But now we are getting firmly into sensitivities that aren’t allergies.
I’ve been told many times that it’s impossible to be allergic to cranberries. But one Thanksgiving I took a bite of cranberry sauce and my throat started closing up. I won’t be repeating the ambulance ride to prove them right or wrong.
I do not doubt that happened but do you know if it was the cranberries you were allergic to or something else in the cranberry sauce? Cranberry sauce is pretty basic (usually just cranberries, water, sugar/brown sugar and orange juice). None you would likely have an allergy to but I have seen people do all sorts of variants (say add spices like nutmeg or cinnamon).
@Whack-a-Mole Now that you’ve returned to your thread: any reactions to the information which people have provided in answer to your original question???
As for your name, do you eat everything except pine nuts? Couldn’t resist.
It was the canned sort with orange in it. We went through the ingredients list and watched pretty closely for a while. Cranberries were the only thing we didn’t find in other foods that I regularly ate.
Cranberries have a strong, unique flavor. I’m sure there’s stuff in them that’s not common in other foods. Why on earth couldn’t you be allergic to them? No, it’s not a common allergy. But it doesn’t seem like a weird allergy at all.
I have a friend who (after extensive testing) learned that her gut is sensitive to chicken, including chicken eggs, and corn, including corn syrup. She’s not allergic, but this stuff can mess her up for days. It’s really hard to avoid corn syrup.
She can eat duck eggs, which cook very similarly to chicken eggs. And cane sugar. So if she can source the right ingredients, she can cook pretty much anything except “chicken”. But she spends a lot of time scanning ingredients lists.
Not really. It really was a question and never a debate for me. It has been quite comprehensively answered. Even sensitivities (of which I have a few…I am mostly allergy free except some light sneezing some times of the year with certain…something in the air).
Thanks to everyone.
I had a fellow worker who was allergic to lettuce and broccoli. His sinuses would start to release histamine in large quantities.
I assume someone allergic to broccoli would be allergic to related foods like kale or cauliflower?
Sounds logical, but can’t say for sure since he’s left our school district. He is also allergic to tomatoes so, when he got tacos, they had to leave half the stuff off of them. LOL
Right. And it does at some point become definitional?
To most people any adverse reaction is “allergy” (hence my wife’s mocking me). To more if it involves histamine it is “allergy” even if IgE or any immune system mechanism is not involved. But strictly they are not. So aqugenic urticaria is not actually allergic even though it is a mast cell histamine hypersensitivity response.
I sometimes wonder if I have (or had) an oral allergy to peaches and raspberries. As a kid, I found that both fruits, when fresh, had a sort of “harshness” to them-- I’m not sure how else to describe the sensation. Cooked versions didn’t have the same reaction.
I don’t notice it as much any more, but I’m not sure if it went away, or if I just got used to it.
They can be, but it’s not guaranteed. Human biology is a deeply weird thing sometimes. Or a lot of the time
Being allergic to broccoli but not to kale wouldn’t even be all that weird. Broccoli is flowers. Flowers often contain allergens, even if the rest of the plant doesn’t. That’s why a lot of common allergies have seasons, because the plant is only flowering some times of the year.
I cannot eat boiled eggs. I curl up in a ball and cry for hours due to the pain. Scrambled or fried eggs are a crapshoot and I try to avoid them, limiting myself to just a few times a year. An egg in brownie or cake batter, cookie dough? Totally fine. Talking with a few other people with this very weird situation, we think it’s how the proteins align and/or something about baking at least 15 minutes at 350 that stops whatever bothers us, or maybe even the smaller amounts one ingests per serving.
It’s possible it’s a “what the chickens ate” thing, how fresh they are, particular varieties. Maybe it’s yolks vs white. But I am not risking the pain to experiment. I’ll just keep to my limited eggs and hope it never develops into anaphylaxis.
It’s similar for me with bananas, which I’ve seen people say “No one is allergic to bananas!” True, I might not be allergic, but pain for hours still sucks. I did get organic bananas and made banana bread with them and was fine, but I don’t want to risk a bad reaction so I don’t eat them at all any more. Banana allergies go with a lot of latex allergies. I get terrible skin reactions from the wrong band-aids, vomit when I smoke pot. But other of the latex ones are completely fine. Bodies are indeed deeply weird.
Also, I had both of these… intolerances, sensitivities… my whole life but I didn’t have the words or the world experience to describe my situation. “Sometimes I have to go lie down after I eat a big breakfast/ice cream sundae”. But I didn’t have breathing problems or hives. Just a little tum tum ouchie sometimes and that got progressively worse as I aged.
I highly doubt that there’s any macroscopic whole organism part that truly nobody is allergic to. Any such thing must contain proteins and other complex organic molecules. Sure, there are some things for which allergies are very rare, but never bet on completely nonexistent.
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Nothing tastes as good as being able to breathe, so let’s just say I don’t view not having a particular food in my life as The Worst Thing Ever
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There ARE tomato-free variations on pizza, by which I mean available at a lot of stores these days, not requiring a special vendor or making it yourself, such as “white pizza”. Although Wikipedia repeatedly states that tomatoes can be added to such a pizza as a topping there are, as I noted, tomato-free variants. The one I usually opt for is a four-cheeze with spinach and mushrooms variety. I also once had a white pizza with chicken as part of the topping that was quite good.
Is it exactly like traditional pizza? No. But it does enable me to be more a part of a pizza party, and quite a few non-allergic folks also enjoy that variation of pizza, too
It’s sort of like folks who exclaim “Oh, you poor thing! You can’t have spaghetti!” Sure I can - I can have spaghetti in pesto, in white sauce, in oil-and-garlic… I just can’t have it in red sauce.
I try to focus on what I can have rather than what I can’t.
Works for you but not for me - it was ketchup that triggered my last episode of anaphylaxis. “Cooking makes it safe” sounds more like oral allergy syndrome to me which is different than what I have. But I’m not a doctor and in no way qualified to diagnose anyone. I wish cooking made the stuff I’m allergic to safe to eat.
Your cousin might enjoy the white clam pizza at Frank Pepe in New Haven. It’s free of tomato sauce.