictions? I personally have not but I worry about my daughter when she starts to go to school. I was bullied a lot just because of my name. I find that bullies look for something to pick on that you cannot change, your abilities, name, the way you look and also things like food allergies. I am hoping by the time my daughter reaches school she would have grown out of most of her allergies but it is something that I worry about.

Have you ever had an anaphylactic reaction and if so, what happened? My daughter had her first anaphylactic reaction when we began the wheening process. She vomited violently and broke out in hives everywhere. Her hands and feet also swelled and turned purple. It was the scariest thing we had ever seen and rushed her to the hospital. It was there when we learnt that she had an anaphylactic reaction.

Do you have any allergy-related tips to share (meal prep, nutrition, avoiding cross-contamination, etc.)?Cook all the food for the people suffering from allergies first, this reduces cross contamination significantly and you can then go on to use the same utensils