Elly Ward and her son Hunter.
In 2012, Southampton’s Elly and Trevor Ward’s then 8-month old son Hunter ate a tiny bit of peanut butter on a cracker and in less than 30 seconds he had hives around his mouth and on his hands.
After a hurried trip to the emergency room, several scary hours went by before they could take Hunter home, along with a prescription for two EpiPens. Elly Ward recalls, “watching my son’s symptoms get increasingly worse while the doctors gave him a variety of medications was heartbreaking because I couldn’t do anything to help him.”
Until they experienced anaphylaxis first hand, they didn’t realize how serious food allergies could be. Anaphylaxis is a severe, potentially life-threatening condition. One in 13 Canadians have a severe food allergy, the highest percentage of those being nut allergies, both peanut and tree nut.
Ward calls herself a “mompreneur” and after she found she was investing a lot of time and energy researching safe foods and other products for her family - although there are many safe foods out there, Ward found that most stores only carried a few, which made online shopping and visiting multiple stores an onerous practice - the concept of an online store came to her.
No Nuts About Us, an e-commerce website that ships Canada-wide, launched in December 2016 and is dedicated to offering a large selection of organic, GMO free and natural food, personal care and cleaning products that are made in facilities free of peanuts and tree nuts. The hope is to help alleviate some of the anxiety and stress for people and families dealing with life threatening allergies and also to benefit those whose children attend nut-free schools.
The goal for Ward is to fill what she sees as a void in the industry and offer people a complete shoppe for products that are made in a peanut and tree nut free facility.
