A Peek into a Food Allergy Life

I’ve always known the way I think and the things I have to constantly look out for are different from others. As is the case with most people who have food allergies, especially the more allergens you have, the more complex and complicated it gets. I wrote an article last year about how to look out for your food allergy friends and be mindful.

However, I’d also like to give you all, who might have friends with food allergies or not — a look into how some of our minds work, or at the very least to be aware of what others might be going through that you may not see outwardly. 

And for reference I’m anaphylactic to (meaning I could die if I ingest these foods even a tiny amount); dairy, peanuts, tree-nuts, egg, mustard, oats, sesame, and chia. I have an oral allergy (meaning I can eat them if they are cooked but not raw) to; kiwi’s and pineapple’s.

Food allergies are a disability under Canadian law, but food allergies are an invisible disability — you can’t see it but we do and it affects how we interact with our world. 

1. We wipe everything down

Even before the pandemic happened, what every food allergy kid for the most part would always have is — say it with me, “Wet Wipes!” 

Non-allergy people over the last few decades have began to bring coffee, milk, and other drinks with them everywhere — which you have every right to do. However, we don’t know whether the surface we put our laptop, phone, bag, or other necessities on, has had something spilled on it and dried or been wiped up but not with soap and water. Or if someone’s eaten a bag of Cheetos or a muffin with peanuts or whatever it is on that desk — we wipe it down. 

And this isn’t exclusive to desks but anything people touch, so for more examples: people with food allergies tend to pre-board on planes to do as diligent of a wipe down of the chair and little flip-down table thing as we possibly can. The chair we’re sitting on, if it’s summer and we’re wearing shorts or a t-shirt and there’s no barrier from our clothes with what we’re sitting on. 

Also, sometimes we’ll grab door handles with our sleeve or jacket, or we’ll press the handicap door opener with our elbows to avoid touching the door handle which may have our allergen on it. If we do touch it, odds are since we aren’t ingesting it we won’t have an anaphylactic reaction but we might get hives on our hands or have itchy hands for the rest of the day which isn’t fun.

2. We read the ingredients of everything, not just food

Did you know some chalk has milk in it? Oh yeah, everything could have an allergen in it, so most of us are pros at reading allergen labels and we usually follow a golden rule which is before you eat the food — read the label at least three times; once at the store or when you get it delivered (if you’ve insta carted it), once before you use it, and once before you eat it in whatever you made. 

In my twenty years of having food allergies, my family has and needs to read the ingredients of — paints (which might have milk in them or casein which is a byproduct of milk), chalks (which can again can have milk in them), pastels (which could have tree-nut oils, or milk byproducts in them), art supplies in general, eco-cardboard (which can scarily sometimes be made with peanut shell husks), shampoo, conditioner, hand soaps, body wash, makeup, potting soil (which can have crushed nut shells), deodorant, and more.

3. We wash our clothes more often

Why? Well, if we aren’t sure what was previously on the seat we sat on – again if someone spilled a drink so there is a worry of cross contamination. Which is why I don’t buy clothing that can’t be washed and is dry-clean only, it just personally gives me too much anxiety. 

4. Some of our food is more expensive

A common university student meal is mac and cheese – the most well known brand of mac and cheese is Kraft Dinner. Kraft Dinner costs $1.75 for 200 grams, Kraft Dinner Deluxe costs $5.45 for 350 grams, but a food allergy safe equivalent is Daiya Mac and Cheeze which costs $6.35 for 300 grams. 

Another common food is a bagel with cream cheese. I’ve yet to find a bagel brand that I can have that is bought from a grocery or speciality store in Canada. However, I can talk about the cost of cream cheese – Philadelphia cream cheese costs $5.35 for 227 grams, the allergen safe equivalent cream cheeses are Violife which costs $8 for 200 grams or Daiya which costs $7.11 for 227 grams. 

Say you want to make chocolate chip cookies for dessert, you might buy no name chocolate chips that cost $4.35 for 300 grams or Chipits chocolate chips that cost $5.25 for 250 grams, or allergen friendly chocolate chips which are Enjoy Life brand, cost $7.10 for 283 grams. 

Want to make a peanut free – peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Kraft and JIF peanut butter both cost $5.45 for 500 grams, Wowbutter which is a peanut butter alternative made from roasted soy beans costs $6.35 for 500 grams. 

Now, I understand some of these products price increases are only about a dollar extra but those dollars add up quickly.

5. Anything involving food takes more time and planning

Finding restaurants that you can eat at and feel comfortable at are very rare, which means you usually have to make all of your own food – for everything. Finding allergen friendly bread, pastries, bagels and other baked goods are very very hard – so you bake your own bread, you make your own pastries and bagels. You make your own meals from scratch everyday, we don’t have the luxury of being able to UberEats, DoorDash or SkipTheDishes food. 

For birthday parties as a kid, my friend’s parents would let us know the menu so we could replicate the food being offered to the best of our ability so I was included as much as possible. 

And in university this is the reason I don’t tend to have lunch most days – because it takes about 1-2 hours before I leave if I were to make a meal from scratch. Recently in my fourth year, I’ve figured out a way to meal prep a little the day before I have a long class. But I only meal prep for that one class, it’s too much work to do it for all my classes. With meal prepping it’s also more complicated because I can’t buy the pre-made salads, cut vegetables or shredded meats from the grocery story because there is too high a risk of cross contamination. 

I hope this article gave you a little look into our lives. 

Thank you for reading,

Dahra

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