myrmepropagandistFeb 25

I hate how my allergies make me seem like a republican.

Can't eat sunflowers so people think I hate "seed oils" (the other ones are fine, it's just the sunflowers they are deadly)

Can't eat most vegan meats because these people always want to put sunflowers 'n nuts and chickpeas in them.

Generally suspicious of vegan food because of the whole nut issue, even though I really like it when there are no nuts.

Mary WhitneyFeb 25
Show threadmyrmepropagandist

What makes this worse is restaurants who can't tell you their ingredients lists. I just give up and get the most basic foods.

Then there are the things that no one believes: like the "shelled peanut problem"

I can eat peanuts, love them! but not if they have been shelled in a "facility" because whatever they do it gets some kind of other nut dust on them and down i go! Toss me the epipen it's gonna be a long night.

Allergies are so odd. Obscure but serious ones are annoying.

Feb 25 at 1:31amWeb
Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25
@futurebird SERIOUSLY. The human immune systems are _so weird_.
Show threadmyrmepropagandistFeb 25

@aredridel

I really want to know if I was born this way or if it is caused by what foods I ate when I was young?

My husband can't tolerate apple peels. Just the peels, the inside is fine. I wonder what the strangest food allergy must be?

Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25

@futurebird So just the peels: probably oral allergy syndrome; there's a lot of pollen proteins on the surface.

In general pollen exposure at formative moments seems to have a huge impact.

It's regional too: peanut allergies are way more common in the US than in Europe. Sesame allergies are vanishingly rare the US, but common in MENA.

And then I think a hidden component is a general sensitivity in the form of subclinical MCAS, and new immune learning caused by stressors and viral illnesses. Suddenly new allergies pop up, either real ones (due to inappropriately large IgE production in response to something) or MCAS-like ones (where normal-high amounts of IgE inappropriately trigger mast cells.)

Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25
@futurebird I've got friends with corn allergies and that one fuckin' sucks. It's in everything in the US. And nobody knows how to read labels for it. And one had to move out of Arizona because the pollen was so bad.
Show threadCatFeb 25
@aredridel @futurebird corn is one of my food sensitivities and it's not one of the big 8/12 so I have to read the fine print. Weirdly I don't get noticeable symptoms with every kind of corn ingredient but corn syrup is a no go. Solved the mystery of the terrible gastric distress I got after drinking soda at 8 years old ... but no problem slamming diet coke in college
Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25
@catmisgivings Yup! Seems that starch and syrup are the two biggies, but lots of other corn derivatives are less likely to do it.
Show threadaburka 🫣Feb 25
@aredridel @futurebird I thought the peanut allergy thing was largely caused by a misguided pediatrician who said let's keep infants away from peanuts so they don't develop allergies, and it became a recommendation but it turned out to be totally wrong and the opposite is true
Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25
@aburka @futurebird Made worse, but the actual reality is complex and we're still learning all the situations that can lead to sensitization, and how to desensitize. We're getting there but it's definitely not a simple single factor thing.
Show threadΨ*ΨFeb 25
@futurebird @aredridel birch pollen, maybe? Are cooked apples safe?
Show threadgbsillsFeb 25
@futurebird My oldest kid has the apple peal problem. They made her mouth itch.
Show threadWharrrrrrgarblFeb 25
@futurebird @aredridel it's both. Immune development is a contingent process that involves genes you're born with, random modification of those genes to generate cells which produce a variety of immunoglobulins, and then selection of those cells based on a balance of self-reactivity and environmental reactivity to determine what exactly makes the adaptive immune system you face the world with. Lots of places it can go wrong, or at least inconvenient.
Show threadPiers CawleyFeb 25
@futurebird A friend is allergic to alliums *and* anything from the nightshade family. So no onions, potatoes, tomatoes and a bunch of other less obvious stuff. And she keeps kosher. Finding somewhere to eat out is a challenge for her.
Show threadLeelooFeb 25

@futurebird @aredridel
Has he ever tried an Apple straight from a tree in the garden?

Just wondering if it's actually the peel or some of the bug killers or preserving agents farm grown and store bought apples are covered in.

A former colleague left a home grown and an imported apple next to each other on the window sil. It only took a day or two for the home grown apple to shrivel in and start rotting, where as a few weeks later the imported one still looked fresh. Though when he cut it in half, the inside felt like cardboard. His conclusion, the imported one was so covered in chemicals that even bacteria refuse to eat it.

Show threadMx. Aria StewartFeb 25
@leeloo That's not how decomposition works, that's not how pesticides work, that's not how any of this works.
Show threadJeremy ListFeb 25
@futurebird I avoid shrimps and prawns: not allergic to them as such but I am allergic to whatever gets fed to them in Thai shrimp farms.
Show threadaburka 🫣Feb 25

@futurebird there are restaurants that won't tell you the ingredients?! that seems like it should be a legal requirement

the best was when I went to Germany and if you ask for the "allergy menu" the most hole-in-the-wall place in the middle of nowhere will have a big spreadsheet with all the menu items and the government mandated list of allergens

Show threadMx. Eddie RFeb 25
@futurebird
Oh good grief, the shelled peanut thing sounds so annoying! Like, in and of itself, but also you have to try to explain and convince people over and over.
Show threadMxBikil is Spoopy🎃 and Gay!❄️Feb 25
@futurebird I used to think I was allergic to peanuts and was surprised when I didn't test for it. It turns out many peanuts are processed on equipment shared with cashews and that's what I'm allergic to!
Edit to fix the autocucumber of Manny to the intended many
Show threadmyrmepropagandistFeb 25

@Bikil

YUP.

If you get peanuts in the shell you will be safe and can enjoy them.

But shelling peanuts is a bit tedious.

Show threadAndrew DrakeFeb 25

@futurebird I have a fun one! Something that likes to grow on (or is produced by something that grows on) temperature-abused cooked meat dishes. Eat a dish and it's fine, eat the leftovers that weren't fridged until a couple hours later than ideal, and there's a small chance I get anaphylaxis from it. Took years to figure out the pattern because there was no shared ingredient among the triggers!

I started being a real hardass about either keeping the food hot/refrigerating the leftovers promptly, and not eating meat leftovers unless I was confident that those had occurred (even at some risk of offending someone that I didn't trust their food handling). Still rarely got it from restaurants. Started vetting restaurants by checking to see if they had a pattern of food holding temperature violations on their health inspection reports and it's been a good number of years since my last reaction. Still carry epi-pens, of course.

Would love to know the actual trigger, but at least I figured out how to avoid it!

Show threadAndrew DrakeFeb 25
@futurebird (no other allergies, food or otherwise)
Show threadllewellyFeb 25
@futurebird evolution: It can't work miracles, it just does the best that it can.
Show threadKate ShawFeb 25
@futurebird I know someone who's incredibly allergic to carrots. She can't eat out because no one believes it's a real allergy, and carrots are in so many foods.