Editor's note: Mireille Schwartz is the founder and executive director of the Bay Area Allergy Advisory Board, an organization that promotes education and awareness. It also provides no-cost medical care and medication to families with severely allergic children. She is the author of "The Family Food Allergy Book."

No doubt your children are ecstatic that summer's here - and you'll be just as excited when you can send them off to camp, right? Follow these safety tips to ensure food allergies don't get in the way of all the fun:

More than 12 million Americans - including 1 in 13 children - suffer from food allergies.
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Editor's note: Mireille Schwartz is the founder and executive director of the Bay Area Allergy Advisory Board, an organization that promotes education and awareness, and provides no-cost medical care and medication to San Francisco Bay Area families with severely allergic children. She is the author of "The Family Food Allergy Book."

Food allergies are on the rise, and are currently the fifth leading chronic illness in the United States.

Since the mid-1990s, food allergies have shifted into high gear; what used to be a relative rarity has become increasingly commonplace, with scientists estimating that the problem is getting worse.
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When you live in fear of you or your child accidentally ingesting peanut crumbs, any hope of undoing severe food allergy is welcome.

A large clinical trial published this week in the Lancet confirms what smaller studies have shown in the past: Oral immunotherapy - swallowing tiny, increasing amounts of peanut over time - has the ability to desensitize allergic individuals to peanuts.

Peanuts are one of the leading causes of food allergy reaction, and 400,000 school-aged children in the United States have this allergy, according to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Symptoms may occur from any contact with the peanut protein, which is why cross-contamination of foods can be very dangerous.
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What gives M&Ms their bright colors? That depends on which country you're in.

Mars Inc. primarily uses artificial food coloring for the candy in the United States, but M&Ms derive their candy coloring from natural sources in Europe.

Now a Change.org petition begun by Renee Shutters and the Center for Science in the Public Interest is calling on Mars to stop using artificial dyes in its American M&Ms as well. As of Tuesday morning, the petition had more than 142,000 supporters.
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