4 tips: How to travel China with a peanut allergy

I recently traveled the east coast of China and I have a severe peanut allergy, in fact I’m allergic to all nuts. I had a great time with out any incidents. These four tips will hopefully help your travels of China, and perhaps other parts of Asia!

1. Ensure you have a travel a customized travel allergy card. There is a site that I’ve found that will really help! I personally used Google translate and had a friend proof read, both options will work!
2. In my experience they tend to use allot of peanut oil in their cooking. Or at least they say they’re using peanut oil. According to a few sources that I’ve come across peanut oil might not affect peanut allergy suffer’s. The most frustrating part of this was that they most likely weren’t using peanut oil because of its higher cost(especially in the cheaper restaurants). There was no real way to tell, so I avoid the oil at all times
3. It’s a good idea to read forums from reputable travel sites. Lonely Planet has been in this business for years and has countless fellow travellers sharing their experience.
4. Go with your gut instincts and stick to grilled food! I found that there was allot of grilled chicken and fish options on the menus. Worst case scenario I ate McDonalds and KFC (which was way better than home!)

I also want to add one more in here, and would like feedback on this. This is a portable peanut allergy tester! It’s less than $300 and might be worth looking into!

In my opinion, if you follow your own personal routines and some of other tips in my blog, you will be able to travel safely. I hope these tips help you travel the beautiful country of China with confidence.

Safe travels!