Food Allergy PSA (Last post on this topic, I swear)
OK, I know, I'm beating a dead horse here, but I've been thinking about my little mushroom incident, and it's really changed the way I look at food allergies... given that I know I'm not the only one out there with potentially life-threatening food allergies, I wanted to share a bit of what I've learned from the experience. This may all be "Well, duh," to some of you... but it may not be to ALL of you, and if it can help spare some other soul a trip to the emergency room someday, well, that would be AWESOME.
So! Let me share with the class what I've learned this week:
FOR EVERYONE:
Probably you don't want to accidentally kill a friend, or even a casual acquaintance. It's not something I honestly thought about much in bringing food to parties and the like, even as someone with a food allergy, but the fact is that a few days ago, a very good friend who knew about my allergy and thought she'd made something safe for me wound up sending me to the emergency room, and this sort of thing is not actually as unusual an occurrence as one would think (witness some of the hilarious comments to my last post). It really is incumbent on the person with the allergies to make sure food is safe themselves before they eat it, but helping is really nice, if you're up for it! So here I go...
When you are making food that might possibly be eaten by someone with an allergy (bringing food to a party, making dinner for friends, etc...), it would be awesome if you considered doing any of the following:
* If possible, find out if anyone who might eat it has any allergies (ask your guests to tell you about them). Then you can warn them in advance of what to avoid. IMPORTANT: There is a big difference between intolerance/sensitivity & true allergy. Intolerance can suck -- even epicly -- and make you very sick for a while, but won't kill you. Allergies are rarer and CAN kill you. So it might be a good idea to ask your guests exactly how allergic they are. Clearly it's nice not to make anyone sick, but there's a higher level of paranoia required for true allergies (especially since it also takes much smaller amounts to set off an allergy).
* Save containers/labels for any packaged ingredients you use -- crackers, dips, even the broth that goes into something you cook. If you have the label, it's possible to check if it has a dangerous ingredient. If you threw it out, not so much.
* If you're feeling super extra awesome, putting out a little card with ingredients for each dish at a party listed is AWESOME. It makes people with allergies filled with love and gratitude to you, because having to track down who made each thing and ask them individually no, really, are there any nuts/tomatoes/whatever in this AT ALL, even a teeny bit, gets old fast, and then we get self-conscious or lazy and do dumb things like, say, not asking as many probing questions as we should and eating something without checking thoroughly and getting sick.
Other important note: it's apparently not as obvious as I always thought it would be when someone is going anaphylactic. If you're close to someone with a serious allergy, or you ARE someone with a serious allergy, I recommend reading up thoroughly on the symptoms if you haven't already done so. This may seem like a "well, duh," but I actually never read up on the symptoms of anaphylaxis before this week. (Yeah, I know, dumb.) If I had, I probably would have figured out what was happening waayyyy earlier. If vastin had, I'm sure he would have gotten my ass to the emergency room in the middle of the night when I was actually probably a lot closer to going into shock than I want to think about, rather than letting me talk him into waiting until morning when I was, luckily, better in this case.
FOR ALLERGIC PEOPLE:
Again, you may already know all this stuff, but here's what I learned:
* Symptoms of anaphylaxis are enough like a cold that if you're already sick, you may not realize you've had a reaction to something. If you get a sudden spike in your cold symptoms after/while eating, watch out.
* I have been very successful in avoiding tomatoes (they're RED!), so I never realized that you can have an anaphylactic reaction to something and still be walking around and talking to people (if hoarsely) and not falling over in a heap... and yet still potentially be in real danger. I thought it was all about the airway closing and that as long as you could breathe, you were OK, but after reading up, whoops, it's actually all about the blood pressure. Who knew? Probably you... not me.
* Since one of the symptoms of anaphylaxis is confusion (which, at least in my case, apparently translates roughly to "stupidity"), you may not be in any mental shape to make rational judgments about how you're doing. Having a friend/SO/whatever looking out for you when eating strange foods may not be a bad thing. Not trusting your own sense of whether you're all right may also not be a bad thing.
* Intolerances can apparently upgrade to true allergies without notice! (Well, depending on the source of the problem, no doubt.)
* CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!!!!
Again, sorry if this is a bit "duh" or preachy or whatever. I feel a little self-conscious and silly posting this... but this incident has turned out to be a bit of a wake-up call for me, and it's also made me think about how if I'm so clueless about food allergies and I HAVE them, it might not be bad to help spread the word to people who don't have them, have no reason to have read up on them, and yet might still accidentally wind up hurting a friend because they don't even realize the potential danger.
If you have your own allergy tips, stories, lessons, anecdotes, etc, I would be totally interested in seeing them in the comments!
So! Let me share with the class what I've learned this week:
FOR EVERYONE:
Probably you don't want to accidentally kill a friend, or even a casual acquaintance. It's not something I honestly thought about much in bringing food to parties and the like, even as someone with a food allergy, but the fact is that a few days ago, a very good friend who knew about my allergy and thought she'd made something safe for me wound up sending me to the emergency room, and this sort of thing is not actually as unusual an occurrence as one would think (witness some of the hilarious comments to my last post). It really is incumbent on the person with the allergies to make sure food is safe themselves before they eat it, but helping is really nice, if you're up for it! So here I go...
When you are making food that might possibly be eaten by someone with an allergy (bringing food to a party, making dinner for friends, etc...), it would be awesome if you considered doing any of the following:
* If possible, find out if anyone who might eat it has any allergies (ask your guests to tell you about them). Then you can warn them in advance of what to avoid. IMPORTANT: There is a big difference between intolerance/sensitivity & true allergy. Intolerance can suck -- even epicly -- and make you very sick for a while, but won't kill you. Allergies are rarer and CAN kill you. So it might be a good idea to ask your guests exactly how allergic they are. Clearly it's nice not to make anyone sick, but there's a higher level of paranoia required for true allergies (especially since it also takes much smaller amounts to set off an allergy).
* Save containers/labels for any packaged ingredients you use -- crackers, dips, even the broth that goes into something you cook. If you have the label, it's possible to check if it has a dangerous ingredient. If you threw it out, not so much.
* If you're feeling super extra awesome, putting out a little card with ingredients for each dish at a party listed is AWESOME. It makes people with allergies filled with love and gratitude to you, because having to track down who made each thing and ask them individually no, really, are there any nuts/tomatoes/whatever in this AT ALL, even a teeny bit, gets old fast, and then we get self-conscious or lazy and do dumb things like, say, not asking as many probing questions as we should and eating something without checking thoroughly and getting sick.
Other important note: it's apparently not as obvious as I always thought it would be when someone is going anaphylactic. If you're close to someone with a serious allergy, or you ARE someone with a serious allergy, I recommend reading up thoroughly on the symptoms if you haven't already done so. This may seem like a "well, duh," but I actually never read up on the symptoms of anaphylaxis before this week. (Yeah, I know, dumb.) If I had, I probably would have figured out what was happening waayyyy earlier. If vastin had, I'm sure he would have gotten my ass to the emergency room in the middle of the night when I was actually probably a lot closer to going into shock than I want to think about, rather than letting me talk him into waiting until morning when I was, luckily, better in this case.
FOR ALLERGIC PEOPLE:
Again, you may already know all this stuff, but here's what I learned:
* Symptoms of anaphylaxis are enough like a cold that if you're already sick, you may not realize you've had a reaction to something. If you get a sudden spike in your cold symptoms after/while eating, watch out.
* I have been very successful in avoiding tomatoes (they're RED!), so I never realized that you can have an anaphylactic reaction to something and still be walking around and talking to people (if hoarsely) and not falling over in a heap... and yet still potentially be in real danger. I thought it was all about the airway closing and that as long as you could breathe, you were OK, but after reading up, whoops, it's actually all about the blood pressure. Who knew? Probably you... not me.
* Since one of the symptoms of anaphylaxis is confusion (which, at least in my case, apparently translates roughly to "stupidity"), you may not be in any mental shape to make rational judgments about how you're doing. Having a friend/SO/whatever looking out for you when eating strange foods may not be a bad thing. Not trusting your own sense of whether you're all right may also not be a bad thing.
* Intolerances can apparently upgrade to true allergies without notice! (Well, depending on the source of the problem, no doubt.)
* CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!!!!
Again, sorry if this is a bit "duh" or preachy or whatever. I feel a little self-conscious and silly posting this... but this incident has turned out to be a bit of a wake-up call for me, and it's also made me think about how if I'm so clueless about food allergies and I HAVE them, it might not be bad to help spread the word to people who don't have them, have no reason to have read up on them, and yet might still accidentally wind up hurting a friend because they don't even realize the potential danger.
If you have your own allergy tips, stories, lessons, anecdotes, etc, I would be totally interested in seeing them in the comments!