Nope. Our youngest had a classmate years ago who was bad enough that the whole school was declared a “banana free zone.”
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Just look at it…oh, sorry we cant.
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It’s like my relationship to marijuana as an asthmatic. I smoke very little in one sitting (one average inhalation of smoke - about 1/2 a pinky nail of flower bud) compared to most people, yet I have to be careful to make sure I’m remembering to take my Advair regularly because I produce a lot of phlegm instead of suffering from bronchial dilation.
I’ve tried edibles, but I don’t really get that nice introductory buzz when I consume.
On a side note, I may be mildly allergic to tree fruits like apples and apricots, which tend to leave me feeling tingly and flushed in the face.
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Yep. Reasonable people don’t recklessly endanger human lives to make a point about their anti-scientific viewpoints. There’s also an air of machismo is the sort of willful ignorance that denies a scientifically-verified life threatening condition because it was, for whatever reason, under-reported or simply less common a couple generations ago. Quite literally toxic machismo.
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Membranous Nephropathy is at least one auto immune disease more common in men, twice as much. Although I’m one of the women with it. Good news is women have better prognosis for it.
I also have Graves which is indeed way more common in women.
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No worries. Not singling you out. I just think we can make more progress in encouraging society to take these things seriously if we call a spade a spade even for understandable historical reasons we’re not accustomed to calling a certain type of spade a spade. Like how some circumstances of rape were not so long ago commonly called martial rape, and not long before that not acknowledged as rape at all. I tend to find euphemisms for transgressive acts corrosive to public acknowledgement, but when I correct them it’s not to criticize the users but the usages.
[Edited for egregious grammatical error resulting in saying literally the opposite of what was meant. For want of a nail the war was lost. Must proofread.]
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The population bottleneck for Ashkenazi Jews was in medieval times, when the group went down to about 350-400 people total.
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This is why I actually try and hide my Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity in restaurants - or whatever the fuck it is, going through tests at the moment from the annoyingly vague ‘IBS’ medical diagnosis - but basically if I eat more than a small amount of wheat I get stomach cramps, lack of appetite for upto 24 hours, brain fog, all of that. Cos of the ‘fad’ thing, and the weird looks I get from pissy waiters and staff who if I ask for GF food and they see me take one bite of bread they get all weird on me.
What these self-appointed Quincy MD types don’t know is that bite of bread is my weekly treat…I’ve spent most of the week eating rice and rice noodles and more rice things, horrible GF bread, and loads of less interesting but completely GF stuff so I can have that one or two bites of nice bread - and the fact my meal hasn’t got any in allows for that. If they ‘hide’ wheat - and they fucking do, usually in sauces and soups - it then makes my stomach go into meltdown…I think a lot of restaurant staff are annoyed at the extra work detailing what food contains, but I think it’s pretty basic stuff. And very few places do it, amazingly given there are more lethal issues than mine. I’ve seen weird pushback online, on waiter-industry boards or ‘Customer Isn’t Always Right’ places, moaning about ‘entitled gluten fad/allergy people’.
So I hide it as much as I can and try and pick the dishes I think MIGHT not have wheat. I’d rather be open about it - but the judgemental attitude goes both ways. Also the weirdness about not liking certain foods - I’ve had waiters and people telling me ‘but have you tried it?’ about the stuff I don’t eat all my life - and the picky eater tag gets really fucking tired.
Sometimes I just want to stuff nice food in my mouth without having to deal with say, onions (have eaten them, thanks, hate the texture). Or more dangerously, wheaty surprises. I hate picking at food, but some places seem to make a speciality of this ‘guess what we can secretly put in your dish you didn’t want’ game.
AND they don’t listen - I’ll say ‘no X’ and it’ll still arrive with it on my plate or even worse, mixed in. If wait-staff or the kitchen paid more attention, then in a way that ‘fake allergy’ thing wouldn’t be needed. But it does seem with some cases saying you might die horribly in their establishment is the ONLY way to get them to do it properly. I say this as someone who cos of dietary reasons, habit and also one of those people who never get bored of a dish, I tend to eat exactly the same thing at places regularly. And yes I’d say a non-trivial amount of times they get it wrong until it gets into the double figures. And even then, new staff etc. And they roll their eyes and say ‘yes yes I know’ when I give out the mantra of ‘this and this but not this and this’ - and guess what? They still get it wrong. In fact usually those times I KNOW they will. And I sigh, and send it back and don’t cause a massive scene but really, is it so hard? Apparently so.
So given all that lack of listening and attention, I’m not surprised people invent strategies to make sure they get the food they actually want. Which they shouldn’t ever have to.
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Wow! I did not know that! That’s seriously fucked up.
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Bullshit. They did double-blind tests a year or so back, proved it exists, and that hasn’t been disproven (unable to replicate does not mean it was wrong). There are other studies ongoing… e.g, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/what-s-really-behind-gluten-sensitivity - if it was so ‘wrapped up’ why are scientists still looking? Everyone used to tell me my issues didn’t exist, it was in my head - but funnily enough I knew when I was being secretly/accidentally fed wheat. I still had the stomach meltdowns which annoyingly got described as ‘IBS’ and I am going through the whole process now - inc ultrasound and blood tests, lactose intolerant tests etc at the hospital to try and pin it down - even might see a immunologist after my next gastroenterology appointment.
But thanks - random person over the internet who wants to be Quincy MD - for your diagnosis! And ruling that NCGS does not exist, when the proof is out there, or at worst the jury is out. I am not alone either.
You are correct it’s probably not the same Coeliac, I get negative on all those tests - but actually the only real test is to do a biopsy of the stomach wall after 6 weeks of wheat and look for scarring, it’s actually really hard to prove. Doesn’t stop me from getting shit from coeliacs in the past accusing me of ‘making it up’. I wish I had, it’s shitty. I don’t even know if it’s gluten but it’s definitely wheat-based and done all the sugars/FODMAP etc and done the 2 weeks off testing over years, how I got to wheat cos that was the only thing that triggered it. The FODMAP diet is odd - of that list, I only eat a few of them anyway - hate most of it, and did cut out mushrooms, honey (the whole possibly brewing sugars in your stomach thing is interesting) and the FODMAP fruit and lactose for a long time (months or years). No change.
Funnily enough after so much resistance from medical staff, they are all ‘we believe you’ now. It’s odd, but better than 5-7 years ago. The ‘fad’ has actually made things better, actually. I remember the GF food going mouldy in shops because it wasn’t being bought quickly enough - which as you say isn’t completely GF, but disturbingly you put all coeliacs into one level, which from friends who have it say there is a range - some who cannot ever have a trace - so Malt Barley Extract is out - and some who can stand traces. It’s not binary.
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I wouldn’t call it an allergy, but the very smell of bananas or apples is nauseating.
And something in coffee gives me the mother of all hangovers, and no, it’s not the caffeine. And I have been told that it’s impossible, and it’s not a big deal and to not complain if the person behind the counter screws up and puts it in my drink.
By the way, everyone doubting the allergy story: count yourself lucky you’ve never had to deal with an abusive person.
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Yes it is a lot better than it was, with the Free From etc. When I first realised - and now my doctors are starting to back me up and research confirms there is something even though people may argue about what - it was difficult to find GF food, and back then you could get it prescribed (but only if you had a coeliac diagnosis)
Ironically I get as much shit from coeliac people as I do non-coeliacs. I am going through tests etc at the moment to try and find out what it is, but in a way that’s just to try and shut up the nay-sayers. I don’t really care if it’s agglutin, gluten, modern wheat, or effing chemtrails, I just want to know how to prevent it from reoccurring and what causes it. Wheat is the closest I have to it, but it doesn’t go away 100%. But it’s definitely NOT in my head.
But you do get some side-eye still if you ask about then order GF food and then eat a bit of bread (cos I am not coeliac, but a certain level triggers a reaction, so a little is OK) even though I’m monitoring how much wheat I eat to stay under that level - and if I don’t, oh boy! Partly the reason I don’t go wheat cold-turkey is I suspect I wouldn’t be able to have any at all…I know people who were like me but probably undiagnosed coeliacs who cut it out entirely and then found the reaction got worse to even a tiny bit and then were diagnosed coeliac.
That’s why the menu things are so important, I love places that bother to put exact details of what is in their food, so I don’t have to have that awkward conversation. It’s surprisingly rare still.
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Same here. I started getting issues about 7-8 years ago when it was basically ‘do you have bowel cancer? no. Are you coeliac? no. Then you’re making it up’.
Things have progressed since then, thankfully, and the ‘fad’ makes my life easier, even if I do get pushback from coeliacs who think I am some faking upstart sometimes. ‘I inherited it you know’ - whoop-de-fucking-do! Congratulations! Do you want a medal? It’s almost like old money vs new money, or some kind of hierarchy of illness.
Now I have a gastroenterologist and have been having tests to look at it, and the medical establishment seem to take it more seriously than ‘it’s IBS/in your head’. And despite what this Ryu person says above, there HAVE been double blind studies into it that have proved there is something there. Yes they might be hard to replicate, and scientists might disagree about causes, but they are taking it seriously now after many years of ‘fad/making it up’ BS. We can’t all be making it up, my stomach cramps, brain fog, constipation for 3-4 days, 24 hour loss of appetite is very real, and quite often triggered by hidden wheat or me indulging in something like pizza or cake when I shouldn’t. Although not always, hence the tests.
Funnily enough though, all the people I know who are coeliac are men.
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Favism, that actually isn’t an allergy, is a problem especially in Southern Italy. Grocery shops and restaurants are putting warning signs when they are selling these beans. They’re losing clients, but it could be worse if somebody will start to feel ill inside the shop.
Besides I don’t like vey much mushrooms, if you are forcing me to eat them I consider it impolite.
If a relative isn’t polite with me I simply avoid him or her. I refused restaurant dinner with some of my uncles because I don’t like to eat with people that attack me because I have different political views and read different newspapers.
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In the club of wierd- I can’t eat beef, lamb, bison, or venison without explosive and painful gastrointestinal problems. But pork is fine. A doc thought it might be the alpha-gal tick-created allergy. But that would make me react to pork.
The anything-like-beef issue started when I was a teen. My doc and I thought I just had irritable bowl syndrome. Until I spent a summer almost constantly in the company of a Buddhist who avoided red meat for religious reasons and whose family ran a restaurant. Then my beef consumption went way down (his family place made great food and they loved feeding me) and I could easily trace the stomach issues.
At that point, my doc was a bit baffled. His best guess was a sensitivity to additives and antibiotics found commonly in beef. His verdict “if it upsets your stomach, don’t eat it. If you stop eating it and the problem stops too, we probably have the cause if not the reason.”
So I stopped eating beef. Good thing my friend’s family loved feeding me because mine started having beef almost every day, putting the sunday roast juice in all the side dishes for “flavor” and generally ensuring I had fruit and pb&j to eat. When I started eating just the bread and green beans on Sundays, they started putting the roast water in the green beans. They didn’t believe me. Except my brother. He had problems with dairy (eventually diagnosed as casein allergy). My other family members happily cut dairy for him. It wasnt until I got sick from a chicken breast my parents knew had been cooked in the grease from the hamburgers but also knew I didn’t know had been contaminated that they started taking my issue seriously. I was in college by then.
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Dealing with this for many years now due to chronic illness from autoimmune disease that has some kind of comorbid gastro issues plus complications from cancer. I have been deaths-door-there-went-your-savings ill from this. It’s gotten to the point where I try to avoid eating with other people at all costs and usually only eat food I brought. I’ve just given up. I’d love to not be managing a serious illness for the rest of my life but that’s just not an option for me. My endocrine system and bowels are permanently damaged and I want to have a decent quality of life for as long as I can. But it’s not worth taking abuse from people who think they might have found a faker. On the upside avoiding restaurants saves money… But then again costs time and social opportunities. I quit drinking mostly too so now I just meet people and drink a glass of water while they eat.
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Yeah. I say I’m allergic to beef. It’s not really true, neither I nor various doctors know what it is, but it is the easiest way to explain without having to go into my damned medical history before ordering. Luckily beef is a whole lot easier to avoid than wheat.
Edited to add: I’m sorry you have so much trouble at restaurants. One of the advantages to living in Austin is there are a lot of places that are very good about catering to a customer’s preferences. I’ve rarely gotten any push back on my no-beef thing and we’ve found several places that are happy to cater to various in-laws’ food issues.
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The subtlety with which you mentioned the “buried lede” is enviable. This particular example deserves to be the archetype, the ideal, the epitome, the classic exemplar of the buried lede for all time. Dang.
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That sound identical to my Dad who is a vegetarian (almost the opposite of myself!) and has been since little, and his mother was - so more cultural than conviction.
He can’t even eat things cooked in meat fats, when we have by accident he’s been very ill. It’s like he lost the ability to process meats somehow. Or maybe never had that ability and it’s hereditary…bowel issues run in my family, he has bile acid. But apparently he used to eat sausages during the war/rationing according to Nanna (not his mother, she died and my grandfather remarried - yes he goes back to WW2) although it’s questionable how much pork was in those.
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Places in London are getting better, I’ve only had a few major issues recently - one is Thai, I dunno what they put in the food, I’ve never eaten at a Thai restaurant before - once at a more Malaysian/fusion place - partly because I don’t do shellfish or fish - but the next few days were really bad. Some of the worst since I started peppermint oil capsules (they do usually work, despite sounding like some holistic BS - but not this time).
Also Chinese places can be a shitshoot on what you get, they seem to have a culture of ‘throw it all in’ which is why my Dad won’t eat Chinese cos of the sneaky meat or meat juices they put in. The pushback I used to get was quite often from Chinese restaurants telling me what dishes I should eat ‘you can’t have those two dishes together’ ie. ones I know are safe from random things I don’t like or could be a problem. And after a few rounds of ‘try this’ - nope can’t eat that, they give up but it’s exhausting.
Mostly it’s a low-level ‘joke’ about being picky, which is irritating but I can ignore that. Amazing how in our culture some people seem to be mortally offended by not eating something. What is it to them? I might josh vegans - and do because even my vegan friends get annoyed about those vegans, the uber-preachy ones that are usually recent converts, which comparing with my dad’s cultural veggie status is like night and day - but I understand via the people I know how upset people can be about not eating something. It’s odd, I don’t insist people drink or take drugs in my presence, so why is food different? Only an issue if I’m cooking, and even then I’m happy to cater although it might cause me stress if I’ve never cooked that before.
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