Top Allergy-Friendly Recipes (Vegan)

Struggling with food allergies is no joke. Being in contact with an allergen can lead to serious problems for an allergic person!

Whether someone in your family can’t have any of the top 9 allergens, you host a guest that needs to eat gluten-free, or your kid’s school doesn’t allow nuts, it’s always good to have some allergy-friendly recipes on hand!

What are the top food allergens?

According to the FDA, these eight foods cause the majority of allergic reactions:

• Milk
• Eggs
• Fish
• Shellfish
• Tree nuts
• Peanuts 
• Wheat
• Soy 

Can you be vegan with food allergies?

While it’s harder to plan a nutritionally balanced vegan diet if you have to exclude certain foods like soy, wheat, or nuts, you can make it work.

Be sure to eat plants of healthy fats like seeds, avocados, or olive oil when omitting nuts, and load up on beans like chickpeas and black beans if you have to skip soy.

But if you can’t make a fully plant-based diet with one or more food allergies work, don’t beat yourself up!

Allergy-friendly recipes

Luckily, all of our fully plant-based recipes already cut out half of the top allergens: cow’s milk, fish, shellfish, and eggs.

Find out how to replicate your favorite recipes without any of these ingredients below.

But what if you’re already vegan or want to go vegan and struggle with a soy, nut, or wheat allergy?

Peanut and tree nut allergies

If you can’t have cashews, walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, or pistachios, you need to get your nutrients and healthy fats from seeds or seed butter like tahini, pumpkin seed butter, or sunflower seed butter.

Omit almond milk, yogurt, and cheese, and choose soy milk instead.

Peanut allergies can occur with or without tree nut allergies because peanuts belong to the legumes family! So, someone might not be able to have almond butter, but they can have peanut butter.

Wheat and gluten allergies

These two allergies are not the same, but they can overlap. Wheat is a specific grain, whereas gluten is a protein found in a handful of different grains — wheat, barley, and rye.

It’s best to find out which one of these allergies you actually have so that you don’t restrict your diet unnecessarily or run the risk of an allergic reaction!

If you are only allergic to wheat, then you can eat rye bread or spelt pasta! If you can’t have gluten, stick to pseudo-grains, such as rice, buckwheat, quinoa, millet, and oats.

Vegan with a soy allergy

Luckily, soy allergies aren’t really common, as soy is an important staple food on a plant-based diet. It’s high in protein and really nutritious!

If someone has a soy allergy, they need to stay away from tofu, soy milk, soy sauce, soy yogurt, edamame, and tempeh.

They should get their plant-based protein from foods like chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, and other legumes instead! Protein powder is also an option.

Don’t forget that some veggies, nuts, and quinoa also have protein!

Nightshade allergies

Nightshade vegetables, such as eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers, can also cause allergic reactions in some people.

Apart from pizza sauce and toppings, these vegetables are usually the easiest to replace with anything from cauliflower and sweet potatoes to carrots, lettuce, grapes, blueberries, and more!

Check out our vegan nightshade-free recipes below.

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