Nut allergies

A friend with a severe nut allergy is planning to visit me in Taiwan early next year and I was wandering if anybody has any experience of dealing with this problem in Taiwan. Apparantly my friend has a high chance of going into anaphaelactic shock if she ingests any amount of
‘nut matter’, so food cooked in or containing a trace of nut oil for example would be very very bad.

Anybody know what type of oil etc the local vendors used?
Also any ideas which of the local specialities may contain a nut element?

Thanks
BB

Sympathies on his allergy, but this is not the place to go if you want food safety. Peanut oil is in common use in Chinese cooking, even in the cut-rate stuff here, and it’s doubtful that you would get an honest answer if you try to find out before eating somewhere – perhaps not because they particularly want your friend to die in their restaurant, but simply because they don’t understand the seriousness, or at least they don’t give a crap.

JMHO, YMMV. This is based on a friend-of-a-friend getting killed that way in China about 20 years ago, BTW. Allergic to peanuts, made a point of asking at every restaurant they went to visit, and some Beijing dump restaurant killed him by cooking his food in a wok that had had peanut oil in it before. Who knows, they might not have used the oil in his dish (at least that was the story Val got out of them), but enough residue was in the wok to kill him anyway.

Thanks MPS

The situation you describe is what I was worried about. I suspect a lot more home cooking than usual will have to be done.

Any more ideas/views/experiences appreciated.

BB

PS YMMV? wo bu dong :blush:

Your Mileage May Vary.

I’m terribly allergic to nuts, yet still I read ac_dropout, Lane 119, Bob and all the others …

Seriously, you simply cannot trust food stalls and restaurants here to make their food totally nut-free (with the possible exceptions of Carnegies or the Tavern (shameless plugs :wink: )).

As you said, it’ll have to be home cooking.

Well, there’s always McDonald’s, and hot dogs at 7-Eleven.

good luck,
DB