Another Day, Another Meal

It's just another day in my allergy filled life...

 A few days ago I had a friend in town and we decided to do dinner at this Italian place near my SoHo apartment.  It's amazing and I find myself wondering why I had not yet popped my head in the door to check it out.  The bread basket is placed on the table after we ordered.  There are two different kinds of bread, one is in a paper cone within the bucket and the other is placed around the cone.  The latter looks semi-suspicious.  Little greenish looking dots appear sporadically throughout the bread.  The friend dives right in; I on the other hand take the piece of bread to investigate it a bit closer.  "hmmm.... this could potentially be a pistachio. Or is it an olive? What do you think?"  I decide to just skip on the bread-- better safe than sorry.  A bit later our salumi board appetizer comes out.  It's a beautiful presentation and the first salumi I try is amazing.  I see one however that appears to have pistachios in it.  Okay, don't eat that one or any piece close to that one. Check.  I look up at my friend who has a heavenly expression on his face after eating the duck liver mousse, which is presented already spread on a piece of bread.  I can't miss out on this, so I bite right in to the remaining slice.  Chew, savor, swallow, think "damn".  I had jumped right in without even looking at the bread to see if the skeptical green dots were there. Of course there was one at the far end of the slice of bread.  So, the next step is to verify the green speck with the server.  Yup, definitely a pistachio.  I'm thinking that there are so few, maybe two mini-dots per slice, that I should be alright, perhaps a slight itchy throat at most.  I'm certain I did not actually eat one; it was a pretty small bite and I didn't feel any varying textures.  However, It's been a while since I have had any sort of contact with a pistachio, and I don't really know what to expect which makes me slightly nervous.  I play the waiting game and ended up with what I predicted: just an itchy throat and a numbish feeling tongue.  Not too bad for a potentially disastrous and night ruining situation.  But hey, that's the story of my life-- and this was just another meal. 

My Tragic Love Affair

I'm going to embellish on my personal experiences and explain further the struggles I have experienced not only as an allergic person but also as a die hard foodie.  I love food; I am insanely passionate about it in every aspect imaginable.  All I knew growing up was that I wanted a career involving food.  Med school? HR? No way.  Food and only food.  Imagine if I had said that to my allergist-- he would have laughed in my face.  It was the most impossible career for me to have pursued.  I took three years of culinary arts in high school and food was the heart of my program in college.  I have never held a job not revolving around food.  I have worked in cookie factories, small bakeries, cafes, and large scale kitchens.  I even went to culinary school.  Each experience has only deepened my fervor for food.  However, I always felt like my allergies were holding me back, inhibiting me from fully reaching my potential.  I could only do the patisserie program because my seafood allergies are too severe to have completed the cuisine program.  I can't be the food critic I always dreamed of because I can't eat most of the food.  I even had to stop working in kitchens-- being so close to so many allergens on an every day basis was detrimental to my health.   There are so many jobs that I cannot pursue, and it is quite possibly the most difficult thing for me to accept.  So, I sought out one of the only graduate programs in the nation that entirely focuses on the study of food. I am a grad student where my primary purpose is to look at the world through the lens of food.  It's perfect and I am optimistic that it will lead to a career where I will no longer be hindered by my allergies. 

It still seems so unfortunate that I had to fall in love with something that could kill me.  It's a tragic love affair.

An American in Paris- My Launching Point

While living in Paris I, inevitably, had an anaphylactic reaction. It was the beginning of the first semester and what better way to bond with new classmates then over dinner? We decided to try out a well-rated Indian restaurant. I had never tried or perhaps even seen Indian food before, but after a glance at the menu I noticed that cashews were a predominate ingredient; this was a slight problem: I am severely allergic to cashews. So considering I could be placed in the “aggressive” category for diners with food allergies, I decided it would be okay to order a dish and just simply ask for them to leave the nuts out. After all, that’s common practice in the US. In my best French possible, I clearly explained my food allergy to the waiter using phrases like Je mourrai... (I will die...). Our food arrived and no visible traces of nuts were present. Nonetheless, one bite later that ever frightening feeling of the burning, numbing, itching throat came on. Then came that thought of “damn.... what a great way to get to know these people”. After using the epi-pen in the bathroom and taking a few Pepcid AC, a daring and generous friend took me home-- making a few pit-stops along the way for me to use the metro’s garbage cans for my gastrointestinal distress. Semi-recovered the next morning, I came to find out that the remaining diners had explained the situation to the server, yet he made them still pay for my contaminated meal. Oh, the French. Then I realized I needed to get another epi-pen. This is where the extreme cultural differences regarding food allergies became apparent. Both the pharmacists working at the time had never seen an epi-pen before, nor did they have anything relatively similar to one. I even gave them my used one for reference, and a day later, still nothing. I ended up with a vile of epinephrine, which was to remain refrigerated, and a syringe; so if I were to need it, I would have to draw the epinephrine with the syringe and give myself the shot. Suffice it to say that I did not eat out until I had a new epi-pen sent to me from home.

So why is it then that the French have no equivalent to an epi-pen? And why do so many French hardly know about food allergies? How did the prevalence of food allergies in America versus other countries in the world come about? What are our different cultural attitudes regarding food allergies? This experience and these questions have led me to where I am today.