After reading the books you'll find out that the list of things your child can't have doesn't just stop at food. The reality is that so many things that we use on a daily basis from cleaning detergents, shampoos, soaps, gels, perfumes, make-up, sun screen and more have either milk or eggs in it. Even things we don't encounter have them such has some medical gloves. A good rule of thumb I've learned is that anything that has an ingredients list needs to be checked for allergens.
The great thing is that a lot of companies are now clearly labeling products in plan English if they have an allergen. The bad thing of course is that these non-food items don't usually and a lot of food from outside the United States are also not clearly marked saying "this product contains: milk and eggs" or "this product may contain: milk or eggs" or "this product was produced on a equipment that manufactures products that contain: milk or eggs". Therefore, even if the allergen isn't listed I read the entire ingredients list including the active and inactive ones. If a company of a non-food product has only listed the active ingredients I tend to not buy the product unless I do more research on the web or by calling the company.
We've also learned that some products change and therefore, we can't trust that just because we bought it once that it's ok now. Also sometimes the companies make a mistake, if this happens the alerts you can get from the FAAN newsletter and online are really helpful. (http://www.foodallergy.org/)
When it comes to my sons allergies I've learned to not trust what I knew to be true of the ingredients and to always ask questions.
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