Feedback wanted - Start Up Weekend - Making food allergies easier to deal with

[Kelly]

Hey everyone,

I'm Kelly, and I'm attending Start Up Weekend in Auckland this weekend.

Our team are trying to validate an idea we're developing. The focus is on individuals with food allergies, their challenges, and possible ways to make dealing with specific food allergies easier.

We've got a few key considerations that we'd love your advice on - we greatly appreciate any insight you can give us!


1. What *sucks* about having a food allergy?


2. How do you currently overcome your allergies to certain foods?


3. When it comes to your food allergy, what do you spend most of your time and money on?


4. Finally, if there was a magic way that *you* could improve your food allergy (except for removing your allergy) what would you improve?


Again, thank you so much for any information you can share with us!

Have a great food allergy awareness week next week (NZ),
Cheers,
Kelly

[spacecanada]

1. Not having the freedom to eat what I want, where I want, when I want.  Everything I eat requires careful consideration and planning.  PTSD from previous anaphylaxis.  Anxiety about food and social gatherings or events where food is present.
2. Read ingredient labels, call manufacturers, make 99% of my own food from scratch.
3. Time: cooking, reading labels, calling manufacturers, educating others about food allergy.  Money: mail ordered safe foods not available in local supermarkets.
4. Labelling on all foods, with accurate and reliable precautionary labels (may contain statements) for items made in shared facilities and/or shared lines with priority allergens.  A better understanding of the public about food allergy and its management.

I'm not sure I answered all of those correctly, but hopefully it is useful.  Best of luck with Start Up Weekend!  I think it's great that you have chosen to help people with food allergy as your focus project.

[Macabre]

What she said.

[SilverLining]

1. What *sucks* about having a food allergy?

That someone else making an absented minded error could cost me my life.


2. How do you currently overcome your allergies to certain foods?

You don't overcome allergies.  I avoid my allergens by calling companies to verify the safety of foods and I make a lot from scratch, which also means verifying the safety of the ingredients I'm using,  and I substitute things.  For example I use sunflower seeds instead of peanuts.


3. When it comes to your food allergy, what do you spend most of your time and money on?

Time, baking. Money, epi-pens.


4. Finally, if there was a magic way that *you* could improve your food allergy (except for removing your allergy) what would you improve?

Make labelling make-contains mandatory.  Or make sesame seeds illegal. 

[twinturbo]

What is the idea you're trying to validate? Wife of a consumer behavioralist here. I might be able to proxy some targeted advice. Outside of performing  a thorough ethnographical study via this board's existing data, which is quite rich.

I'd like to ask specifically what is your team identifying as an allergy? Anyone who self-reports or self-diagnoses? Or are you focused on the actual segment this board is comprised of, that of IgE-mediated life threatening allergic reactions which have a known mechanism with objective, acute symptoms. In other words, a hard medical diagnosis that does not include vague, subjective symptoms as a rule.

[Kelly]

Thank you all so much for the feedback!

There's some excellent information in here, and matches up with other feedback we obtained from allergy sufferers here in New Zealand.

We're currently down to the final minutes before our final presentation, so unfortunately don't have time right now to take this conversation further. But, over the coming days I'll jump back on here and put together a bit more info about where we started and ended up throughout the weekend.

Thanks again, we really appreciate your time,
Cheers!
Kelly

[twinturbo]

Yes, if the life threat of anaphylaxis intrinsic to IgE-mediated allergies were not a paramount part of your entrepreneurial effort any application to this segment would be at best nonexistent, at worst dangerous.

I noticed you had no questions regarding anaphylaxis or our standard of care for the treatment of anaphylaxis, co-mordity with asthma, and the burden of rescue medications that includes constantly carrying epinephrine auto injectors. A few of my husband's students enter start up contests and they are required to conduct market research according to a set standard which includes netnographies, ethnographical studies of forums, social media, in order to gather some pre-market data for products or services targeted to that demographic.

This question has me a little concerned that perhaps more process and understanding of the target market, or perhaps defining it better through more standard research methods, is necessary.

2. How do you currently overcome your allergies to certain foods?

We cannot. The question itself cannot be proposed to someone with an IgE-mediated allergy to a food. It is outgrown infrequently, with experimental research still performed for immunotherapy. The long term data on this has not been positive enough to move this forward through the FDA as there were unintended, unforeseen serious side effects.

My specific feedback is if your intention is to provide a product for the gluten free lifestyle, which as far as I can tell from the overlap with the Gluten Free Food Show which focuses on gluten free foods, supplements, organics and paleo, make sure to contextualize that when you seek information and that it is/is not an appropriate match for patients with a history of anaphylaxis.

Having said all that, there are some NZ products that I think could have great success entering the US market for people with IgE-mediated allergies and anaphylaxis, especially products that are produced in facilities that do not process peanuts and/or tree nuts. For example, kumara chips if they were processed in a "free of" nuts facility. Most people in USA do not know what kumara is but I think would be a great success given we do eat sweet potato.

There the key to understanding our needs is actually the manufacturing process. See the Canadian company Dare for an example of the type of product in great demand for our demographic, how they handle manufacturing and labeling. Labeling policies and practices are another area that if NZ manufacturers exceeded FALCPA (another item very worthy of knowing to understand this segment) by labeling for shared lines, facility it could create greater demand than for the US manufactured competing product. This is how some Canadian manufacturers out compete their American counterparts for our segment even within the same parent company, such as Nestle or Mars.

[eragon]

adult individuals, or teen young adult?


direct food aspect of food or social impact / quality of life?
allergies and relationships, adult relationships? <for e,g condoms often have milk powder as well as latex problem>

using medication, carrying medication , communicating risk, and treatment during reaction ?
please define your question please!