That aversion might pass, Anne. I had a friend who got herself a huge snickers blizzard. She ate the whole thing and then started getting sick. She got sicker and sicker (it was the flu) and vomited copiously onto her dorm room carpet.
She couldn’t eat ice cream with stuff in it for years and still can’t eat ice cream with snickers in it, but she can now eat snickers and ice cream.
So, there is hope.
The list of foods I do not eat at home because my wife hates the taste/smell:
Coffee
Tea
Beer
Wine
Squid/Octopus/Prawns
Tomato (fresh only, sauces and cooked tomato are fine).
Really hot chillies
Slightly pink inside steaks
Vegemite
Sour Cream
Rye Bread
Avocado
The list of foods she does not eat because I hate the taste/smell:
Crabmeat.
End of Lists. We have such a balanced relationship 
Butter beans. The canned ones. I got on the hugest kick on those for a while. Ate them at least once a day. Then my mom bought some frozen ones and tried cooking them. I got scarred from ever eating butter beans again.
(Still catching up)
For all those who get swelling somewhere on/around their heads from foods: Either benadryl or chlortrimeton (chlorpheniramine maleate) will usually relieve the symptoms. For many people, they will even allow modest indulgence in the Forbidden Fruits. Dunno about swellings elsewhere, but it might work. Ask Your Doctor.
Things I can’t eat/drink:
egg yolks (discovered before I was old enough to remember): When I was in 2nd grade, my teacher insisted I eat a boiled egg along with the rest of the class (at Eastertime, maybe?). Shortly afterward, I barfed on her shoes when I went to ask her to let me go to the restroom. I’ll bet she never made another kid eat an egg! 
I can eat most things with eggs in them, and I certainly can eat meringue (egg whites), but no French toast (unless made with lots of milk) or egg custard (under any circumstances; it tasted wonderful going down, not so great coming back up). Gotta ask that my fried rice be made without eggs when I get the urge. Effects: see above.
legumes, except for very young peas (seeds not mature, usually includes Chinese peapods, yay!) or beans (seeds barely begun to form, like in French-style green beans); peculiarly, there are periods of my life when I can eat peanuts. Effects: make my tummy very unhappy.
raw tomatoes, or cooked, with skin and/or seeds, or ketchup; thoroughly cooked tomato sauce, and things made therewith, are just fine. Effects: give me the lip swelling, only it’s mostly the upper. Looks weird.
fresh strawberries, same as tomatoes, just not as bad.
from 18 or so until sometime not long before my 20th birthday, I drank coffee … lots and lots of coffee. Then, suddenly, even a sip of it gave me horrendous heartburn. Love the smell, love the taste, but can’t take the fire in my chest. Good thing I also love tea, and have since childhood. 
probably not an allergy, but - too much animal fat (i.e., lard, etc., excluding butter), unless a very low percentage, and thoroughly mixed (ground) with lean meat makes me really ill. When eating a slice of meat, I hafta trim off all the fat, even narrow “veins” of it. Makes me really ill. I’ve often speculated that I got a defective model gall bladder. :dubious:
Due to allergies, I can’t eat
Tomatoes (which I never liked anyway - if every time you eat something you get Projectile Vomit From Hell you quickly learn distate for it)
Corn (But I like corn!)
Barley (But I like barley! Used to cook it as a side dish, like rice, and put in soups and stews and bread. And beer - no more beer and I love beer! I’ve had my last Guinness Stout 
because breathing take priority)
Lentils (But I like lentils and fallafil and lentil stew…)
Peas (that’s OK - never liked 'em anyway)
Oranges (meh - I could take 'em or leave 'em)
Peanuts (this makes eating in Thai restaurants a death-defying feat. And I do miss my Reese’s peanut butter cups )
For a while I was having the problem of whenever I ate Thai food I would experience near-instantenous liquification of all intestinal contents, followed by the usual consequences. Through examination of commonalities of ingredients, I narrowed the culprit down to either fish sauce or squid. I recently made a Vietnamese stew with lots of fish sauce, and had no problems, so I guess it’s the squid, which is good, because there’s plenty of Vietnamese and Thai food without squid, but not much of it without fish sauce.
For years I couldn’t eat chili or hot dogs, after an experience that combined a jumbo chili dog and severe gastroenteritis. Luckily, I’m over that one now.
In no way am I suggesting you mess around with anaphylactic shock, so obviously talk to your doctor. But I will tell you my story. I have gone through the whole rigamarole with the allergist for food and non-food allergies.
I get the swollen lips thing from MSG (which is in a lot more stuff than Chinese food). In general, whenever something savory tastes way too good to be true, that’s MSG, in my experience. True food allergy to MSG is rare but adverse reactions are widely reported. MSG works by stimulating the taste buds. For me, stimulating is another word for irritating. So this could be a benign reaction, or there’s a small possibility it’s a true allergy to something else. An allergist will probably tell you a true food allergy to MSG is highly unlikely, though. I avoid MSG, because in addition to the swelling it often leads to canker sores, but I don’t worry about it killing me. If you get this reaction from flavored potato chips, that would be one way to informally see if it’s MSG bothering you.
What I don’t eat is shellfish, though. Even though the test came out absolutely no shellfish allergy, serious projectile vomiting has resulted on one too many occasions. This may be a sensitivity to a preservative, or maybe an extreme prevalence of inadequate refrigeration. I’m just not going there again with the shellfish.
When my husband was about 10, he and a friend stole some watermelons from a neighbor’s garden. They ate a lot of watermelon. The friend got sick, so hubby got sick.
Now 30 years later, nurse can’t bring watermelon inside the house.
I miss watermelon, but I’d miss the love of my life more 
I can’t have anything with caffeine in it. My nose goes numb. Don’t know why. If I have say, 2 cans of coke worth, my cheeks start to go numb too. Irritating! no one has been able to give me an explaination, either.
I used to like bread and butter pickles, quite a lot. I would eat maybe 1 or 2 on their own, and of course put them into sandwiches.
As a treat, my mum sent me a jar whilst I was in grad school. Yummy! A whole jar just for me. So I ate about a dozen slices whilst preparing for a 3 hour seminar, and then when off for class…where I spent the next 3 hours desperately fighting the urge to vomit. Crikey was I queasy. Haven’t tried them since.
On the positive side, I know potential for ‘lost foods’ can be averted. When I was wee, my big brother was baby minding me one night, and he made us pizza. A few hours later, after I went to bed, I woke up and knew I had to vomit, so I calmly went along to the loo and unloaded the pizza. My brother came running (turned out it was the flu), and I was more upset that I wouldn’t be able to eat pizza again, because of the association of pizza ‘n’ puking.
My big brother, who was of course my hero, dismissed this as nonsense, and said of course I would be able to eat pizza again. And of course he was right, because, well, he was my big brother.
Come to think of it, I haven’t thrown up since that night, too. Even reverse peristalsis has respect for my big brother…hmmm…
Coffee without food is starting to make my stomach go wonky. I could cry. I need that caffeine and really can’t eat that often.
Not sure if this helps; however, my doctor told me, after a bout of projectile vomiting and fever-induced seizures caused by getting food poisoning from shellfish that, since they’re “bottom feeders,” shellfish tend to eat all the sludge and crap from the bottom of the ocean/lake or wherever it is they come from. He said that because shellfish absorb all that crap, and shrimp especially sometimes have that vein right down the middle that many restaurants fail to remove, lots of people get sick on shellfish, though they might not be allergic to them. I wish I had done more research on that comment, but it made sense to me at the time, and more or less still does, especially when you consider that a lot of shellfish are caught right off the coast or near it, where I think there tends to be higher pollution density.
tacos de tripitas bien doradas. the united states banned them for fear of mad cow disease. man I miss them.
Like cher3, pineapple will give me canker sores. I don’t think it’s the acid however. I’ve had the new engineered low acid pineapple, and it’s the same problem. I can eat all sorts of citrus fruits and enjoy extra strong lemonade.
The pina allergy started in my early 20s and I denied it for years because:
By the time I was in my late 20s my sensitivity was such that the first bite would instantly make my tongue swell, so I couldn’t deny it anymore. I mourned the loss desperately. Once in a while I’d give myself just a nibble just in case the allergy has gone away or is just in my head. It hasn’t and isn’t.
Speaking of the benadryl trick, I tried it once. Well I tried claritin. It was on a trip to SE Asia; we were served a plate of the juiciest, cheeriest yellow pineapple I’d seen in a long time. Canker sores be damned, I had one piece. It was divine. Then I told myself, maybe if I practically swallow the next bite whole, I’ll be ok. Choke risk be damned, I gulped a second piece. Then I felt the swelling. Some of you know it well. The top of your tongue feels raw as it gets pushed against your upper molars. I knew it was time to stop and I said to my friends, “I guess I’ll be swishing my mouth with benadryl & mylanta tomorrow” (a trick for relief that my doctor once gave me). Then one of my friends suggested taking Benadryl orally. Since I carry claritin with me to prevent hiking-induced hives (that’s another story), I popped one. Waste of a good claritin.
I don’t know if it’s because I didn’t take it before eating the pineapple, or if benadryl would work where claritin doesn’t. Maybe I should try benadryl next time. But I don’t really like using my gums as a ginea pig and the tongue swelling thing is a little scary.
And as if the pineapple allergy happening to me, someone who loves all food & especially fruits, isn’t bad enough, the other day, the tongue swelling thing happened for the first time after eating kiwi. Nooooooooo! Not kiwi!!!
Broomstick, I think falafel is usually made with chickpeas, if that makes any difference.
Benadryl and Claritin are NOT the same thing!
First of all, if I recall correctly (and I may not) Claritin works by blocking your histamine receptors - problem is, if the allergic reaction has already started the horse is out of the barn and it does no good to ask Mr. Claritin to bar the door at that point. Claritin should be taken before the reaction starts up.
Truthfully, Benadryl works better when taken before, too, but the drowsiness side effect kind of blows. However, Benadryl will work after a reaction starts. In fact, 50 mg of Benadryl is a standard treatment in the ER (along with other stuff) for severe allergic reactions. In the ER they can even give it intraveneously for really fast relief.
Lately I’ve been carrying those Benadryl tablets that dissolve in your mouth for “just in case” - a pharmacist told me they are absorbed faster (would be nice if a Doper with medical credentials could confirm/deny this, hint, hint) which would be a good thing in a serious situation. They’re labeled “children’s”, but that just means each tablet has a child size dose - so as an adult I figure take four to make 50 mg. As always consult your doctor beforehand. I am not a doctor, I am not telling you what to do, I am just telling you what I do, which may or may not be a good idea for you.
It would make a difference if I could trust the kitchen, but the cook getting either careless or creative could make me seriously ill for days. To top it off, Middle Eastern restaurants, at least in this area, frequently have this problem called “a language barrier” which can make communicating difficult.
Which is why I end up doing a lot of ethnic cooking at home - it’s the safest way to enjoy these tidbits. Some purist usually comes along at some point and screams "no! NO! no! NO! - you’re not doing it right!!! but hey, that’s the other cool thing about doing my own cooking - I can make it the way I like it.
What s/he said! AFAIK, the only things that will work on the kind of reactions discussed here are either Benadryl and ChlorTriMeton. I think they’re considered to be of the same drug “generation”, even though the benadryl didn’t come out until a long time after. I can’t use benadryl. I don’t sleep, I don’t merely bounce off the wall; I bounce off the ceiling. And even ChlorTriMeton doesn’t put me to sleep. It interferes with my sleeping for the first few days when I start taking it in the spring, but then my body readapts, and I sleep normally.
But it is something to remember, if you (or someone around you) starts having a bad reaction. If you can get either of the above, stick it under the person’s tongue.
(I got Xanax #2 that way last Thursday after they were an hour late starting on me, and before having dye and a tube threaded through the vein that joins the two major leg veins. Neither the Xanax nor the rest was any fun. I complained about the nasty taste of the pill, and yelled (better than moving!) when the tube was being put it - that [COLOR=Red]hurts.)[/COLOR]