If you’d asked me a couple of years ago how I thought I was going to die, I would have thought you were a morbid weirdo, but I would’ve answered, “Car crash, probably. Or cancer. Old age, if I’m lucky.” Now I think I’m probably going to get killed by a cashew.
As you age, allergies can sometimes get milder. Or, if you’re unlucky, they get worse with repeated exposure. I’m unlucky. Astute readers might have noted, that, in my first article, I mentioned eating a hazelnut and my throat closing up temporarily. In my second article, I ate a hazelnut and I ended up having my throat close up and throwing up for an hour and sneezing and feeling feverish for about two hours after that. These two incidents were about five years apart. The only reasonable conclusion is if this trend continues, five years from now eating a hazelnut will cause me to drop dead on the spot. That is the only reasonable conclusion.
After eating a hazelnut on Christmas, I have become way more diligent about carrying around an EpiPen with me. I’d been carrying around technically expired EpiPens for a couple of months, but after that incident I promptly got new ones and now have ‘RENEW EPIPENS!!’ scheduled in my calendar annually for the rest of eternity. (Did you know that EpiPens cost $100 each, per year? And that you need two of them? And that I’m no longer on my dad’s health plan? Blergh.)
My friends and I recently travelled to Montréal for a few days. They really wanted to go to one of those eat-in-the-dark restaurants, where the dining room is pitch black and you can’t see your meal. Supposedly this makes the food taste better by heightening your other senses. I was hesitant. I read their poorly translated menu online over and over, scouring it for signs of nuts. It seemed safe and I relented; we made a reservation. I started to regret agreeing to it in the first place. It seemed to me, as with dim sum or a bake sale, like a game of Russian Roulette. What if I couldn’t explain my allergy well enough in French and I died? What if they brought me the wrong meal and I couldn’t tell and I died? What if I couldn’t find my EpiPen in the dark and I died? What if my throat closed up and I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening and nobody could see me and I died in the dark in a gimmicky, overpriced restaurant in French Canada?
I was growing increasingly nervous, but everyone else was really excited so I kept my mouth shut. I looked up how to explain my allergy and discovered that French doesn’t technically have a word for nuts and panicked. (‘Noix’ refers to walnuts.) When we got to the hotel, I asked the bilingual concierge to help me. (She said ‘noix’ was fine.) I showed my friends exactly where in my bag I was keeping my EpiPen and explained how to use it.
At the restaurant, we learned that you placed your food orders in the lobby area before venturing into the dark. Before taking our orders, the server asked, in perfect English, if any of us had food allergies.
“I’m allergic to tree nuts,” I told her, sweaty palm on the paper in my pocket with the French translation written down.
“It’s a nut free kitchen,” she said in a blasé Québécois accent. “Too many allergies.”
I could’ve kissed her and/or punched whoever decided not to include this information on the website. Our server lead us into the pitch dark dining area. It was an interesting experience. There was a rowdy table seated nearby and a server broke a bunch of plates. My main course was weirdly damp and cold and I’m still not exactly sure what it was. The menu called it a ‘roll;’ it was the only vegetarian option. The crème brûlée was good.
When I think about my future death I now conceptualize it as some bizarro nut-based game of Clue: will it be ‘Server’ with the ‘Cashew Curry’ in the ‘Restaurant’? Or ‘Friend’ with the ‘Pecan Butter Tart’ at the ‘Wedding’? Or ‘Significant Other’ with the ‘Nutella’ in ‘My Own Home’? Humour aside, I’m terrified. Going to new restaurants, or ordering a different menu item at a familiar restaurant, makes me anxious. I check the list of ingredients on food items I’ve bought millions of times before just in case they’ve changed their recipe in the last two weeks. I ask servers if completely innocuous foods have nuts in them, and what kind of oil things are fried in. (I recently discovered walnut oil in a grocery store and my blood ran cold.) I make people taste test baked goods for me, but I rarely trust them when they say ‘I think this doesn’t have any nuts in it.’ That used to be good enough for me. It’s not good enough anymore.
I wonder what it’s like to eat without thinking about it. My friend ordered a mystery meal at the restaurant in Montréal; the thought of being able to do that is incomprehensible to me. Any time I eat something in an unfamiliar environment, I contemplate my mortality for a moment. I think that there’s a pretty good chance that I’m eventually going to meet my end at the hands of a cashew. Cashews have always caused my worst allergic reactions and I’m not sure how they could get much worse. I try to be vigilant, but I recognize that it’s a real possibility that I, or someone else, could slip up.
For now, I’m not going to let fear stop me from going out to eat with my friends. Eating great food while surrounded by people I like is one of my favourite things in life. The tiny risk is worth it. If this is really how I’m going to die, I just hope that I’m eighty-something years old when it happens, out at a restaurant with my best old lady friends, and that whatever it is, it’s the most delicious goddamn thing I’ve ever eaten.
PS: My dad is from Québec. Your province is lovely. (NO IT IS NOT, it is almost worse than Alberta, but I’m sure your dad is great, for a daywalker. – Ed.)
Tags: food, it tries to warn you with its delicious taste, nut allergies, QUEBEC, sarah robert, she didn’t even eat the salmon mousse
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wait what’s wrong with Alberta
Is it bad that all this comment makes me think of is Avenue Q… (I’M SORRY CANADA)
Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver. She cooks like my mother and sucks like a Hoover!
It’s like the Texas of Canada. /mic drop
No, really, it’s intensely conservative (for Canada, so), wildly rich because of oil money, so Albertans gripe about how they’re supporting the “rest of Canada” through their taxes, and lots of native-born Albertans resent the fact that people FLOOD there from all over the place (the Maritimes and Newfoundland especially) to work in the oil and gas industry. And the usual things that come with a booming economy, like cities that are growing at an exponential rate. And places like Fort McMurray, which is such a ridiculous boom town that people are living in garden sheds and trailers in order to work there. The rest of Canada doesn’t like Alberta because Alberta likes to gripe about the rest of Canada, and so on and so forth.
(this has been GENERALIZATION HOUR)
As an born-and-bred Albertan, I’ll have to reluctantly agree with most of this. However, there are some really lovely (and progressive, and artistic, and creative) places and people too!
My husband grew up in Alberta, and I do enjoy visiting there! And parts of it are very lovely.
But it’s a very Weird Place.
As a Maritimer, I can tell you that I’ve known other Maritimers who have moved there and become absorbed in the culture, like they look down their noses at all of us who’ve stayed here. I’m thinking, “Why are you like this? You grew up here!” Not everyone, but many. (Not to generalize.)
Annoying conservative politicians and a bunch of people who keep voting for same, mostly.
Calgary’s mayor is making most other Canadian cities look pretty dumb right now though.
That’s not a very high bar these days. (Though he is awesome.)
I was at a sushi resto in Vancouver with my nut-allergic boo and we ordered a roll that was made with some kind of sauce. We asked the waitress if the sauce had any nuts in it and she said no, just sesame, which is fine. After the first bite he said he was pretty sure it had nuts in it–his allergy thankfully isn’t as bad as the poster’s, but his mouth and lips swell up a bunch. We asked the waitress again, she denied it again, and we asked her to check with the kitchen. Turns out that yeah, there was some peanut butter in the sauce. I really feel for everyone with food allergies and the paranoia/tension it brings up when you’re just trying to go about the everyday business of feeding yourself.
Not at all the same as a life-threatening nut allergy, but I am starting to come to terms with the idea that I am lactose intolerant at least on some level (the level that makes me farty and bloated) and it seems like a relatively easy thing for servers to know. “I know this creamless spinach doesn’t have CREAM, but does it have any dairy at all?” “Oh, I don’t know.” REALLY?
I have never been a server so it is probably not for me to judge, but I feel like it is a pretty important thing to say “I don’t know . . . BUT LET ME GO BACK AND CHECK.” Just to be courteous, so you don’t swell up or get sick.
I fortunately don’t have any serious allergies (just a few mildly uncomfortable ones) but I often dine with people who do, so I notice and appreciate when servers ask up front whether anyone at the table has food allergies. That seems very efficient: saves a couple of trips to the kitchen or the possibility of people needing to send dishes back.
Can I ask what restaurant this was?
I have anaphylaxis in response to dairy, soy, almonds, walnuts, honey and sesame. I am definitely doing the thing where your allergies get worse as you get older. Here is what I hate, though: when I say I have food allergies, SO OFTEN people assume that I am gluten-free.
Gluten has become like the new allergy fad. When I was a kid, there was a lot of awareness about peanut allergies, so things with nuts in them were more clearly marked, but now gluten seems to have overtaken nuts. Now, I’ll often go to a restaurant and the gluten-free dishes on the menu are marked, but no mention of nuts. Why can’t we have both?? This weird allergy-du-jour thing doesn’t help anyone with legitimate allergies.
ALSO once I was out with a large group and passed on an appetizer served with soy dipping sauce saying “I am allergic to soy”. The woman across from me said, “OH, I am TOO, but I eat it anyway” as she chewed away on her soy-coated snack. Um, lady. I think we are talking about different kinds of allergies here.
Aghh I hate those people! As a celiac, I’m not fond of those people who are “allergic to gluten” but then eat a regular pastry at the coffee shop because all the gf options are shite/gone.
I get anaphylaxis in response to dairy, peanuts, celery, and carrots. And chocolate! Carrots and celery are the worst to deal with because it’s so rare, and chocolate is just sad. My dairy allergy only presented itself when I was 20 or so (I’m 25 now) and it’s gotten pretty severe in the last couple years. I miss cheese SO MUCH. My boyfriend is so happy when I go out of town because it means he can eat all the PB&J he wants and not have to worry about killing me.
Quebec is the worst province.
what kind of oil things are fried in. (I recently discovered walnut oil in a grocery store and my blood ran cold.)
It’s amazing to me that when so many people suffer from peanut allergies (which, I know, are different from your tree-nut allergy), so much food is fried in peanut oil, and I agree with you that the oils and butters make it terrifyingly difficult to be sure a food is allergen-free.
But let me reassure you at least a tiny bit: most nut oils, like walnut or pistachio or hazelnut oil, are both too expensive and too delicate for indiscriminate frying-stuff-in. They’re primarily finishing oils and will probably be bleated about on the menu or by the server; these are prestige ingredients that are worthy of boasting about, not like peanut oil in a sauté pan or fry-o-later.
eta: but of course, that means salads, which might seem like an obviously safe option if they just leave off any nuts, could easily be contaminated with nut-oil dressing – though I’d also expect the menu or server to point that out as a point of pride, it’s easily overlooked. Scary.
Yeah, it definitely seems too fancy to really be frying things in, but I’m paaaaranoid. I also had no idea that tree nut oils even existed until I saw that walnut oil. And you’d be surprised at the things that get left off the menu – looking at you, pesto. But yeah you’re right; it just freaks me out that they even exist at all.
When something can actually harm you and the people selling you food are charmlessly insouciant about its absence or presence, that’s not you being paranoid; that’s you not wanting to DIE. Or even to swell and be sick. “Don’t make me sick” seems like the absolute baseline expectation we should have for food service.
I’m sorry you have to be so vigilant, and I hope it didn’t feel like I was minimizing your quite reasonable anxiety. I can absolutely see how suddenly realizing there’s a whole new unthought-of category of nut substance to sneak into your food could be mind-shattering.
Don’t worry about it! Didn’t feel like you were minimizing it. 🙂 It is helpful to have confirmation that it’d usually just show up in salads. I’m already pretty wary of salads. Sauces/dressings are difficult to judge.
I’m guessing nut oils are most likely to show up incognito in salad dressings, but also keep an eye on anything likely to have a finishing oil. I’d use it* on, for example, risotto or a pasta dish, or drizzled over some hot vegetable sides.
Most of the time, nut oil isn’t used in the cooking process because heat causes the volatile flavors to go off. That’s two different kinds of potential good news: 1, it’s usually drizzled on afterward or included in a dressing, so in many cases it can simply be left off; 2, because it’s a prestige item, it’s usually a selling point and therefore highlighted on the dish’s description. But yeah, still one more damn way to slip something poisonous-to-many into a dish unseen.
*But I also ask all my guests if anyone has any allergies/sensitivities because I AM NOT A MONSTER. I have had to give up trying to accommodate gluten allergies; I bake so much and have such a tiny kitchen that I can’t be sure my bowls and spoons and even clean kitcehn towels and oven mitts don’t have traces of flour on them. But nuts are a lot easier to contain, even in a home kitchen.
I was eating trail mix when I started reading this article, but I just put it away out of solidarity. (I am astonished that the hand of fortune has seen fit not to give me any food allergies as yet. I’m sure it’s coming.)
Hi, I’m a few years down the road with your exact same allergy (except my worst reactions are to walnuts, hazelnuts and pecans). Listen, I’ve been in the hospital for this and I desperately want to give you some advice so bad that I’m de-lurking. I don’t know if this is the kind of advice You Have To Learn on Your own, but on the off-chance it’ll help, I’d like to ramble on at length.
1. CONSTANT VIGILANCE: In the past, you trusted the people around you not to betray you. Well, cut that out. Never rely on someone else’s taste test (!!) to keep you alive. No one knows your nut allergy like you. No one knows how fragile you are like you do. If you take the power to say things are safe to eat from them back to you, then you have to check things all the time and it’s exhausting, yes, you’ll miss out on a bunch of free desserts, yes, but you will never, ever be poisoned by someone else. It’ll be literally impossible. And if you ever decide to take a calculated risk, knowing the dangers, and you have a reaction, it’s not because someone else failed you, the helpless victim. It’s because you’re a badass who takes risks like eating in a pitch black restaurant (because hello, rad) and miscalculated.
2. I have seen such an improvement in restaurant service in the past 10 years: it’s unreal. Fancy restaurants now even ask if you have any allergies before giving you the menu. The restaurants to watch out for are restaurants that pretend to be fancier than they are. Cheap restaurants can’t afford nuts and nice restaurants value actual customer service and hire waiters that aren’t dirtbag teens. Select wisely dot com sells little laminated cards that explain your allergies in other languages (I got one with a huge list for France) and English and I have found them invaluable in getting my allergy taken seriously.
3. Some minor reactions can be headed off at the pass if you take a fast dose of benedryl right away. Liquid benedryl is better because it gets into your system way faster than pills. However, there was a massive recall of benedryl and they only sell liquid children’s now. So I have a huge bottle of zzzquyl in my purse: according to the rad pharmacists at walgreens, it’s the same drug but with twice to dose/amount, so be careful.
Here are some non-intuitive foods that contain nuts: pesto, mole, west coast horchata has almonds but oddly enough no other horchatas from anywhere else, filberts is a cutesy name for hazelnuts, posh salads with walnut oil. Fancy flours like buckwheat flour can often be contaminated, so be sure to check.
Fancy cocktail ingredients that contain nuts: orgeat, walnut bitters, amaretto (actually made from peach pits apparently? Would we be allergic to peach pits if we can eat them? Id even k call a scientist), things called nut brown ale etc generally do NOT have nuts in them as it is real difficult to make beer with nuts so if a beer contains nuts it’ll be real specific and braggy about it (source: goose island tour, rogue hazelnut ale).
It looks like your attitude towards this is healthy and great. Excellent job not letting your fear paralyze you or overly control your life. It’s normal to be scared shitless sometimes with this, and I’ve come to view contemplating one’s mortality at close range is good for the soul. Take a day to be extra kind to yourself whenever you’re overwhelmed by your tenuous grip on this earth.
I’ve got even more tips and tons of sympathy if you want to talk.
This was all very helpful! Thank you very much.
Yes, I’m at the point where I feel like I can’t really trust anyone and I have to take my diet entirely into my own hands. It’s exhausting, but necessary. About five years ago when my allergy wasn’t so bad it was okay, but no more.
The eat-in-the-dark place asked right away about the allergies – it’s one of the fancier places I’ve ever eaten. Right now I’m at an income level where I’m mostly eating at the semi-fancy places with dirtbag teen servers… Good call on the laminate cards, wish I’d had that when I went to Italy.
I’ve never seen a beer with nuts in it, but that’s something I’m super paranoid about, so thank you! Like, please don’t describe your beer or coffee as having a “nutty” taste when there are no actual nuts involved, because you’re giving me a panic attack for nothing.
Also, amaretto has peach pits?! I thought peach pits had cyanide in them. Trace amounts, but that’s really weird. I mean, I guess alcohol is already technically a poison.
Thank you for all those tips! I’m sure they were hard earned.
Aw shucks thanks: I know everyone’s experience is different but your allergy experiences are just eerily familiar. I hope it applies/helps. I’m probably projecting but when I was trying to learn how to deal with it, I really wanted advice.
I was wrong about amaretto: it’s apricot pits! Probably less deadly to most people. Contains the same flavor as almonds in greater concentrations, apparently. I have no idea if it contains that protein that’s so dangerous for us.
One last tip: to prevent social awkwardness when people want to make food for you, just present the task of checking for nuts/traces of nuts as something that’s just so incredibly difficult and fraught it would be positively unfair to ask your friends to do this a gargantuan task for you. Ask to see the ingredients for everything suspicious they put into it yourself, if possible. And it’s always less awkward to refuse to eat some brownies just in case than to have an allergic reaction and then spend the day reassuring them it’s okay and you forgive them while falling asleep due to benedryl.
Then bring desserts for potlucks and reap the deliciously sweet rewards of always having a dessert you can eat!
Also, my boyfriend will not buy nutella for our apartment because of my allergies even though he loves it and I told him he could. I hope all significant others you may ever have will be as sweet, therefore eliminating one potential way to go. I’ve gone over 2 years with only the slightest allergic reaction (a single hive in like, July) and you can too.
Another non-intuitive potential nut-bearing food: hummus, which some people make with peanut butter instead of tahini. A bit of peanut-infused hummus nearly felled my partner on Xmas Eve of this year (once we ascertained he was out of danger, the running joke was that he’d eaten it on purpose to get out of the first meeting of the in-laws that happened that evening, while he was sleeping off the Benedryl).
Allergies are just awful and tedious, aren’t they. My mum gets anaphylaxis, and in her 40s suddenly started getting allergic to pistachios, having spent 20-odd years in Iran and eating them by the bucketload.
Annoyingly I seem to be going the same way – I became allergic to ibuprofen and aspirin after a knee injury, to paracetamol after the flu when I took it every four hours for a week, to fake cherry flavour after a heavy Cherry Drop habit during my last two years at school, etc etc etc. Mine are definitely getting worse as I get older, although nothing life-threatening so far. My latest is having to come off one of the very few painkillers I wasn’t already allergic to (which I was on for a back injury) because they were giving me palpitations, except the palpitations haven’t stopped so now I have to go for an ECG before they can put me on anything else!
RAAAAGE!
Here for the became allergic to ibuprofen/aspirin, because HOLY SHIT does it suck. And you might be the first person with those allergies that I’ve encountered in the wild (aside from my mother, who eventually died of complications from her late-onset allergies). Solidarity fistbump.
Aw, I have allergies too, let’s hug!
I actually feel more confident going to restaurants than hanging out with friends — it’s not emotionally fraught to tell a stranger I have a peanut allergy, but sometimes friends get weird and insulted if I remind them (coincidentally, every time I’ve gone to the hospital, it’s been because a friend or relative forgot).
I’m more worried about my sister, though — I have a peanut allergy and she has a nut allergy, and nuts crop up in the weirdest places. Beer brewed with nuts? Why???
I’m mildly allergic to almonds, which is weird because I would think it would be all tree nuts, but I’ve never really had issues with any of the others. With almonds, my throat just swells up a little bit. My friends made marzipan once for the holidays and I had to leave the kitchen, because I was having a reaction to the dust in the air. People love to put almonds on things, too.
Me too! And no other tree nuts! I’m also allergic to wheat and rice, and guess what the next best flour substitute is made of?
Allergies unnerve me because of how they come and go. My environmental allergies have gotten much much better over time, but I spontaneously developed a stone fruit allergy a few years ago and there’s something off about eggplants now that makes me worried I’d developing something there. The stone fruit one is so far just an itchy mouth from fresh fruit but I’m torn between eating all the fruit now while I still can and eating it only when it’s something really good to limit my exposure (not eating it at all is not an option).
Ugh I know I’m late replying to this but I have the stone fruit one, too. I also get reactions from kiwis, certain types of apples and raw hazelnuts and almonds. It’s only really come into its own in the last few years and I still keep eating peaches every august and just pretending I won’t get a reaction (even though my numb and itchy mouth is usually coupled with nausea and sometimes puking). I’m not sure if you know it’s probably a birch pollen allergy? Tied to your environmental allergies.
My daughter has a peanut allergy and I find all these stories terrifying. 🙁 We carry an Epipen everywhere and she announces her allergy at every restaurant, so that’s good at least.
I used to work in a vietnamese restaurant. They sprinkle peanuts on everything. Nearly had a heart attack when a family came in and told me their son had a severe peanut allergy. I told them we wouldn’t add nuts but that they were all over the kitchen and there was no way I could guarantee everything would be totally nut-free. They said it would be fine but I was so terrified serving them.
Don’t say ‘severe’ if you don’t mean it!
Oh, we would not eat there!
My husband is allergic to pine nuts–no other nuts, just pine nuts–and it’s gotten worse with each exposure. Even the tiniest trace can set off an attack, and his trick is to put a Benadryl pill or two under his tongue. He says it burns like fire, but it works well enough to buy him some time (it’s the fastest method of getting the Benadryl into your bloodstream).
Don’t be afraid to put the fear of God in your waiter–tell them that any exposure to a nut may kill you, and they need to be 100% sure that anything you are brought is 100% nut-free. Occasionally you may be told they can’t serve you at all, but in our experience that’s a better option than going through an attack and paying for an ER visit.
Epipen solidarity. I found out (the hard way) about my serve mollusc and shellfish allergy (and milder saltwater fish allergy) about a month before I moved to Vancouver Island. And honeymooned in a fishing village. Potlucks were a nightmare out in Victoria: I had a severe reaction because the prosciutto that I ate had been transported to the party in a container with clams. Who thinks to question the prosciutto?
I have a strange developing allergy that I’m mildly concerned about killing me someday. Mostly because I don’t know what I’m allergic to.
So far the list is: one particular sour ale beer from a super indie brewery that only sells their stuff on site (incidentally the only beer I have ever enjoyed drinking), Magner’s Cider, and Courvoisier maple whiskey.
My skin gets red and blotchy and then my throat starts to feel funny and close up a little bit. So far, nothing that couldn’t be dealt with by a quick dose of Benadryl, but it’s unsettling. And marginally worse every time.
I drink a ton of cider and whisky, so far it’s only these very particular brands. And it’s never happened with food. I am mystified.
My people! I am allergic to carmine dye. It’s made from bugs and after a dozen reactions to yogurt, Popsicles, juices and sushi and spending an absurd amount of money going to the ER (in multiple countries! Try explaining this to a Chinese ER doctor) and an allergist, Dr. Google and I figured it out. My allergist was kind of a jerk and borderline told me I was suffering from hysterics, but I insisted on a blood test for carmine and what do you know I was right!
For the poster above me and any other lurkers with undetermined allergies, get yourself an epipen and keep a list of everything you’ve ever reacted to. It’s super annoying (and expensive, stupid epipens) and I don’t take my own advice but it’s really the only way to figure it out. I also have an undetermined allergy to citrusy wheat beers and Asian food. Good luck and be safe!
“I wonder what it’s like to eat without thinking about it.”
THIS.
My experience is also that allergies increase with age. And that it sucks to be allergic to wheat (“oh, did you read the Wheat Belly book and decide to be gluten-free?”). I just paid $312 for 2 epi-pens, and I DO have good health insurance. Still worth it, but damn.
Yep, definitely this.
After getting diagnosed with celiac, people started asking me which gluten-y foods I missed the most. I realized that there isn’t really anything specific that I miss, but I really miss the convenience – nothing says footloose and fancy free like packing all your dinners for a weekend away…
The worst is all those fucking places that advertise a "gluten free and vegan menu" but refuse to accomodate people with celiac/tell you not to risk it once you're there/don't know what gluten is and poison the SHIT outta you.
Or the places that have a "gluten free" menu that is comprised of 4 dishes from their regular menu with "tips" on ordering gluten free, as if we didn't do that shit every fucking day.
Oh man, soli here! I am always so worried about people with nut allergies because as someone with celiac, often the best, easiest to find high protein snack for me is nuts. I eat so many now because I can’t eat other processed food (like…so many easy snacks are off limits) and I need to eat a high-protein diet because I’m low in a few key nutritions (celiac malnutrition, bro. It blows.) But now I’m conscious of the fact that my safe snack is someone else’s deathfood.
Also replying to my own comment to ask if you’ve had experience with assholes who find food allergies to be a posh woman neurosis, and thus invalidate you/treat you like a fragile little princess, all because you want to be sure that the food you’re eating doesn’t put you in hospital/out of commission for three days.
Personally, contact/smell isn’t a problem for me, so people eating nuts around me is generally fine. But it definitely can be a problem for some people. I’m not going to begrudge people their protein, though!
I think nut allergies are perhaps taken a little more seriously than gluten allergies, because of the whole Wheat Belly thing and people trying to use not eating gluten as some kind of miracle cure-all, so I haven’t had anyone treat me like I’m just being neurotic. Sorry if that happens to you! That really sucks. I do have a friend who once told me, “Oh yeah I really hate nuts, so I just say I’m allergic,” which… um. Not cool.
I definitely get some people overreacting. I went on a trip with a scholarship group and I mentioned to the organizer than I had a nut allergy, and she contacted all of the restaurants we were going to to warn them, and then gave me the phone numbers of all the head chefs and was like, “You should call all of them just to be safe,” (nooope) and then kept checking up on me whenever we were eating throughout the trip. It was definitely coming from a place of kindness, but it was really excessive – like, I’ve been dealing with this all my life, I can handle it myself.
Yeah, my safe comfort foods are other people’s deathfoods or at least seriously-to-be-avoided-foods, so that always feels weird. Generally speaking, where there are treenuts (exception for some moles and vegan food) I’m in safe territory with regard to my problem food (all tomato-products), so I get really happy when I see something on a menu listed as being covered in nuts. I <3 celiacs. They have taught me how to deal gracefully with an entire frigging restaurant menu being unsafe and are the only people who don’t look at me with vague suspicion and judgement (anyone else ever run into this?) when I reveal how much I have to cook from scratch.
Mine is apples, and I know exactly what you mean. It’s been a fairly bad allergy since childhood, that has done nothing but get worse. The label reading is something I have done for so long that it only seems strange that there are people who don’t pore through every single ingredient.
Baked goods are the most terrifying thing! I will pass on almost anything without a label unless I can speak directly to the person who made it.
Anyhow, thank you! I read this and was like, yes, yes, YES the whole way through.
My allergy is progesterone, mostly my own body’s, but I have to avoid dairy because if a cow is pregnant her progesterone will be in her milk…and farmers keep their cows pregnant every single damn month of the year now. I believe I have the only food allergy borne out of cow suffering? It’s the saddest food allergy.
My allergy is progesterone, mostly my own body's, but I have to avoid dairy because if a cow is pregnant her progesterone will be in her milk…and farmers keep their cows pregnant every single damn month of the year now. I believe I have the only food allergy borne out of cow suffering? It's the saddest food allergy.
My kid has nut allergies and he is too young to understand them and I basically can’t let him eat anything that doesn’t come from our house and I can’t even take him to a restaurant (unless it’s a pizzeria–those are usually ok) and I can’t leave him for five minutes without anyone I wouldn’t trust to recognize and deal w an anaphylactic reaction and it’s pretty horrible, yeah.