Why Allergy-Friendly Foods Can Make All the Difference

< Full Episode

Transcript: Why Allergy-Friendly Foods Can Make All the Difference

Season 10, Episode 14  | April 29, 2025

[MUSIC]

 

Welcome back to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

 

And I’m David Freeman.

 

And in this episode, we are talking about food allergies. They are extremely prevalent making everyday eating challenging for many individuals. So in this episode, we are talking with a guest who is here to share her first-hand experience with these challenges, and who can offer some insights and advice on how to better navigate the food world when you or someone you love is dealing with food allergies. And with that, David, you have to let us know who’s joining us.

 

Yes, yeah. Super special guest. We go back over 25 years of knowing one another. And to introduce Denise on this episode, I’m excited about the topic. I want to give you a little bit of background about her, and then we’re going to dive right in.

 

So Denise is the Founder CEO of Partake, a natural food company that was inspired by her daughter’s experience with food allergies. It launched in 2017. Partake’s first product, allergy-friendly cookies, can now be found in more than 17,000 retailers, including Target, Kroger, Walmart, and Whole Foods market. So partakes offering have since expanded to include Graham crackers as well as vanilla wafers.

 

Denise is the first Black woman to raise more than one million publicly for CPG food startup. To date, the company has raised over 25 million from investors. So prior to launching Partake, Denise spent a decade in consumer packaged goods at various Fortune 100 companies. She is also the founder of non-profit Black Futures Fellowship, an annual program that matches active HBCU students with paid internships in the CPG food and beverage industry.

 

She graduated with a bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill! [SHOUTING] And has an MBA from Arizona State University. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jeremy and her daughter Vivienne. Welcome, Denise. How are you?

 

I’m so happy to be here with you today. It feels like a very full circle moment. We’ve been friends forever, and I’m excited about the topic that we’re going to cover.

 

Love it, love it.

 

Well, yeah. And on that note, we’re going to dive right into those food allergies. On this podcast in the past, we have covered that food sensitivities and food intolerances are different than food allergies. We’re going to point people back to that in our show notes. But, Denise, wondering if you maybe just want to take a moment to help people level set with people again about what are those differences. So that people know exactly what food allergies are and why we’re focusing on them today?

 

Sure. So I think the biggest difference between a food allergy versus a sensitivity or intolerance, is that a food allergy, unfortunately, can kill someone. A typical response in a food allergy is an anaphylactic response where someone stops breathing, and the treatment to date for that is the administering of an EpiPen. And so while food sensitivities are definitely a serious topic as well, I think the difference on the food allergies, that I want to make sure we note, is that they are really something that can be life threatening.

 

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

 

Yeah. And I mean, this is close to home. I said it in the bio as far as what inspired this whole movement for you. So the work that you’re doing, your daughter’s experience with food allergies, you just broke down the difference between sensitivities versus the allergies. So are you open to sharing what personal experience with food allergies that you actually had with your daughter, and how your family navigated it?

Sure. It’s been interesting because I don’t have any food allergies, neither does my husband. And so we didn’t expect that my daughter would. And our first experience was with food allergies on her first Thanksgiving. So she was about seven months old, and she had a dish that had egg in it, and she ended up vomiting 14 times over the span of three or four hours.

 

We rushed her to the emergency room and they said, oh, it’s just a stomach bug. And then she had egg again another week later and we had a similar response, and they said, oh, well, typically food allergy testing doesn’t happen until a child is around 1 years old but they were like it looks like she has food allergies. And around her first birthday, we tested her for food allergies, and it came back that she was not allergic to peanuts.

 

And so the recommendation was give her peanuts as soon as possible to help prevent her developing an allergy. And we ended up giving her a snack that just had two ingredients, peanuts and corn, and we, unfortunately, saw very quickly, firsthand, an anaphylactic response. So her lips started to swell up, her tongue started to swell up, she turned blue in our living room.

 

And corn is a much more uncommon allergen than it doesn’t fall in the top nine. And so it’s not something that’s regularly tested for. And for me, I think, that was the moment that really brought home the severity of food allergies and how it was going to become a part of our everyday life.

 

Absolutely. So your daughter had — so she did not have allergies? She does have allergies to eggs, as well as to peanuts. So is there more than those two that she had? Because I know that can be common.

 

 

She does. So she’s allergic to eggs, tree nuts, corn, and bananas. So it’s definitely quite a bit to manage. It’s been interesting because, I think it’s been — I guess, I would say the silver lining or blessing in disguise has been it’s really cleaned up our family’s diet. And so we’re much more cognizant about what we do eat and reading every single label, because as a food allergy parent, you really have to check every single product even if it’s something you eat regularly, because oftentimes a manufacturer will change the ingredients. And so you’re looking at the back of the box every single time.

 

Yeah. Just the diligence that you have to have and the awareness to always be keeping in mind. So yeah, that’s a huge thing to be doing all the time. And a lot of people are doing that. I mean, statistics show that some 32 million Americans are living with food allergies. Can you talk a little bit about how widespread this is, and why?

 

Sure. So to your point, 32 million Americans living with food allergies, kids, there’s two kids in every classroom in America living with a food allergy. The incidence of peanut allergy has grown almost 400% over the last decade. And I think to answer your question about the why, I’m hoping that because of the rise in the incidence of allergies, we’ll start to understand why sooner than later, because more dollars will be donated to research so that we’re able to get answers. And hopefully treatment that expands beyond just an EpiPen.

 

Some of the theories that exist are around the gut microbiome. And maybe not having a healthy gut is one of the causes. There’s some theories around society maybe being too sterile and too clean and like there’s something tied to that. And then there’s also some theories around, particularly, the American food system and the amount of GMOs and antibiotics, where I will say, although I think that’s true, we have seen a rise in food allergies in the EU and in Australia and other parts of the world where some of the things that are permitted here are not permitted.

 

So I gave you a really long winded way of saying, I don’t know. And I, unfortunately, don’t think doctors and scientists know yet, but it does seem like they’re making major strides and discoveries as we further try to uncover what is causing the rise in allergies.

 

Yeah. One thing just to add in there, you mentioned — the mention of the cleanliness factor. I know there has been talk over the years of the hygiene hypotheses. And as we have of sterilized more things in our environment, type of thing, there’s also been a correlated rise with autoimmune diseases as well, so food allergies, autoimmune diseases. It’s just really interesting to think from a safety standpoint, it seems like that’s the way to go. But there are potential consequences to that as well along these lines.

 

Yeah, for sure.

 

Yeah.

 

You just said there’s still a lot to be researched and still a lot for us to figure out. There is one thing that we are aware of as far as food allergies being more prevalent within Black and Brown communities. And in your history as far as discovering and building out all that you’ve done in this space, why is that, that we see it more within Black and Brown communities?

 

I wish I knew the answer. I think the other factoid I would throw on top of that is oftentimes there’s this trifecta of eczema, allergies, and asthma. And all three of those seem to disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities. And as we look at the groups of people that research is done on, oftentimes, underrepresented communities are not as involved. And so my hope is that changes so that we can get answers that apply to everyone.

 

That makes sense. So let’s talk. You talked about the top nine food allergens that make up about 90% of known food allergies in the United States. What are the foods on that list? And why are those so problematic for so many?

 

Sure. So let me — I should know these by heart. Peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, milk, soy, fish, shellfish, sesame, mustard. And I hate to continue to answer your questions with I don’t know, but I think that there’s a lot of research that still needs to be done to understand why those are the leading food allergies. And you find that different age groups, like oftentimes people will develop food allergies as an adult, and oftentimes that’s more shellfish or dairy, whereas children are often more allergic to nuts. And so I think there’s still just so much to uncover. But I feel like through our products and through — because those allergens account for so many of the food allergies, it’s been possible to make something that almost everyone can eat safely and share safely amongst each other.

 

Yeah. I mean, when we look at how we framed up this episode around navigating food allergies, and obviously, you’ve had the personal experience to be able to bring about all the things that you’re doing in this space, I always go back to — it’s almost like when we go to our primary care physician, what questions should we be asking? So if you were to give guidance to our listeners in understanding that this could be something that is coming down the line, whether they are about to have kids or somebody that they actually love, what questions to ask, and necessarily, from your personal experience, what you suggest that they end up doing in this space?

 

I think I will caveat definitely not a medical professional, but have been living the food allergy mom life for the past decade. Some tips that I would share would be there’s definitely been some science around early introduction. There was a study that came out of Israel, where there’s very low incidence of peanut allergies, and there’s also very early introduction of peanuts through the Bamba puff snack.

 

And so there’s been a lot of startups emerging in the US over the past few years that help parents introduce allergens to their children at a young age. So that’s definitely something people can look into. I think also when I think about introducing new foods to your child, making sure to keep them as singular foods so you can understand if, God forbid, there is a reaction. If you give them something that has 10 ingredients, you’re clueless as to what actually caused the reaction. So making sure that you introduce with very simple soul foods initially so that you can understand what could potentially be the culprit.

 

And then I think, for us, we continue to talk to our pediatrician and make sure that they were giving us the most up-to-date allergen and information, because it feels like things are always changing, and there’s always new information coming out. So making sure that you’re staying in close contact with your medical professional about any new research that’s emerged.

 

Awesome.

 

That makes sense. When you’re talking about starting to introduce those single allergy foods at a young age, is that still the standard, still around age one, unless something happens earlier, like in the case with daughter?

 

So I think there’s mixed feedback. And it’s interesting to hear mixed feedback from different pediatricians around what the right moment is. In our experience, it was hold the allergens because there was a likelihood that she had food allergies until she was one, so that we could safely test for the allergies to understand. Because I think as a baby is still developing, their immune system is developing, and some of the allergy testing before age one isn’t necessarily accurate. And so it leaves you a bit blind.

So I think what you said is definitely very sound feedback. But I would go back to the — I would talk to my pediatrician about what the most recent research says.

 

Absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s keep talking a little bit about this. So talking about transparency and the options around our food in this space, there’s a lot that’s been done already, there’s a long ways to still go. So talk for a minute about the state of transparency around allergy-friendly options, and how do you hope to see that continue to evolve in the years ahead?

 

Sure. So I think there’s definitely been progress. So the FDA mandates that the top-nine allergens must be disclosed if they’re in a food product. Where there’s more gray area than I would like is when you think about packaged foods and you think about statements, like may contain, made on a line with, made in a facility with, none of those are required, and all of those are at the discretion of a food company. And so there really is no common apples to apples.

 

There could be one company that’s making their products with peanuts on the line, and another two companies that are doing that. And one notates it on their packaging, and another doesn’t. And with allergies, for some people being extremely severe, I think if there was a common way to notate what’s in the facility and more information for consumers, I think is better. And if there was a standard to that, I would love that.

 

I think the other place where a lot of consumers with food allergies have qualms is around products like natural flavors or spices, which oftentimes can be an amalgamation of a lot of different ingredients. And so the consumer is then forced to reach out to the manufacturer or supplier every time to understand what exactly is in your natural flavors or exactly what spices are in your spice blend.

 

And so I think if there were more transparency around the labeling, it would make things easier for consumers. But my advice for consumers dealing with allergies and sensitivities is just to reach out to the supplier directly to get the information that you need, knowing that it’s not always on the package.

Got it. Quick follow-up with that just while we’re talking about it. If it’s at the discretion of the food companies, I know there’s a lot of discrepancies between what’s on labels in the United States versus in Europe, for instance, are there different labeling standards in the EU, for instance, when it comes to allergies like there are for some of the ingredients, like the food dyes and other things?

 

Yes. So I can’t speak specifically to the EU in terms of the number of top allergens they require, we haven’t expanded to that part of the world yet. But as an example, in Canada, yes. They declare 12 allergens versus nine. And so there’s definitely different standards across different parts of the world around what the most common allergens are.

 

I think of in Asia, in Japan specifically, buckwheat allergy is something that they track and has increased in incidence because there’s a lot of buckwheat eaten in that community, whereas in the United States, it’s not eaten as often, and it’s not an allergen that’s tracked. And so there’s definitely quite a bit of discrepancy across the world.

 

Got it. Yeah, it’s so interesting. And you mentioned a little bit it’s eaten more. So it probably is more common in different certain things for that reason.

 

Solid. So Denise, passion is a close cousin to purpose. And for you to be able to create this allergy-friendly food product, tell us about Partake, how it came to be? And where you’re hoping to go with it?

Sure. So I spent my previous career working for big consumer packaged goods companies, and thought I would spend my life working my way up the corporate ladder. And then when we learned about my daughter’s food allergies, we were living in New York at the time. And so I felt like I had access to all types of stores, and I was still coming away empty handed.

 

It felt like the products that I was finding, from a nutritional perspective, I didn’t feel good about giving her. Taste wise, they weren’t products that we could enjoy together as a family, because without any dietary restrictions, I was like, I don’t think this tastes very good. I don’t want to eat this. And then I thought about the emotional impact of having food allergies, and how food’s really something that’s meant to bring people together. And when you can’t safely and confidently participate in events that include food, it’s really it weighs on you.

 

And so I wanted to create a better-for-you brand that made allergy-friendly products, but appealed to consumers with and without food allergies. And so I had the idea in the summer of 2016. I spent a year moonlighting while still working my corporate job. And then in August of 2017, I left and started Partake. And we initially were completely bootstrapped. I sold my engagement ring to fund the business and sold cookies out of my car. And thankfully, the business has grown quite a bit since then.

 

And you asked where I wanted to take it? Right now, you can find Partake in the retailers that you mentioned, but also in really fun places, like in a co-branded flavor with Ben & Jerry’s, or at all Doubletree hotels, or on JetBlue flights. And so I want to make products that are accessible and inclusive, and sell them in as many places as possible so that we can meet consumer need.

 

We’re really excited about innovation that we have coming out, so we’re going to move outside of the cookie category over the next year with a lot of really fun products. And from an impact perspective, I’m excited that hopefully as our business continues to grow, that our impact continues to grow alongside it.

I love that.

 

Denise, how involved are you in the — in the early stages, how involved were you with the recipes for the cookies? And how involved are you now as your company has grown? What’s your — are you on the line with everybody testing and doing all those pieces?

 

So I cannot bake to save my life. I was not responsible at all in the formulation of the product. I had a very clear vision of what I wanted, and through some LinkedIn stalking, I found somebody who could help bring that to life. But I am definitely very involved in the process as we bring a new product to life. I will say my daughter has given herself the title of Chief Taste Tester, so she is also very involved. It has become a family affair. But thankfully, we’ve grown the team and have an experienced team that has really professionalized the process and is also very involved.

 

That’s awesome. I’m always envisi — what is it like to be on the forefront of starting a company, entrepreneurial as you are. And do you bake or not? I mean, I’m not a baker either, so I’d be with you. Who can I partner with? And it’s just amazing when you’re able to bring that vision to life. So kudos to you for doing the work and finding everything there that you needed.

 

We know that even if we ourselves don’t have a food allergy, Denise, you don’t have one. I personally don’t have food allergies, but we all know someone who is dealing with this. So given how prevalent the allergies are, what are some ways we can support others who are living with food allergies as they’re trying to just go about the day-to-day, and have the same experience as we are?

 

Sure. So I think being proactive in asking. And if you’re hosting an event, asking if anybody has any allergies or dietary restrictions, attempting to be accommodating where you can. And I think if you know someone has allergies, just making sure that they feel safe in the space that you’re providing for them, I think so often people with food allergies don’t want to be a burden to anyone else, but they also want to feel safe and secure and confident in social events.

 

And so I think just being really genuine and deliberate around asking the questions to help understand so that you can create a safe and inclusive environment for people around you.

 

Solid. D, so I mean, we hit on a lot of things around the food allergy space and the background as far as how you brought it all to life. I want to make sure we didn’t miss anything before we go on to the magical mic drop moment that I got for you.

 

I think it was a super robust conversation. I’m slightly nervous about the magical mic drop.

 

[LAUGHTER]

 

I think I would just reiterate, like, there’s so much good literature and information that can be found online, through community, through your doctor, and medical professional. And I think a lot of the learning around how to be more supportive of those with food allergies is just around having care and being deliberate in asking the questions.

 

Alright.

 

Well done.

 

You’re going to be the first one to get two mic drop moments because of how far we go back. It’s only right. 25 plus years, we got to make sure — yes, all right. The first one that I want to throw at you is if you could snap your fingers and eliminate one challenge in that allergy-friendly food industry, what would it be?

 

I would create more manufacturing. There aren’t that many allergy-friendly places to actually make products. And so companies hands are tied unless they have capital to invest in equipment to even bring more products to consumers who need them. So I would create more manufacturing capabilities.

Well, you were ready for that one. Look at that magical mic drop. Here goes number two. Yeah. This one might be a little bit more challenging. So if you had to explain Partake to a skeptical toddler in five words, what would you say?

 

Yummy, chocolate, chip, cookie.

 

[LAUGHTER]

 

I don’t know if I exceeded, but I would just go with yummy cookie. I think I saw firsthand when my husband and I used to do lots of demos, I would lead in with the cookie is allergy-friendly and gluten free and vegan and non-gmo and kosher, and he would just be this is a yummy cookie. And he sold a lot more than I did.

 

There it is.

 

So I would appeal to that. Like appeal to that emotion. What do they love and what do they want?

Oh, I love that.

Well, if our listeners want to follow you, they can find more about Partake Foods at partakefoods.com. They can find @partakefoods on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. And they can also follow you, Denise @denisegwoodard, W-O-O-D-A-R-D, on Instagram.

 

Denise, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. We know many families out there are dealing with food allergies in their own lives, and this is an important topic for us to cover with them. So thank you.

 

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Appreciate you, D.

 

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