Food allergy means boy must only eat boiled sweets


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The Evening Standard

A boy with an extreme food allergy has been surviving on a diet of boiled sweets.

Finley Ranson, three, suffers from a rare disorder that means he is unable to eat normal food without having an extreme allergic reaction.

His body fights food as if it were a virus, causing him to bleed internally. It means the only solid food Finley, from Battlesbridge, Essex, eats is 10 Fox’s Glacier sweets a day. His mother, Rhys, 27, discovered her son was able to eat the sweets after a tip from another mother in a support group.

Before then, she had tried hundreds of different foods in the search for something Finley might be able to eat without becoming ill. It is not known why he can tolerate the sweets.

The toddler has undergone a series of genetic tests at Great Ormond Street Hospital to try to identify what is causing his rare form of Eosinophilic enterocolitis. He is also fed six times a day through a feeding tube.

His mother said: “It can be tough at times for me because, as a mum, I blame myself, wondering if I was carrying a faulty gene but you just have to ... deal with it.

“If the research being done does not help Finley, hopefully it will make a difference to another family.”