Lima - Post Report Question and Answers
What do people who suffer from environmental or food allergies need to know?
A lot of restaurants are proactive about asking for allergies, which is good. Desert environment (although humid) means not a huge amount of allergies, but there is plenty of (expensively watered) greenery around, if you're allergic to that. Also lots of dogs. - Jul 2022
Pollution, dust mites, dust from the huge sand dunes....
Lima has a great food scene and everything and more you could want in grocery stores and local markets. It's a fantastic place for folks with gluten allergies as there is everything under the sun made with quinoa and other gluten free grains. Peanut allergies aren't really a thing here, so you may have to be careful with that, but peanut sauce and peanut butter aren't really popular here either. Most restaurants and school cafeterias put MSG (Aji NoMoto) in everything, but if you ask restaurants to keep it out of your meal, the good ones will abide. For our school, we've sent packed lunches instead of using the cafeteria, as our daughter was getting a lot of headaches from all the MSG they were using. The US Embassy provider has stopped using it due to complaints.You would need to train your household staff not to use it if you have bad reactions to it. - Oct 2018
I did notice that some of the better restaurants in Lima would ask if any of your party had any food allergies before you ordered. - Mar 2018
I have mild seasonal allergies here that seems to be a little more severe given the pollution, but nothing too crazy. - Apr 2017
If you suffer from a fish and/or seafood allergy it would be a tough place to be. For celiacs, there is little understanding of what gluten is. Peruvians use soya sauce in a lot of products so one must explicitly ask if it is in a dish. - Jul 2016
Not a sufferer personally, but I think some pollens might affect some folks during various seasons. MSG is used in the Chifa restaurants... Peanut exposure might be a problem in many places - ask about it when ordering. Am seeing more and more gluten-free products in the markets. - May 2015
