It's an allergy, not a choice

[Neeps]

Some people just don't realize that "it makes me sick" really does mean "it makes me sick" and does not mean "I'm a fussy eater but I'll probably like it if you force me to have some".

I can't eat anything with dill weed in it, or I get terrible stomach cramps and usually spend the afternoon throwing up.

My ex-boyfriend, having been told this, went ahead and added a bunch to a dish he cooked for dinner - it was really heavily seasoned with other stuff, so I didn't notice til I actually started to get sick. When I confronted him about it, he admitted he'd put it in.

His excuse? "Oh, I figured you'd learn to like it if I snuck it in and didn't tell you what it was."
You can probably see why he's an ex-boyfriend.

I'm wondering if he's now gotten a job serving sodas at restaurants!

[Cia]

^^That's why I don't eat or drink anything with aspartame in it. The stomach cramps and the sleeping on the bathroom floor next to the porcelain god just isn't worth it.

[Ironclad Alibi]

I just bought a SodaStream home soda maker. It makes great soda water. They have over 60 flavors that do not use HFCS. Their diet flavors use Splenda, not aspartame. I have only tried the diet root beer flavor, and it is very tasty.

[wolfie]

I just bought a SodaStream home soda maker. It makes great soda water. They have over 60 flavors that do not use HFCS. Their diet flavors use Splenda, not aspartame. I have only tried the diet root beer flavor, and it is very tasty.

You might want to check out 3rd party gizmos that adapt standard (i.e. paintball cylinders) CO2 fittings to work with the SodaStream. Their proprietary cylinders are FAR more expensive than standard ones on a per-ounce basis.

[SongsOfDragons]

Sodastream, nom!! I loves my little farty machine. ^^ different countries sell different flavours, which is slightly annoying, but I managed to haul some non-UK flavours home from Holland last month.

[Flying Grype]

And of course you can add whatever flavour you want to the soda water, right? You don't have to buy their flavours. We had a Sodamistic when I was a kid. It did basically the same thing, charged up bottles of water with carbon dioxide so that you could make your own pop.

[SongsOfDragons]

There are looooaaads of recipes out and around. I'm not brave enough to try them yet ^^;;

I've taken to keeping a bottle of just-made fizzy water in the fridge and mixing it with my usual amount of red stuff/Ribena/cordial/etc.

[Flying Grype]

See, I'd be adding lime cordial and... I dunno, raspberry vodka, at certain times of day... to the fizzy water.

[Andara Bledin]

I'd love to try the sodastream thing, but every last one of their soda packets has stuff in it that I won't put in me. Such a shame.

^-.-^

[Flying Grype]

OH. This is relevant, actually. At work we are pretty careful about allergies. We have no peanuts in the store and no peanut ingredients. We don't use tree nuts in stuff we cook ourselves. No promises about whether any of our ingredients came from non-peanut-using factories or whether any premade things we use (e.g. muffin batter) have tree nuts.

We also have gluten-free lunch specials (things with rice or rice noodles, plus no soy sauce or flour or anything) three days out of the week. The rest of the week, gluten-free options are basically the veggies that don't have soy sauce in their recipes. Cue this conversation:

Customer: Hi, which are your gluten free lunches today?
Me: This rice noodle curry is gluten free, and so are the cold spring rolls.
Customer: How about these noodles over here?
Me: Sorry, those are soba noodles, a.k.a. buckwheat.
Customer: What are the other noodles?
Me: Egg noodles.
Customer: Aah, so no flour then?
Me: o.O

Egg noodles have... flour. And some eggs, but... there's flour. How would that even work?

Another customer assumed that the buckwheat noodles, since they were brown/grey and clearly whole grain, must not have gluten in them.

I think I may have encountered the fabled gluten-free-fad-diet followers, who don't actually know what the hell they're putting into their mouths at the best of times but are going to go on picky diets anyways.

For the record, we do have customers who genuinely have gluten intolerances and they appreciate our rice noodles and they know what they can and can't eat.

[Cazzi]

Another customer assumed that the buckwheat noodles, since they were brown/grey and clearly whole grain, must not have gluten in them.

I've fallen into that trap in the past. Buckwheat is gluten free so soba noodles made from just buckwheat flour are fine to eat. Unfortunately, quite a few are made with added wheat flour too as I found out when I ordered some green tea soba online that didn't mention any allergens in the write up.

Oh well, my mother enjoyed them!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I'd love to try the sodastream thing, but every last one of their soda packets has stuff in it that I won't put in me. Such a shame.

^-.-^

Mrs. IA wanted the SodaStream for making plain soda water, which is what we mostly use it for.
I have been trying the sample flavors, but doubt I will buy many of them.

[Flying Grype]

Buckwheat is gluten free so soba noodles made from just buckwheat flour are fine to eat.

Huh. That's my error, then. I thought buckwheat was, you know, wheat. Apparently it's not.

That said, I think our buckwheat noodles are not pure buckwheat. I'll double check.

[Mer-Mer]

I'm allergic to eggs, and I have some of the same problems. At soccer camp, for breakfast I got two sausages, or three strips of bacon. Not both, though, because that was against the rules. And some tatertots. But that's not enough for a teenager playing soccer all day, only taking breaks to swim and eat lunch/dinner. But I couldn't eat the omlets, or the pancakes.

[ArcticChicken]

I thought buckwheat was, you know, wheat. Apparently it's not.

Buckwheat is the only exception. Everything else with wheat in the name has gluten.

Oats can be hazardous to a gluten allergy, too. While they either have no gluten or a gluten that doesn't effect many allergy sufferers (I've heard different things from different sources), they are often processed on machines that also process wheat, so a lot of oatmeal can't be eaten by folks with a wheat allergy.