Allergies and Sensitivities

[Mountain Cat]

Wondering what, if any, people here have, at least regarding food.

My food sensitivities have arisen later in life - I ate everything just fine as a kid and an early adult.

First one to crop up was fiddlehead ferns, which was depressing because I loved that harbinger of spring and Dad enjoyed making them. He'd steam them and all. But in the early 90s suddenly they returned as easily as they went down.

Although I have to say for a long time I find myself feeling under the weather in a mild way upon eating most pre-made/commercial cakes, cookies, pastries, donuts, and a lot of candy bars. I've learned that eating cakes or cookies others make from boxes also unsettle my stomach - not in a violent way, but in a "just this feels so wrong" way, just like the store bought things. One of the few exceptions is Walker's Scottish shortbread cookies - the plain recipe. Only ingredients: flour, sugar, butter. This does make it easy for me to turn down desserts from uncertain provenance. (True home-made has been fine.)

About five or six years ago I bought a bag of Trader Joe's de-shelled pistachios, and proceeded to eat the contents in three days. That was a serious mistake. Long story short, I can no longer eat pistachios, and by extension, pine nuts. A couple that creep in (within say, a salad) - that's okay. In other words I don't have to request that hosts not have these things in their salads, because I can kick most of them to the curb. Not a true allergy, but a sensitivity that requires a threshold to trigger.

I have since discovered i can eat almonds. Yay! I really don't care all that much for the rest of the nut world - a bit of pecan in a cookie is fine, but I don't want to push that limit to find out since I'm not really crazy about them to begin with. I do like chestnuts but haven't seen them blatantly out there in the supermarket shelves to buy of recent. SO I do not know if I can still eat those or not.

Well, Saturday I went to a Solstice celebration, and someone had brought a home-made acorn cake, made entirely from acorn flour (and spices). I took the miniscule of slivers, simply because here's a food I've never eaten before and of course I've got to try just about anything I've never eaten before. (She followed the 60-80 hour process in making the acorn flour herself.)

Nope, no more acorn for me. I had less of that than I tolerated of pecan fragments in a small cookie - nope.

The other thing I can't eat any more - liquid egg product. I can eat eggs until the chickens come home, but for whatever reason - some undeclared "GRAS"/Generally Regarded As Safe ingredient they don't have to disclose, or the process they use to create the liquid egg product -- gut wrenching.

 

[CraigC]

I'm the opposite, having my bout with allergies when I was young. Dairy products in particular. Now, I'm allergic to fast food burgers by choice!

 

[Mountain Cat]

Oh, btw, before one might try to link the "liquid egg product" to the discomfort from store-bought cakes and pastries - no, two different types of issues. There is probably a little liquid egg product in some of those things, but not enough to trigger the first type. .

 

[TastyReuben]

No allergies, but there are a couple of things that send me straight to loo after eating, namely pancakes and doughnuts. That will happen literally minutes after consuming. Waffles, oddly, are fine.

The bar and grill that's closest to the house, their pizza does the same thing, but it's delayed by several hours. I know when I get that pizza, not to make any plans for the first half of the following day.

 

[Yorky]

As far as I am aware I have no allergies or sensitivities.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Allergies, yes.
Sensitive to, yes.

But it is important when discussing food related allergies to remember thay there is a massive difference between an allergy and an intolerance to. Allergies provoke life threatening responses. Just think peanuts or nuts, and those with an air borne trigger and anaphylactic shock response to just being in the same room as someone who has recently handled these products. That's an allergy, not an intolerance.

Intolerances on the other hand are generally not going to be fatal (inside a few minutes) simply unpleasant. They are the 'we don't get on' side of life.

I'm unlucky to have a dairy protein allergy. It triggers anaphylactic shock. Many times I'll get the "we've used/ got lactose free milk" or better still I'll ask for something dairy free to be told they don't have anything but we do have gluten free. Those are the places I now just leave. If they don't know the difference between dairy and gluten, they'll not know the difference between an allergy and an intolerance so I'm not trusting my life to them.

I am also sensitive to savory cabbage. It goes straight through me inside ½hr. That's an intolerance. It's a real shame because I really like savoy cabbage but it just doesn't like me.

The dairy side of life is a real problem because dairy crops up in so many places. Medication is a big on. I have had anaphylactic shock to an antihistamine tablet. I've had anaphylactic shock to capsules used to treat my asthma, where they're are only 2 chemicals in tablet and it is impossible to be allergic to one of the drugs. The only other chemical is the tablet filler (lactose monohydrate and I'm not allergic to lactose (you actually can't be allergic to lactose, the body doesn't recognise the dairy sugar as a trigger, but I am responding to the contamination on the filler when it is made from dairy. Dairy proteins can get left on the filler and it's that that triggers my allergic reaction).

But I've not always been that way. I started with it back in my late teens. Suddenly after an illness, I could no longer have cows dairy if it wasn't cooked. Goat's and sheep milk I was fine with for about 10 years, then another much longer illness and all of a sudden no dairy off any type (including buffalo mozzarella) at all.

The savoy cabbage has always been that way.

 

[rascal]

No allergies here, except about a year ago after eating strawberry cheesecake my lips swelled up. Antihistamine bought it back to normal. About 6 months again the same thing. But not cheesecake.???
Must be due again???

Russ

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

No allergies here, except about a year ago after eating strawberry cheesecake my lips swelled up. Antihistamine bought it back to normal. About 6 months again the same thing. But not cheesecake.???
Must be due again???

Russ

Strawberry leaves are known to do this. My late Grannie could easy strawberries quite happily, prepare them everything. But even we'r went strawberry picking, she had to wear rubber dish cloth gloves to prevent her hands swelling up badly. Lips swell, tingle, the lot much more readily than other areas of the body so you may have a mild allergy to strawberry leaf. Some herbal teas contain strawberry leaf so you might want to be careful should you ever try any (though I'm guessing you're not a herbal tea fan tbh )

 

[Morning Glory]

Intolerances only for me - mayonnaise, taramasalata, coconut milk (the thick type). I really don't quite understand why. Mayo is eggs and oil l and I've no problem with either. Taramasalata is fish roe with oil. Again I can eat both separately. Coconut cream is high fat. They are all high fat foods but it can't simply be that, because I get a reaction if I only have a tiny amount.

Basically these foods make me feel sick - my stomach reacts almost immediately and I can't face eating anything for several hours afterwards. The only annoying thing was some years ago when I was working and sometimes wanted to buy a pre-made sandwich. There was a time when almost every sandwich on sale had mayonnaise in it. This never used to be the case as its not a UK tradition to put mayo in sandwiches - I think it crept in from the USA.

 

[medtran49]

Eggplant skin and pumpkin cause itchy rashes, and I can only eat small amounts of eggplant and not very often as it makes me feel "wrong" the next day if I eat too much. In the last few years, I have started having uncontrollable sneezing (to the embarrassing point) fits after eating some bread type products when at a restaurant, not all the time, and even homemade now sometimes, can't figure out what the trigger is. I haven't been able to use soy sauce in years without suffering the GI consequences for most of the next day, and even using tamari still has side effects. Can't eat mango as it causes lip/mouth tingling, even in tiny amounts, although we did find 1 variety at a farmer's market I can eat. Cinnamon goes a very, very long way with me. I don't eat anything with cinnamon in it that I haven't made myself because it's just overpowering.

 

[rascal]

Strawberry leaves are known to do this. My late Grannie could easy strawberries quite happily, prepare them everything. But even we'r went strawberry picking, she had to wear rubber dish cloth gloves to prevent her hands swelling up badly. Lips swell, tingle, the lot much more readily than other areas of the body so you may have a mild allergy to strawberry leaf. Some herbal teas contain strawberry leaf so you might want to be careful should you ever try any (though I'm guessing you're not a herbal tea fan tbh )

Thanks for that, we grow our own strawberries here so im picking daily, leaves don't bother me, but it may have been something they preserve the strawberries on the cheesecake??
I only drink earl grey tea so no herbal teas for me. My son drinks green tea and other herbal teas, must get it from his mother,lol.

Russ