Nascar/Indy driver Alex Tagliani made a special stop to St. Mary's school Wednesday morning to help promote the Allergy Friendly Food Drive Challenge.

Tagliani, 43, has severe nut allergies from peanuts all the way down to pistachios and has to be extremely careful in what he eats, whether he's at home or living a busy lifestyle on the road while racing.

The veteran driver says eating out at a restaurant for him can just be as dangerous as getting behind the wheel of race car with the abilities to go up to 400KM/H.

"If you give me the opportunity to jump into a car and you say 'well there's no seatbelts, I can't give you a helmet today, you don't  have fireproof race suit then it would be a similar risk," Tagliani says.

Tagliani spoke on the importance of identifying students who may carry a food allergy especially ones that may require an EpiPen due to anaphylactic shock.

He says it's a hard lifestyle but it's a very manageable one.

"I walked out of the house and my wife had some chicken with zucchini and some rice, I brought it my backpack in a Ziploc container. Then I sit in the plane and I opened the Tupperware I had my little plastic fork and I ate there, so you create a system."

Tagliani says from the first time he started racing to now, there's been a complete U-Turn when it comes to food allergy awareness and knowledge for schools and other organizations.

"You go to the restaurant, the waiter or servers there were not as sensible to people with food allergies walking into the restaurant,number one. Number two, labelling all the work that Food Allergy Canada does, a piece of food that contains an allergen is very small now."

For more on the Allergy Friendly Food Challenge click here.

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