Several years ago, I was diagnosed with a lengthy list of food sensitivities. For those who don’t know the difference between an allergy and a sensitivity, don’t worry, it’s confusing. An allergic reaction occurs fairly instantaneously – generally within an hour of coming into contact with the food. Symptoms of an allergy include itching, hives, breathing difficulties, and anaphylaxis. An allergic reaction is an immune reaction and happens each time, generally with the exact same symptoms, you eat a food you’re allergic to.
Sensitivities are a little more complicated and a little less concrete. First, a food sensitivity isn’t an immune reaction, although prolonged consumption of certain offending foods can weaken your body’s immune system. Sensitivities, like intolerances, have to do with the body’s ability to digest a food. Second, the symptoms of food sensitivities, (including headaches, acid reflux, stomach cramps,and joint swelling, to name a few), vary depending on how much of the food was consumed and how long it’s been since the last time the food was consumed. For instance, I can have a very small amount of ice cream once a year without reacting to it, but if I had ice cream as often as once a month I’d get stomach cramps.
I have sensitivities to whey, casein, gluten, sugar, apples, pears, bananas, almonds, cashews, all types of fish, onions and all onion relatives, bell peppers, mushrooms, coconut, and soy. When I first figured out I had all these sensitivities it was really frustrating. I had to completely rework my diet. I had to learn to adapt recipes so that I could eat my favorite foods without feeling sick. My parents had to adjust their diets too, because I’m so sensitive to mushrooms that it’s probably closer to an allergy. I once got a whiff of mushroom and immediately started wheezing, the room started spinning, and I had to lie down on the sofa. Mushrooms were subsequently banished from the household and my dad loves mushrooms. I had officially become a nuisance.
On the one hand, it’s really annoying having all these sensitivities, but on the other hand, I can’t eat most processed or precooked food, so I now eat a healthier diet than I ever had before my diagnosis. Do you know how many things have apple juice in them? Read some labels and you’d be surprised at how many things contain soy. I had to cut out granola bars, juices from concentrate, breakfast cereal, store-bought chicken stock, tomato sauce in a can, salsa, and the list goes on. Some of those foods I found I could live without. Breakfast cereal hardly got me through a couple hours of the day, a steak and bean breakfast sandwich, on the other hand, keeps me going until mid-afternoon.
I’ve had to get creative – actually it’s mostly my mother who had to get creative, I’ve just been learning from her. My mom learned to make chicken stock by boiling down chicken necks and feet along with some vegetables over the course of a few days. She learned to make tomato sauce from scratch. I will take credit for the mac and cheese though – I make a wicked good gluten free, cow-dairy free mac and cheese from scratch. It’s pretty darn gourmet.
What was at first an annoyance, became a creative culinary challenge, now we don’t think twice about cooking at home. The real nuisance – the time when I become a real nuisance – is going out to eat.
Most people go out to eat to take an evening off from having to cook and then clean up the kitchen afterwards. My family’s no exception, except for the fact that we all have an ungodly amount of food sensitivities and as we’re ordering I can see our waitperson getting more and more annoyed with us. I can only imagine what the chef must think when he or she gets our order and all the dishes he or she has invested so much time into designing and perfecting have been completely butchered. And I’ll be the first to admit that our restrictive diets are annoying. I can’t blame restaurant staff for being impatient with us, but sometimes I just want to grab a particularly huffy waitperson by the collar and say, “Hey, I have to deal with this shit every waking minute of my existence. I have to suffer the sleepless nights of stomach craps if I screw up. I’m not doing this out of choice, I’m doing it out of necessity. You’ve got to deal with me for an hour, maybe two at the most, so can you at least pretend that I’m not a nuisance.”
I don’t say that though – my mother might say it someday, she’s already come close a couple times. I do smile and say, “sorry I’ve got an annoying number of food allergies, try to bear with me.” And it works, by declaring myself a nuisance, I suddenly become less of one. Suddenly, I’m understood and any tension between myself and the server disappears. And yes, I do say allergies, because most people don’t understand that, while less severe than an allergy and less potentially deadly, food sensitivities are just as valid a health condition as allergies – and sometimes, just as devastating. I should know, I dropped out of college because everything I ate made me sicker and sicker until I could no longer function well enough to even recognize how very sick I was. Talk about a nuisance, huh?
Thank you for reading.
For more information about the differences between allergies and sensitivities click here