I am allergic to garlic. If I eat anything with even a trace amount of garlic in it, within a day or two, I get what basically amounts to a large pimple somewhere on my face. It lingers for a week or so and then fades relatively quickly, but is still incredibly annoying. Luckily, they don’t seem to leave scars, just a temporary red mark.
I don’t have acne, and I am 100% sure that garlic is what’s causing this. My mom has the same problem. Just one pimplish-thing, never more.
This means that, unless I want to go around looking like a high school kid just entering puberty, I have to basically avoid all food that isn’t made completely from scratch. Just about everything you buy in the store has garlic in it. They put garlic in ketchup. They put it on the sides of roast beef. They put it in tomato sauce. They put it in that fake wasabi stuff you get with cheap sushi. It is freaking everywhere. Just about the only stuff that’s safe are sweets and desserts - no garlic-tainted Swedish Fish, yet.
Even reading labels isn’t always enough, because apparently garlic is not required to be listed explicitly. So I have to avoid anything with “spices” in it as well. Onion powder is out as well - it must be made on the same machines as garlic powder.
This makes eating at restaurants pretty much impossible also, since most restaurants seem to be buy their stuff prepurchased (which means it is basically guaranteed to have garlic), or make it in big batches beforehand (usually throwing garlic in for good measure.) Everyone uses it, even ethnic restaurants from places where garlic isn’t even freaking native! Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Indian, German, French, Afghani, Mexican, whatever. And half the time I do go out, even to expensive places that make everything from scratch, I end up having a reaction anyway, either because they don’t know how to read, or (I assume) because of some kind of cross contamination with other food. Frustrating.
Anyway - I’ve always wondered if there is something I can do to get rid of or at least minimize this problem. I know that you can’t really do anything about most allergies, otherwise there wouldn’t be such a thing as ‘peanut-free’ zones, but this has alwas struck me as a somewhat atypical allergy, perhaps not truly an allergy at all.
So, any ideas as to how I can get rid of this? I went to see an allergist a few years ago, but he didn’t really believe my story - told me I had acne, and to see a dermatologist.