Food allergies, intolerances, aversions and imagined problems

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Here's a good one. My sister in law took her kid to the allergist recently. Doctor says "Don't give your kid peanuts." Guess what? The kid loves peanut butter and eats it pretty much every day with no obvious problems. Like I said before, it's not well understood.
 
Someone came into our place and told us that her and her husband were allergic to garlic. After 5 minutes of thinking... everything we have has garlic in it. I didn't know what to tell the lady.
 
Lucretia said:
Seems like I've heard that the longer the fish is dead, the higher the histamine levels. Or it could just be the wine from dinner talking. :D
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I want some of that wine. It's definitely better than the wines Drinky has been drinking. :tease:
 
I can eat all kind of food but i have a little problem. I can eat everything but not fish. Whenever i think about fish food i feel vomit. I can't eat fish and you can say that i have allergic from fish food.
 
Anderson said:
I can eat all kind of food but i have a little problem. I can eat everything but not fish. Whenever i think about fish food i feel vomit. I can't eat fish and you can say that i have allergic from fish food.
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Being physically sickened by something and being allergic are two different things. Otherwise I'd be allergic to lima beans, Donald Trump and a few relatives.
 
I think a lot of people dislike something and say they are allergic to it just so when they go out for a meal the staff don't think they're an arsehole when they have to do a whole mean separately from scratch just for them and they are certain there's no trace of said ingredient in their meal
 
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As a chef in a commercial kitchen who has been doing this for a while, I have to say that its my belief that most people do not have actual food allergies, they just go with the current diet or fad. Right now it's gluten-free, and my guess is that probably a full 70% of people ordering from our gluten-free menu (thats how far it's gone!) are NOT actually celiacs. Five years ago it was the Atkins thing. Now you never hear about this anymore, right?! What sucks is that you can never tell, and as a result have to treat EVERY G.F. order like it is a real allergy and not just another train-jumper, changing gloves and using special tongs and cutting board. I know that there are many real sufferers out there and I don't mean to offend them in any way, it must suck to be allergic to something that is literally in EVERYTHING in the US. But the bandwagon food allergy people need to get a grip. If you don't like something, just admiti it! Don't pretend you're allergic just to make sure you don't get those onions in your mixed veg. I think there is something to what DevinT says as well, but I still feel that the majority of food allergies are actually either people jumping on board with the current allergy-in-vogue or your aforementioned 'imagined problems'
 
I think that a lot of allergies are caused by globalization introducing so many things into our diets. In the past changes happened slowly over generations and generations. Another factor is the 'convenient allergy'. People who don't like something seem to have an easier time just claiming to be allergic. I experienced this myself while travelling recently. This one woman on tour kept going on about how she couldn't eat goat cheese because she was deathly allergic to anything goat. A fellow traveller called her on it when he noticed she was eating Greek yogurt made from goat's milk.
 
mano said:
Being physically sickened by something and being allergic are two different things. Otherwise I'd be allergic to lima beans, Donald Trump and a few relatives.
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LOL!!!!
 
Son, You took the words out of my mouth, but spoke them much better than could. Brill!

I also think that these diet-du jour's are also messing with our alimentary canal. Whom ever invented the diets that prescribes eating small meal every hour is rubbish. I'm a big fan of Paleo foods on an Anaconda feeding schedule.


sachem allison said:
well as a chef, I see this a lot. Many of the people who are displaying these allergies and sensitivities are not genetically predisposed to digesting these foods. Celiac's disease used to be only a first world disease, It didn't exist in any of the emerging or third world countries as, they started to get exposed to Western diets and exported wheat, they started to develop gluten allergies. The same thing is happening here with soy and corn. Europeans weren't designed to eat corn or soy. Most Asians don't get soy allergies and most Native Americans don't get corn allergies. As for peanut allergies because of cross breeding for better yield, disease and insect resistance we developed strains that when consumed by some folks it can be fatal. The original wild strains of peanuts actually can be consumed by people with peanut allergies because they naturally lack the allergen.
We in the west subsidize our farmers to grow and over abundance of foodstuffs more than we really can ever use. To justify this we add these ingredients to processed foods as flavoring agents, bulk filler, stabilizers and a myriad of other things, that you would never know was made from wheat, corn, soy and so on and so forth. We put it in everything (why do you need high fructose corn syrup in tomato sauce, bread or pasta?) because we gotta put it somewhere and its cheap, filling and highly addictive. All of these things are the perfect firestorm for allergies, intolerance and disease. We feed antibiotics and steroids to livestock because, we feed cattle corn and other grains. We do this because it's cheap, the problem is cattle did not evolve to eat corn or grain they are grazers, they eat grass. Grass fed cattle are healthier for you , they are low in cholesterol, high in omega3 and beta carotene and studies show you are less likely to develop coronary artery disease from eating it. Eating grain fed beef, you are more likely to develop, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and dozen other things including hormonal imbalances and antibiotic resistance. ( you don't hear about those reports to often, can't mess with big business).

The other contributing factor to the allergen problem is we are to clean as a society. The development of an efficient sewer system and sanitation system has doomed the western world to allergies. We no longer have a natural resistance to allergens and infections because, we are no longer exposed to these things on a regular basis as our ancestors were. A little bit of crap in the water makes you healthier , too much and Montezuma's revenge. I told my sister when here first Son was born to let him play in the dirt and stick things in his mouth (within reason and he will stay healthy. She put him in a sterile environment and he was sick all the time. The second kid, she followed my advice and he hasn't been sick yet. He is much more robust and filled with vigor than his old brother with the sniffles. Why is it the people who are always sick are the ones with the bottle of hand sanitizer? Ask yourself that question.

My rant is now over and I'm sure it made no sense and I may have wandered off topic. This whole thing is a quick fix. Eat better and roll around in the dirt . Drink a little crap in your water and you'll be fine.
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DevinT said:
I'm allergic to all foods. When I eat them I swell up, or maybe that's just fat.

Hoss
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you my friend owe me a new pad of paper..i just spewed coffee out my nose. haha

there are no peanut allergies in Thailand. is this just an american thing? my wife's taiwan family never even heard of food allergies.
 
I found out a couple of weeks ago that my daughter has a peanut allergy... Ugh.
 
I have a peanut allergy, and when I mention it people normally jump through hoops. It makes me feel like ****, because when I am working in the kitchen and this happens it really throws me out of stride, but I am very grateful for the extra steps they take to ensure that I don't die suffocating on their floor (I carry an epipen 24/7 so this is a slight exaggeration in my case). However when someone comes in and needs something without salt because they have an "allergy" to something that the body needs to survive it really pisses me off, because it really lessens the respect and caution that people have for people with real allergies.

I'm just glad that peanuts aren't a fad allergy yet.

The best explanation that I have heard for the cause of allergies is all of the ridiculously toxic stuff that we put into the environment. Though I do agree that we need to be less sterile to decrease illness and strengthen our immune systems.
 
Some great thoughts and contributions here. I am with Son and some others on this. I don't have any food allergies, but I am embarrassed that there are a few things I cannot eat. One of them, strangely enough, are avocados. I just have to puke when I eat them in normal quantities. It's not an allergic reaction but my Mom has the same problem and I didn't find out until recently, so this is most likely some physiological thing. And when I eat uni or fish eggs, they come back up faster than I can eat them - but again, no allergy per se. The same thing happens with natto, but that is because that stuff is just nasty...

It would really be interesting to see if there is a measurable correlation between the global spread of genetically modified foods and food-related illnesses. Anybody wanna do a dissertation, I can be your external advisor ;)

Back to a strongly hopped grain product :)

Stefan
 
This is sort of an old bump (I like saying that), but I read an article recently that the wheat of today has much more wheat germ in it than original heirloom wheat. It has been genetically modified to be 'robust' and there is speculation that the increase in celiac symptoms among the population might have something to do with changing wheat. Also, my neighbor's kid is allergic to corn syrup, and when I told her about the article, she got this excited look on her face and said that she has long suspected that the GMO corn is what her kid is allergic too and not 'normal' corn syrup. Almost all corn 88% is GMO in the US. I must admit that it makes some sense -- or at least makes me a bit suspicious.

k.
 
I'm allergic to stupid.

Had a ticket come in the other day which read, "Bacon Allergy". ******* bacon allergy? Get the **** out of here.
 
mr drinky said:
Also, my neighbor's kid is allergic to corn syrup, and when I told her about the article, she got this excited look on her face and said that she has long suspected that the GMO corn is what her kid is allergic too and not 'normal' corn syrup.
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Is there such a thing as non-gmo, heirloom, handmade, artisan corn syrup?
 
JohnnyChance said:
Is there such a thing as non-gmo, heirloom, handmade, artisan corn syrup?
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My first reaction was: probably not. But google yielded an organic corn syrup, which is somewhat diabolical. Anyhow...

Corn Syrup use (or overuse) in the US is primarily due to sugar quotas and tariffs that limit importation of sugar and make our sugar prices much higher than the rest of the world. Corn syrup is simply cheaper in the US than sugar, so it is used more here as a sweetener. It is one reason Coke in other countries tastes different -- they often use sugar as the sweetener.

k.
 
ThEoRy said:
I'm allergic to stupid.

Had a ticket come in the other day which read, "Bacon Allergy". ******* bacon allergy? Get the **** out of here.
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But they don't have a problem with ham.
 
Just read that approx. 1% of the population are estimated to have a gluten intolerance that requires them to avoid gluten - but 28% of the population say they are cutting back or avoiding gluten. Makes you wonder... Haven't looked into the details of the gluten research, but my understanding is that the claims that avoiding gluten has a lot of benefits for healthy people are contradictory at best.

Stefan
 
I think part of it is because of that Wheat Belly book that is so popular and also some high-profile celebs going gluten free like Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus. And now that 'gluten-free' is seen as a sign of quality/healthy food for many, it is being plastered over all sorts of product packaging giving people the constant reminder the gluten is bad. It is just another case of a fad diet slowly changing how impressionable couch Americans eat.

Btw, one time I was in a grocery store and accidentally bought some gluten free ravioli. It tasted as if someone reformulated the pasta using vomit. It was nasty.

k.
 
I think if Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus are our models for how we should eat, the end of the world is near.

Stefan
 
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