I'm A Food Writer With Severe Food Allergies – Here's How That Works

Navigating a world where food is my life and my life revolves around food is thrilling and exciting. Caviar on a yacht? OK. Imu-cooked pork on Kauai? Yes. Peanut satay chicken with mango chutney in Leeds? No.

No I don’t have a hatred of the UK – I am a food and travel writer with severe food allergies and sensitivities. You will have to excuse me, my anaphylaxis is showing. 

I consistently have to leave my health and well-being in the hands of people who are not health professionals and communicating my food allergies is tough.

Many people think it’s a joke and don’t take me seriously – no really, some insist on serving me foods I’m allergic to and think it’s a dietary preference as opposed to a total necessity.

I avoid touching family members or kissing them goodbye if they consume certain foods. People have told me that I’m “the pickiest person” they’ve ever met but trust and believe me when I say there’s a very thick line between picky and not wanting to die in the middle of a Five Guys burger restaurant.

Food is supposed to be something that brings people together—but I’ve found it can make things socially awkward. 

I have to ask party hosts to announce to their guests that they absolutely cannot bring food with nuts in them to the event. I’ve had to communicate my allergy to gate agents, flight crews and passengers on flights and cruises in case someone else on the plane decides to chow down on something I’m allergic to.

Exhaustion isn’t the word I felt about the situation.

I’m one of those people who looks up a restaurant’s menu days in advance of my meal, I cosplay what I want to order and scour Yelp and Google to see if a user posted recent photos. But as fun as it is to check out menus, I’m actually looking them up I because of my allergies.

I have a real and tangible sh*t list of foods and since the age of 14, allergies have ruined ruled my life. Tree nuts and peanuts are verboten as they cause anaphylactic shock. Legumes, coconut and sesame are okay but by age 25, I added stone fruit to the list.

Fruit helps you poo, but my trips to the loo are more like a stressful carnival ride than a brief appointment to the smallest room in the house. At age 42, I am exploring the fact that I may have to add dairy to my no-go list. I have appointments lined up with a gastroenterologist, allergist and my primary care physician to get to the bottom (pardon the pun) of everything.

I don’t discuss it much on social media because it’s a constant worry and I refuse to make it out as if it’s a personality trait. I am not my allergy. I do have food preferences but those take a back seat to allergens floating in the air. 

Recently I’ve had to make additional diet changes. I used to poop regularly, once a day around the same time in the morning, but recently that’s changed.

Loose stools, frequent trips to the bathroom and prolonged bouts of nausea and intestinal cramps abound. I’m against elimination diets as food is fuel as well as a joyful comfort, so in an attempt to self-diagnose, I curtailed my cheese consumption to only include hard cheeses... but an errant piece of brie, a spoonful of quark or the occasional cube of havarti find their way to my snack plate.

And then I find myself doubled over in pain. No grilled cheese, no quesadilla, no cheese plate after dinner. No macaroni and cheese, of which I have become famous and no pizza. It’s a nightmare situation.

I had my first appointment with a gastroenterologist recently in order to try to pinpoint why my gut health has taken a turn.

“Many people experience adult onset gut issues,” says Heather Danielle Maradiaga, MS, PA-C at Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“Stress, hormonal changes, other illnesses, immune system responses, decreased ability to digest things such as lactose, and slowing gastric motility can all cause problems.” 

For me, my treatment plan includes testing for lactose intolerance, celiac disease, and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth; a colonoscopy to evaluate the anatomy and mucosal lining of my GI tract and a CT scan to evaluate the abdominal organs such as the pancreas, liver and gallbladder. Unfortunately there is no test for irritable bowel and I may just have to resort to yoga and a FODMAP diet in order to calm my gut down.

Maradiaga says that heartburn and acid reflux sometimes presents as nausea in women and simply adding over-the-counter omeprozole to my vitamin regimen may eliminate that symptom. It did. A daily probiotic supplement may help my upset gut. We’ll see.

As for communicating my allergies, I’m no longer going to keep it a secret. So what if I become “allergy girl” or am deemed a problem before I even step foot inside a restaurant.

Rarely do well-behaved food writers make history.