How Natasha’s Law Helps Keep My Daughter Safe from Food Allergies

My daughter Elizabeth was diagnosed with anaphylaxis at just 11 months old, one month before the first national lockdown and just weeks before her first birthday in March 2020. Looking back, I feel a strange sense of gratitude for that timing. When she first became limp, wheezy, covered in a rash, vomiting and struggling with a deep, chesty cough, we were able to access the urgent medical help she needed. I often wonder how differently things might have unfolded had this happened only a month later.

At that time, I had no idea how much Natasha’s Law would come to mean to our family.

During lockdown, with most of our shopping done online and so much time spent indoors, we cooked almost everything from scratch. Those simple, fresh meals unknowingly delayed Elizabeth’s reactions to other ingredients. When I returned to work and she started nursery, the need for quicker meals and snacks returned, and her asthma and eczema became impossible to ignore. With that came the realisation of just how vital accurate food labelling truly is.

As we tried to understand what was causing her distress, we found ourselves slowly navigating the overwhelming world of allergens, cross-contamination, “may contain” warnings and the hidden processes behind everyday food.

That search for answers is how we found Natasha’s story, the Foundation and their extraordinary work. I vividly remembered hearing about Natasha on the car radio years before Elizabeth was born, when her family had just begun campaigning for change. I remember thinking, “Gosh… could allergies really be this serious?” At the time, we were parents of one child with no allergies and had no idea of the world we were about to enter.

Elizabeth’s additional allergies were first uncovered through elimination during lockdown and later confirmed through medical testing. In many ways, Natasha’s Foundation became a source of support and information for us at a time when services felt difficult to access during the pandemic.

Today, the simple act of doing a weekly shop feels profoundly different. Knowing that every prepacked product must list all its ingredients is a protection we do not take for granted. Natasha’s Law does not just exist on paper, it helps keep my daughter safe every single day.

Fundraising for the Foundation is a small way for us to say thank you. That is why I am organising an Allergy Aware Community Fair to mark Allergy Awareness Week 2026.

Seeing what others are doing across the country made me realise something quite stark. Here in the North East, there is nothing that brings the allergic community together. No dedicated events, no safe spaces designed with allergic people in mind where everyone feels understood. For a region as proud and close-knit as ours, that gap felt too big to ignore.

The Allergy Aware Community Fair aims to change that. It is about creating a space that says to every person, you belong here, and you are not alone.