by hilux on 5/23/25, 4:58 PM with 40 comments
by focusedone on 5/23/25, 6:30 PM
Shortly after the hospital incident and after much time spent scrutinizing every ingredient label the law changed. We were excited about this at first. It became much easier to identify things we couldn't have in the house.
The unfortunate side effects of the law were most visible in the bread aisle, where nearly every item now contains sesame. This included all of the store brands and most of the brand-name products. Initially, we were limited to only one brand of bread (shout out to Kings Hawaiian). We also found a few artisan / local boutique options we could trust, but that's a pretty expensive way to make a PB&J.
Our situation has improved a bit. Recently a second, slightly less expensive, name brand sandwich bread went sesame-free. We're still stuck with oddly expensive artisanal hotdog buns. Why are the fancy ones all top cut instead of side cut? It's just weird that way.
Anyway, I expect that eventually more brands will go sesame-free as recipes change and factories go through whatever update process where it makes sense to separate allergens.
We're still happy about the regulation change and how easy it is now to identify dangerous items. Seeing global brands add sesame to a product to avoid whatever cost necessary to change their process was...not endearing. Hopefully their share price went up a few cents I guess.
by NaOH on 5/23/25, 5:41 PM
FDA warns top U.S. bakery not to claim foods contain allergens when they don't - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40797790 - July 2024 (580 comments)
by wpollock on 5/23/25, 7:07 PM
I have to wonder if they really started adding sesame, or just began accurate labeling?