If a food item makes you gag when you try to eat it, is it fair to say you're allergic to it?

Cafe Society
61

No, it is not fair to say you are allergic to food items that make you gag. It is, however, perfectly reasonable to say “My goodness, are there onions in this? I’m afraid that onions just really do not agree with me.” If your host is a reasonably polite person, they will simply indicate whether or not you need be concerned.

If pressed, you don’t have to say anything more than that whatever food it is doesn’t agree with you. Everyone has food items that just don’t cooperate with their digestive system, so everyone understands it. The few times I’ve run across someone who wanted to foist their dish containing an item that doesn’t agree with me, I’ve found that firmly repeating “Onions (or whatever) just don’t agree with me, I’m afraid” and making a vague gesture to my abdomen did the trick.

The difference between “doesn’t agree with me” and “allergic” is basically that if I’m preparing food for someone allergic to a food item, I will make triple-damn sure none of the allergen interacts in any way with the food items I plan to serve the allergic person. If it’s a case of “doesn’t agree with me”, then I will still give a fair warning, and if I know about it in advance I will strive to avoid the food item, but I won’t feel obligated to have the same level of vigilance and separation.

For example, when baking Christmas cookies that I give out as courtesy gifts to a number of professional colleagues and the like, the batch I bake for the guy in my office whose children have nut allergies gets prepared FIRST (before the others) when all my baking apparatus is absolutely pristine and has not been used at all since the last full dishwasher scrubbing wash. It then gets boxed up and moved out of the kitchen prep area before I start on the other cookies - because I want to be DAMN sure that no nuts get in there accidentally. Then I bake the rest of them. When I’m doing a major cooking prep, I can’t guarantee that the measuring cup I use for nuts for one batch won’t get re-used for flour or sugar for another (both being dry ingredients and me only possessing two measuring cups - I use one for wet and one for dry and rinse the wet one between - but only rinse, not scrub clean). The only way to be sure is to do the ones that have to be allergen-free separately and first. If my co-worker’s kids just didn’t like nuts (or nuts didn’t agree with them in a totally non-fatal manner), I would just warn my co-worker as I handed over the cookie tin that some cookies had nuts in them (and specify which cookies of course - I’m not an asshole).

I won’t be offended if, for example, someone refrains from eating the green bean casserole because green beans don’t agree with them, nor will I try to force a food item on someone who doesn’t care for it (because, good manners, yo), but when there’s a potential for death, I’m going to exercise considerably more care than if there’s just a potential for nausea. I will, however, be pissy if someone falsely claims an allergy when they just don’t like a certain food (or it makes them gag or hurl or whatever). Avoiding an allergy is an entirely different kettle of fish than avoiding a “doesn’t care for/doesn’t agree with me” situation.

62

I can’t eat melted cheese…I gag if I see it, and sometimes just smelling it is enough to set me off. I do like solid cheese though; I have no problem with some crumbled feta in a salad, and I have a lovely wedge of balsamic-soaked Bellavitano Sartori in my fridge now. If anyone asks about or laughs at my refusal to eat melted cheese, I tell them why: as a child, I got choked on a wad of cheese from a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza, and vomited very forcefully at the table. Of course, an adult member of human society :rolleyes: wouldn’t go into such detail, but I’ve never had anyone question my cheese choices after that description.

I’ve never claimed it as a food allergy though…having seen my mother almost stop breathing after eating a wintergreen candy, I’m way too familiar with what an actual allergy is.

63

When I struggled with severe IBS I had a list of things I had to be careful to avoid. Not an allergy, but it was fair to say it was an intolerance, and it could make me quite ill. Time after time people would refer to it as “Eliahna doesn’t like <tomatoes/onions/chilli/whatever>”. I frequently protested in vain that I love tomatoes, they just don’t love me.

There is just absolutely no respect for an intolerance even though it causes quite severe pain and gastric distress. It was far easier to say “allergy”, which some people will respect, than say “intolerance” and be dismissed as fussy. It seems people only care if you could die from it, but don’t mind at all if you have a reaction that takes place much later behind a closed bathroom door.

I understand that people who are genuinely allergic are concerned that people who aren’t are using that word inappropriately and diluting its respect in the wider community, but I’ll say it again: anyone who thinks the risk of killing you is worth it to expose you as a fussy eater who tells fibs isn’t going to respect your allergy even if no one else in the history of the world has ever lied about having an allergy. It’s not that they don’t believe it because they’ve been lied to before. It’s that they don’t want to believe it. You’d have to die at their dining table before they’d even start to rethink their scepticism of allergies, and even then half of them would be trying to convince themselves that it was coincidence and you choked because you didn’t chew properly.

There’s one enemy here, and it’s not the fussy eater who lies to get out of eating something they don’t like. It’s the food Nazis who can’t take a polite “No” and have to keep pushing unwanted food, who plant allergens to catch out fake allergies and who generally make eating a fraught and difficult experience for those around them. Screw those guys.

64

Do you have to go into anaphylaxis now for an allergy to count? If I take penicillin, I get an itchy, scaly red rash around my hairline, including my pubic hairline, under my arms, and on my torso, but I don’t go into anaphylaxis. If I’m around pollen, I get swollen, itchy eyes, and I start to sneeze, then my nose gets stuffy. Eventually I start coughing. I suppose if I stuck my head in a bucket of pollen, I might start to choke, but Claritin and a decongestant usually clear me up pretty well in the springtime. Once I had to spend an extended amount of time in a florist’s, with a client, and I felt like I was really sick, but still, no anaphylaxis. If I get stung by a bee, I get a red spot, that turns green-- it looks like a bruise under a sunburn. It’s really sore for a day, then itches for several days, and takes about a week for the “bruise” to clear up, unless I take Benadryl, then it clears up in about 36 hours. My doctor says that’s an allergy. But no anaphylaxis, albeit, my doctor did say I should always take Benadryl ASAP, because it could get worse each time.

My only food allergy is peaches, and that’s just to the fuzz. If I eat a peach with the fuzz, I get a sore rash around my mouth. If I peel it under running water, I can eat it, and I don’t get a rash on my hands. No anaphylaxis.

Are there some people who would say I don’t really have allergies?

65

My neighbor’s kid has a similar allergy to orange oil. He can eat oranges, but if he peels them, his hands break out in a terrible rash. I thought it was odd when he was 12 and he asked his mom to peel his orange. I didn’t say anything, but it came up later in the year when I had my epipen out (I have a bee allergy) and I made the connection.

66

Back when my kids were in pre-school, we had one child who was allergic to nuts and one who was allergic to dairy. Said so right on their admission forms. Because we take allergies seriously in school, the board banned those foods. That meant the parent providing the snack for the day had to bring in a labeled pre-packaged food or the recipe for whatever treat he/she was providing so that we could make sure nothing slipped through. The kids ate a lot of gross pre-packaged Rice Krispies treats that year.

At the year end picnic, we were talking to both mothers, about how relieved we were that we went an entire year without an incident. That’s when the mother of the lactose intolerant child flippantly said, “Ben’s not allergic to dairy in the sense that he’d need an ambulance. He just gags at the sight of milk.”

She got educated that day on the difference between an allergy and an aversion.

:mad:

67

We had a kid at my son’s school with a bad wheat allergy he had Benadryl and an epi-pen. The epi-pen was just in case-- he’d never used one before. He couldn’t play wityh play-doh the first year he was there without breaking out in hives. He got a little better, and could touch play-doh, but he couldn’t go in the kitchen if we’d been baking, because if he breathed in flour, his eyes would get red and watery, and he’d get congested and start coughing, like he had a cold-- Benadryl fixed it, though. If he ate wheat, he got hives, plus the runny nose and itchy eyes.

We went a whole year with no problems, and then his father told me that his pediatrician had suggested giving him a daily dose of children’s Claritin, but the parents decided they didn’t want to “put chemicals in his body” every day because you never know what the long term effects of that could be, and it would mean he could eat wheat like anyone else. No, but it would mean that I didn’t have to throw food out and start again if I accidentally cut fruit with a knife I’d used to cut bread, and the kid didn’t have to sit outside the kitchen by himself when the class went in for a project. It would mean if he accidentally got a single bite of someone else’s food, or drank from someone else’s cup, he wouldn’t break out, and then need the emergency Benadryl that would make him sleep for a couple of hours. Mostly it would mean a lot less worry for everyone, including the kid himself.

68

No, those are true allergic reactions. Anaphylactic hypersensitivity is the most common type of allergic reaction, but it can be systemic or localized, with systemic being the more severe. In a systemic reaction, the response is near-immediate and results in breathing difficulties, a drop in blood pressure, and fluid leakage from capillaries into the surround tissues. This is a life-threatening condition and immediate treatment is required. In localized anaphylaxis, the symptoms, while unpleasant, are much less severe and are localized to different regions dependent upon how exposure to the antigen occurred. The most common localized anaphylactis reaction is hayfever, which occurs when the antigen enters the body through the upper respiratory system (ie you with pollen). If the allergic response occurs in the lower respiratory system, bronchial asthma occurs. What someone develops hives after ingesting an allergen, as you experience with peach skin and penicillin, is a localized anaphylactic reaction. While localized anaphylaxis is far less severe than systemic anaphylaxis, it is important to note that even though reactions in the past have only resulted in localized responses, there is no guarantee subsequent reactions won’t result in a systemic response.

This is what I do. I take an immunosuppressant daily, as well as H1, H3, and H4 agonists, with the goal to turn off my immune system as much as possible. This regimen doesn’t completely eliminate all my allergy symptoms, as I get hives on a daily basis, but at least it is keeping everything localized rather than systemic.

69

As someone in the medical field, the difference between a “True” allergy and an intolerance is a major one. If someone has a true allergy, then we have to be careful with the medication in question, along with everything that is related to it that can cause cross reactions. If it is just an intolerance, then we can give the drug if the benefits outweigh the negatives, or if we can medicate the negatives away. For example, you have a bacteria that is most susceptible to penicillin, if you only have an intolerance, nausea for example, we can give you a script for zofran, and treat the intolerance. If you have a true allergy, if it is a minor allergy like rash or hives, we could try a related drug, Amoxicillian or Cephalexin for example telling you to have benadryl on hand just in case… If you had an anaphylaxis reaction, we would go to a totally different type of drug even if it is less effective.

I have a STRONG reaction to Tequila. I can NOT taste the stuff. I got sick off it once when I was much younger, now if I taste it I gag. Doesn’t matter if it is my first drink, or my 20th, I take a shot, I will puke… At least when we talk about alcohol I can give that exact description and no one questions me. And it is totally psychosomatic, I can drink something with tequila as long as I can’t actually taste it.

Be careful with that. I had a class mate in pharmacy school who always said the same thing “I’m allergic to alcohol”, our group always made fun of him for it, and we always tried getting him to drink with us. Since you can’t actually be allergic to alcohol (it’s not a protein), we knew he was “mistaken”. He was underage when we started school, and his father was a cop, so figured he had a bad reaction in undergrad… We never pressed too hard (always good to have a DD!), but he finally started drinking in the last year of school after taking some alprazolam earlier that day.

70

Hell, I’m 47 - it hasn’t been an issue for over 25 years.

71

Oh, wow - this is an actual thing, with a name and all? I haven’t been able to stomach onions in fifteen years, ever since I got pyrotechnically sick right after eating a sandwich that had onions in it. These days I can handle onion powder in food, or very crispy onion strings, but actual onions still make me gag. I thought it was just me.

72

Hey, Acsenray, I’m neither allergic nor sensitive to plums, but they give me explosive diarrhea both in natural form and in jam. Want me to come over to your house and eat some?

Sometimes you don’t need a doctor to tell you a certain food is Bad For You.

73

Grow up, Nava. Duh. :wink:

74

Exactly. You need to have adult diarrhea, not that childish explosive diarrhea. :wink:

75

I have this exact problem with certain types of booze. :slight_smile:
When I was 17 or so a few of us took turns drinking a whole bottle of Crown Royal straight, and then chasing it with hot 7-up. (This was summer in Oklahoma, in the country. We were too ‘manly’ to mix it) I have never been so sick in my life. I was in my 40s before I could even stand the smell of it.

76

Horse Radish. If it is near my food, I start coughing. Don’t know why, but it’s enough to convince me that it isn’t going in my mouth.

77

Although I once did have the satisfaction of ruining the decor in one of said asshole’s homes. Wow, who’d have thunk it - feed an allergic an allergen and watch the bodily fluids and waste products fly! That is not coming out of the pink carpeting (and who the hell puts pink carpet in a bathroom, anyway?)

78

I know people who say that really strong odors can trigger their gag reflex. Maybe that’s what’s happening. I eat horseradish on Passover, because it’s a commandment. Otherwise, I don’t go near it. You are missing nothing.

79

Every year we get people in the hospital who thought that they just 'didn’t like" something. One memorable case was they guy who didn’t know the name of the fruit he had eaten – it was green and had brown fur on it. A kiwi fruit. Since childhood, he’d had so little interest in fruit that he couldn’t even name them.

So perhaps it’s exposure bias, but if someone tells me they ‘don’t like’ some food ingredient, I tend to assume that they are either alergic or have a food sensitiivity. And that includes alcohol too – there is a broad grey fuzzy patch around sensitivity, dislike and alcoholism.

But I don’t equate ‘allergic’ with ‘hospitilization’ just because the people I see are brought in by ambulance. These are people who didn’t know they had an allergy, because they’d never had that reaction before.

So (1) Say whatever works for you. I’d be less likely to roll my eyes if you said “can’t eat peas because I have a pea sensitivity”, but it that’s not working for you, whatever.

And (2) Don’t be harsh on people who say they are ealergic without having full-blown Anaphylaxis. Allergies wax and wane, and nobody likes a stuffy nose anyway.

80

I usually refuse alcohol, because it gives me a bad headache, and I don’t mean a hangover. About a 1/2 hour after drinking just a couple ounces of wine, I will get a terrific migraine.

Sometimes I go to someone’s house, and if it’s a holiday, they may have bought something really special, so I’ll let them pour me a tablespoon for a toast, because it’s not that I don’t like wine, or mixed drinks for that matter, I just really hate migraines. My stepfather, in particular is a wine collector, and sometimes he opens expensive, imported wines on the holidays, and I do want to taste them, but I know my limits.

On the Jewish holidays, I just take the little shot glass they give you that you are supposed to keep filling up and downing at points in the seder, or when Haman is mentioned, and I take tiny sips instead. I drink grape juice for kiddush if it’s a choice. If it’s not, I just count on the glasses being small. There’s not usually a lot of alcohol in Manischewitz.

Fortunately, alcohol is something people usually take your word for if you say you’ve reached your limit.