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  • #16
    Quoth scruff View Post
    I don't eat meat, and have been actively avoiding it for years, as my family are well aware.

    I've had family members 'accidently' hide bacon in the pastry layers of an otherwise vegetarian pie, chop up meat and hide it in a stew as 'it doesn't count if it doesn't _look_ like meat.', and this xmas eve, hand out 'beetroot stew' that happened to also have meat in it.
    I spent xmas eve in the bathroom with an upset stomach, as I'm not used to having to digest meat. I dread to think what they'd be like if I had a genuine allergy, instead of just a personal preference.
    This is one of my biggest fears as a person with food allergies. My reactions are swift and legitimately life threatening.
    At the conclusion of an Irish wedding, the priest said "Everybody please hug the person who has made your life worth living. The bartender was nearly crushed to death.

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    • #17
      Quoth Aethian View Post
      It's not in your heads. I had that too except it was almost everything made me want to throw up. But then I would get the nauseated hunger pains. So I was screwed either way. It made me cry during the first few weeks cause my stomach hurt so much. I think that first week I lived in mandarin oranges...just cause they came up the easiest.

      Bydurian hasn't done that to me yet.
      Whenever I get nausea I revert back to my chemo diet for a while - ice cold or frozen fruit bits - grapes, canteloupe chunks, mandarin orange pieces; whole wheat toast [dry, no butter] almonds, walnut halves, poached chicken [cooked with ginger and garlic to flavor it] and titbits of candied ginger. Hard on my blood glucose, but my doc is OK with me doing it occasionally. I also find that plain tea and chicken broth to drink help.

      Rob likes fruit salad and ginger ale - he says it tastes the same going down as coming back up - he has bad reactions to coming out of anaesthesia. I pop awake and can polish off a 20 pc mcnugget and a supersized ice tea
      EVE Online: 99% of the time you sit around waiting for something to happen, but that 1% of action is what hooks people like crack, you don't get interviewed by the BBC for a WoW raid.

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      • #18
        I have celiacs so you have my sympathy. I went to a nuritIonist when I was diagnost. She was great. She told me to be prepared every day. To bring food always. To triple check. Never trust anyone for your health but you. Be prepared to lose friends and have family mock you. Because unless they have a food intolerance or allergy they won't get it.

        It is really sad. Right now I have sores all over he inside of my mouth because a server decided to "upgrade" my meal with their green chili sauce as I often get green chili chopped on my food and I thought all it was was green chili. Nope. She also added it to my husbands order. It contains chicken fat. He has been a vegetarian for longer than I have been alive and his stomache freaked out. Send back food if you find a sauce on it. At company events for years I bring my own food and refuse to eat what is provided. Too many times the "plain" chicken has flour on it so it won't stick to the pan. Recently my coworkers have learned to be gluten continue after 3 years of working with me and my "quirks". 3 of the dishes were gluten free at our potluck and I got to go first so no cross contamination would be possible. It made my day.

        People don't understand how excluding it feels not to be able to just eat. To refuse food is an insult in many cultures. I get lectured on how rude I am or how this is just a fad. I wish I had taken pictures. My skin used to look like I had chemical burns from my immune system attacking at random. I used to hide in my house never going out fearing vomiting in public after eating. I was accused of being bulimic and told it was all in my head and that I was crazy. And I was crazy. The gluten was literally driving me crazy because my body ached constantly and my skin crawled. I thought about killing myself because I was in constant pain and no one could tell me what was wrong. And no doctor thought to test me for this. An off handed remark from a professor about how the sores on my legs looked like the ones his sister in law used to get before she stopped eating wheat because she had celiacs prompted me to beg to be tested. I had wore long pants all summer to hide those sores and had finally broken down and worn shorts after my 4 battle with heat exhaustion that summer. If I hadn't who know when I would have found help.

        People who do stuff like this make me angry because they have no idea how much the person they are hurting is suffering and if they had to struggle through the day everyday coping maybe they would get a clue.

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        • #19
          To be honest. I love running into people with interesting eating needs - makes me find new and inventive foods to cook that I wouldn't normally think of making, like finding a whole passel of rice and corn based noodles for a friend with celiac, or learning how to cook entire meals with absolutely no corn/maize products because the kid of a friend is highly allergic. I would love to be rich, I would open a restaurant where all the food catered to people with food allergies - sections for celiac, corn allergy, vegan, all sorts of interesting world cuisine. Just imagine how much kitchen it would have to have to avoid cross contamination! And I would let my staff talk back at rude customers =)
          EVE Online: 99% of the time you sit around waiting for something to happen, but that 1% of action is what hooks people like crack, you don't get interviewed by the BBC for a WoW raid.

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          • #20
            May I eat at your hypothetical dream restaurant? May I bring my whole family?

            Seshat's self-help guide:
            1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
            2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
            3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
            4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

            "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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            • #21
              Quoth AccountingDrone View Post
              I would love to be rich, I would open a restaurant where all the food catered to people with food allergies - sections for celiac, corn allergy, vegan, all sorts of interesting world cuisine. Just imagine how much kitchen it would have to have to avoid cross contamination!
              You'd probably have to have seperate kitchens in seperate sections to truly avoid cross-contamination. Or open up seperate restaurants.
              Quoth AccountingDrone View Post
              And I would let my staff talk back at rude customers =)
              I've never waitressed before, but I'd be tempted to do so at a restaurant that allows that!
              I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
              My LiveJournal
              A page we can all agree with!

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              • #22
                Quoth Seshat View Post
                May I eat at your hypothetical dream restaurant? May I bring my whole family?

                Sure. I want a place that people would actually enjoy coming to that have food issues.
                Quoth XCashier View Post
                You'd probably have to have seperate kitchens in seperate sections to truly avoid cross-contamination. Or open up seperate restaurants.

                I've never waitressed before, but I'd be tempted to do so at a restaurant that allows that!
                It can be done, but it takes training, and being really careful - and multiple prep areas - I would probably have a prep area that was strictly celiac specific, one that is specifically vegan and one that is peanut/legume free as those tend to be the 3 main hot buttons dietwise. The menu would be simple, because delicious does not need to be elaborate it means excellent quality ingredients and careful preparation.
                EVE Online: 99% of the time you sit around waiting for something to happen, but that 1% of action is what hooks people like crack, you don't get interviewed by the BBC for a WoW raid.

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                • #23
                  One of the absolute best meals I have ever had: almond basket, vanilla ice cream, berries, caramel topping.

                  The basket was probably just an almond-meal-and-sugar mix put into a fluted pan and baked until crisp.
                  The berries were the nicest, most flavourful ripe-to-perfection berries I've ever tasted.
                  The ice cream was good ice cream, with vanilla that was either an excellent essence or actual vanilla bean.
                  The caramel topping was similar in flavour to a toffee - the caramel you get when you heat sugar until it undergoes its chemical reaction into caramel - but like a liquid fudge in texture.

                  The only parts that had a trick to them were the basket and the topping; and both were probably easy if you know the trick.
                  Seshat's self-help guide:
                  1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                  2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                  3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                  4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                  "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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                  • #24
                    As a baby, I had to see a specialist because I was constantly sick and under the weather. The specialist determined that I was either coeliac or had cystic fibrosis. Eventually they determined that I was coeliac, changed my diet and I became a lot healthier because of it.

                    As a kid though it grated against me and as a victim of e-numbers in soft drinks, I also became a bit of a terror child. I always used to complain about having to eat other things and I even used to sneak things into my diet to see if it was really that bad. I could never have fish or sausage with chips from chip shops due to the wheat batter used but if there was a bit of batter that had ended up in my chips then I used to eat it and not tell anyone. I never became sick neither.

                    When I was 15, I went to see the same specialist to see if things had changed so I was moved onto a high-gluten diet, even with gluten supplements being added to normally gluten-free or low-gluten meals. Nothing adverse happened and eventually they determined that I wasn't Coeliac after all.

                    However that restricted diet as a child has made it impossible for me to like certain things now. I cannot stand pastry of any kind - pies, pasties, sausage rolls. Pork pies even make me feel physically sick just by looking at it - weird as I love pork products normally. I find it hard to eat bread without it being with something else.

                    What I don't understand though, is if it wasn't Coeliac or cystic fibrosis, then what the hell made me sick as a toddler?

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                    • #25
                      Quoth retro View Post
                      What I don't understand though, is if it wasn't Coeliac or cystic fibrosis, then what the hell made me sick as a toddler?
                      You can out grow allergies. I had a friend who was allergic to eggs and tomatoes as a kid and now can eat both. Her allergy responses changed over time. I used to be allergic to chocolate and now I seem to be over most of it. With true celiacs thought the allergy never goes away. With minor intolerance it may lessen with time or become worse.

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                      • #26
                        I get the feeling that the majority of people don't understand what Celiac Disease is and don't realize that unless you're specifically tested via bloodwork by a doctor, claiming that you can't eat gluten is either a personal choice or a faddish thing to do because you saw it on the internet.

                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celiac_disease

                        "Gluten-free" involves specific grains such as oat and barley. Eating meat, even grain-fed cattle, will not produce the same reaction as the process for grain to be converted into muscle tissue alters the prolamins responsible for celiac symptoms.
                        Waiter? ... Waiter?
                        Curses! When will I ever remember- Order dessert first and THEN kill everyone in the restauraunt.

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                        • #27
                          Quoth Aislin View Post
                          You can out grow allergies. I had a friend who was allergic to eggs and tomatoes as a kid and now can eat both. Her allergy responses changed over time. I used to be allergic to chocolate and now I seem to be over most of it. With true celiacs thought the allergy never goes away. With minor intolerance it may lessen with time or become worse.
                          That's what my understanding about Coeliac disease was too - that it's a permanent thing, but the specialist was absolutely convinced that I'd grown out of it by the time they'd done the testing at age 15. I'm now 38 and I've had no adverse reaction to gluten since.

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                          • #28
                            I'm virtually certain that I'm developing a sensitivity to gluten, which is gonna suck balls if worsens to the point where I have to actively start avoiding it. Currently, one piece of pizza, or a hot dog or hamburger bun or serving of noodles or similar glutinous food gives me a fair bit of gastrointestinal distress. Eating more than just one piece or serving causes considerably worse distress, but it all works out in the end. All such distress ceases if I go more than 24 hours without eating anything containing gluten, which isn't really all THAT hard to do in this house since I do pretty much all prep and cooking from scratch, no prepackaged much of anything.

                            On a side note, I would SO eat at a restaurant that allowed servers to talk back to rude patrons! And even without any particular allergies, I'd probably enjoy AccouningDrone's dream restaurant. I like trying new foods and cooking styles.
                            You're only delaying the inevitable, you run at your own expense. The repo man gets paid to chase you. ~Argabarga

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                            • #29
                              I'm slowly losing the ability to enjoy most foods. I'll be up in the middle of the night just clutching my stomach. Except...nothing has been found. :/

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                              • #30
                                Quoth Aethian View Post
                                I'm slowly losing the ability to enjoy most foods. I'll be up in the middle of the night just clutching my stomach. Except...nothing has been found. :/
                                I suggest you give the FODMAPS diet a go for a few weeks. It's quite challenging, but I've found it has made life a lot more pleasant for me.
                                "Bring me knitting!" (The Doctor - not the one you were expecting)

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