As Americans, we live in a world obsessed with food. Food trends like fashion, photographs like a model and advertises like a car salesman. For most people, food is somewhat uncomplicated; they eat multiple times per day and typically strive to follow some sort of diet and inevitably fail miserably.
But for me, food is dangerous. I don't have an anaphylactic allergy to any food, but I do have extreme food sensitivities that were mostly diagnosed via alternative medicine testing and a "wait-and-see" approach (eat the food, see what happens, and if it's bad, avoid it in the future).
I can't handle dairy (I'm lactose intolerant but also have strong sensitivities to casein and whey). I don't tolerate egg yolks. My stomach seizes up in pain when I eat broccoli, cauliflower or eggplant, and large concentrations of soy wreak havoc on my digestive tract.
I'm also a reflux kid (despite having major surgery to curb its extremity back when I was 11 years old), so any spicy, citrusy, acidic or fried is either off limits or must be eaten very sparingly if I'm feeling well on a particular day.
Then there's my hypoglycemia, meaning my blood sugar tends to be too low. Although it's semi contrary to my basic instinct, I have to avoid foods that are high in sugar because they overwhelm my body and my blood sugar crashes.
With all of those limitations, my diet becomes bland and boring. For a while, I spiced things up by eating cheese (the only dairy I could semi-tolerate) with high doses (4-6 pills) of Lactaid, but I have been completely dairy-free since December 4 due to long-term weight loss and digestive tract inflammation.
Living with severe diet limitations is second nature to me because I've had stomach problems for my entire life. When I see other people eat the foods I have to avoid, my immediate reaction is concern. "Why are you eating grilled cheese with tomato soup?" I'll wonder to a friend. "You're going to get sick!"
Of course, my friends won't get sick. I don't have many close friends that have involuntary dietary restrictions. Some of my friends choose to limit their diets to become vegetarian, and others don't eat certain foods for religious reasons, but, aside from one friend with a nut allergy, none of my friends actually get violently ill the way I do when I eat.
I've learned to make light of my food allergies. I like to call my stomach my "dairy detector" because if I don't know that there's dairy in a product and mistakenly eat it, I will unfailingly get sick within 20 minutes of eating. Because I grew up in a kosher home, I didn't realize certain products we tend to eat with meat meals (such as mashed potatoes) had dairy in them.
When I was 17, I lived away from home for the first time (aside from Jewish summer camp, where counselors were aware of and helped me manage my food allergies) while attending a summer creative writing program at Brown University. I went with my friends to the Providence Place Mall and had a piece of corn bread with a cup of chicken soup only to get extremely nauseous shortly after. I called my mom to ask her what could have possibly made me so sick, and she laughed at me when she informed me that corn bread is traditionally made with milk and butter. Oops.
My college friends were pretty impressed by my stomach in my freshmen year when I ate an arm of a gingerbread man and still managed to get so sick that I had to go up to my room, take my nausea medicine, and spend the rest of the night recuperating from the affair.
At times, I'm very bothered by my food allergies. I'd love to be able to go to a restaurant like everyone else and eat whatever I want. I hate scanning a menu and immediately having to cross off 3/4 of the options due to my dietary constraints. I long to enjoy a macaroni and cheese bar or participate in the frozen yogurt craze like everyone else. I have to buy basic products that are more expensive, such as egg beaters and almond milk, than their mainstream counterparts. For me, every meal is a consideration based on how much protein I'm getting out of it and what nutrients I can get into my body out of limited options based on how my stomach is doing that day. I can't really eat thoughtlessly or skip a meal because I'm tired or too busy to eat. Plus, I don't know anyone else who is like me, so sometimes I lead a very solitary lifestyle in that I have no one to confide in who fully understands what it's like to be me.
But at other times, I'm thankful for my food allergies. My diet keeps me thin without having to work at it, and it teaches me inherent self restraint when it comes to eating. I'm also very lucky that while I live with the constant knowledge that food is dangerous in that it can make me extremely ill, it will never threaten my life. There are so many other people these days who don't have that luxury. One minor contamination can cost them their lives.
I don't really know what the point of this post is. Mostly, I just have food allergies on the brain because I haven't been feeling well this week, so I'm constantly thinking about what I can eat in order to avoid feeling more sick while still managing to get the necessary nutrients into my body hopefully at least three times in one day.
There's also this story of a teenager who died. She was from Hopkinton, and she was seven days away from her 16th birthday when she died of an anaphylactic reaction. I don't know the details of everything and I didn't know her, but my heart goes out to her friends and family for the loss of a young girl who was robbed of a life beyond 15 years old that she should have gotten to live.
A website has been established in her memory, so if you have the time, please check it out.
