Happy Valentine’s week friends! Valentine’s day is one of my favorite holidays (however I’m pretty sure I say that about every holiday as its happening) I love celebrating love! Today I’m bringing you these cute treats in partnership with my friends at Children’s Mercy Hospital. I am part of the #CMHMoms blog team and I will be bringing you helpful information about kids health each month. I have enough friends who have kids with food allergies to know that I always need to have an allergy friendly snack available when my kids have friends over.
We are lucky enough to not have any food allergies in our house, however we have cousins, friends and family who all have a variety of different food allergies. I was shocked to hear this from the Children’s Mercy expert on food allergies- “The number of children with food allergies has increased over the last decade and every six minutes one child may have a severe anaphylactic reaction.” Chitra Dinakar, MD
I have been around food allergies enough to know that they are real, scary, and exhausting for parents. I think its really important as a parent who doesn’t actually deal with allergies on a regular basis but has friends who do to be kind, sensitive and accommodating for those friends. It’s easy to act like food allergies are an inconvenience but for parents who deal with them its not just something they try and avoid, in a lot of situations its life or death for their kids. Thats so scary.
Children’s Mercy Hospital has a great flyer all about reducing the risks of food allergy reactions that honestly, anyone who is around kids on a regular basis should read, you can read it HERE. In that document it states that the most common allergies are Milk, Eggs, Peanuts, Tree nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pecans, Soybeans, Wheat, Fish and Shellfish such as crab, lobster, and shrimp.
The good news is that its really easy to create fun healthy snacks for all kids. These cute heart snacks are simple fruits cut into hearts with cookie cutters for Valentines Day. Cookie cutters aren’t just for sugar cookies friends! I used honeydew melon, pineapple, canteloupe, mango and strawberries. We are just getting to the stage in life where my kids have friends over to play frequently and I think its important to have snacks on hand that everyone can eat and enjoy. Of course I find out any food allergies before a child comes into our house and if a kiddo can’t eat something I make sure to not serve that ingredient to anyone while the child is in our house. I hate to make kids feel left out.
If you make some fun allergy free treats please let me know! I love to see it when you make things inspired by the blog! Share it with me in the comments or tag me on Instagram (@handmadeintheheartland) or facebook! Need to save the recipe for later? Pin the image below!
