My husband posted on his blog about this issue just today. I hope those of you in the restaurant industry will read this. It just might save my life.

http://www.herbivoracious.com/2009/02/understanding-deadly-food-allergies-this-post-could-save-a-life.html

Thanks.

Just an FYI – allergies (real ones, not just sensitivies or dislike or whatever) can occur at any age – you have start with a sensitivity, and if enough antibodies build up, have a true, anaphalactic reaction at some point. Much to my dismay, I’ve had 2 since menopause hit: walnuts and bananas. I had always been so proud that I could and would eat ANYTHING (except beets. Their flavor and my palate do not mix). Now, I have to be careful, avoid 90% of holiday cookies, and can’t have my beloved Cuban-style fried bananas.

Most customers are pretty simple. They want what they ask for. Enough restaurants don’t really care if you don’t like the way something tastes, and will gladly tell you they removed the blah or tell vegetarian customers there is no chicken broth in that dish.

As a result, customers learn to lie in return. Just as it is easier to lie to a customer about what is in a dish, it is simply easier for customers to feign allergies.

Restaurants can solve this problem EASILY. Simply don’t accommodate. Sure it will ruffle the occasional feather. Yes, sometimes that means customers will leave. But long-term, these aren’t the customers you wanted anyways.

On to my own experiences with food allergies, intolerances, and aversions.

I’m luckily free of allergies. My father can’t have shellfish, but loves it. My mom catches him scratching an hour after sneaking some off my plate at a restaurant and gives him hell for it.

I have two intolerances. I developed lactose intolerance after a nasty bout with a gastrointestinal flu in my early 20’s. My theory is that the bug killed off all the good bacteria in my gut, ending my ability to digest lactose. No one else in my family suffers, and my mom was so skeptical of such a thing that she made me get a breath test from the doctor. I’ve found that most cheese is okay, but too much fresh cheese like mozz or ricotta gives me cramps. Oddly enough a sip or two or milk is fine, but baked into a cake I’ll be limited to a private area for the remainder of the day. My theory on that one is that the lactose is suspended and diluted in the milk, but that the cake somehow binds it, making it available to putrefactive bacteria in the gut. The other thing with me is pears. I love pears, grew up on them, had a tree in the yard. In college, I moved into a house with a pear tree out back. In August, I started making pear pies, pear cobblers, pear sauce, pear anything. I had the poos for two weeks, not realizing the pears were the culprit. It dawned on me eventually, and research seems to point to high levels of sorbitol in pears’ sugar profiles. So just like you shouldn’t eat too much of that ‘diabetic’ candy, I can only eat a few bites of pear, lest I run to the restroom.

As far as aversions, I have plenty. I dislike almost all tropical fruits, but I just would never order something like guava gelee on mango curd with passionfruit coulis. Blech. Raspberries are the same way. Anything else I’m fine with. The one sneaky one I have to watch out for is cilantro. For most of my life, I could take it or leave it, it wasn’t a strong flavor to me. But sometime in my 20’s, I started to notice this awful flavor in Mexican or Vietnamese foods I had previously enjoyed. I know it’s a genetic predisposition for it to taste like chewing on a pewter fork, but it’s odd that it happened to me so late.

On those lines of genetics, however, I think it’s interesting that no one in my family thinks that any kind of greens are strong-smelling. Collards, broccoli, brussels sprouts are all pleasant and vegetabley smelling. Other people instantly turn up their noses at the scent of steaming greens. Perhaps my family is programmed to have a predilection for consuming such things?

As far as picky people go, I work with many of them. One of them is vegan, ’straight-edge’ (no caffeine or alcohol, including chocolate, coffee, and vanilla), soy-free, gluten-free, sugar/agave/maple-free, yeast-free, and doesn’t eat anything fermented or with a high sugar content, like peas or corn or carrots. I have never seen her actually eat, although she talks about baking banana bread. What with, I’ve no idea. Needless to say, she just doesn’t eat out.

Any business and not just the restaurant business should be there for their clients. What makes me return to a restaurant is service provided plus quality of food and if a certain food is going to make me ill, I will demand that I do not have it served to me.

Anyone who suffers from food allergies do not need to use this as any excuse but know full well the consequence involved.