Video: Grocery store caters to food allergy sufferers

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VIRGINIA BEACH -- A Virginia Beach woman just opened a new, allergy-free grocery store to help parents whose children suffer from food allergies.

About six percent of children under the age of three have food allergies, and shopping for them can be exhausting. Virginia Beach mother Jennifer Elizondo left behind a lucrative job with a defense contractor to open a grocery store filled with allergy-free foods.

The first time Elizondo’s three-year-old son, Vaughn, ate peanut butter on a cracker, he went into anaphylactic shock. At first, the child broke out into a rash, and then he could not breathe.

“On the way to the doctor, it was just immense vomiting,” recalled Elizondo. “When we got to the doctor’s, they administered epinephrine to him.”

Grocery shopping became so complex that Elizonda decided to open Navan Foods, a grocery store to help her family, and others who suffer with food allergies.

The opening coincides with National Food Allergy Awareness Week.

The most common food allergies among children include milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, wheat, tree nuts such as walnuts and cashews, fish, and shellfish, like shrimp.

Most children will eventually outgrow food allergies, though peanut and tree nut allergies usually last a lifetime, meaning a lifetime of never leaving home without an EpiPen to administer an emergency, life-saving injection.

It also means a lifetime of paying close attention so food can give pleasure and not pain.