Two years ago my sister discovered she had food allergies. Not just "no thanks I don't eat shellfish" allergies, or "when I eat too many walnuts I get a patch of dry skin on my forearm" allergies. My saint of a sister stopped cold turkey with eggs, dairy, and gluten, which is a wheat product found in about 3/4 of all processed and packaged foods. Having allergies is time-consuming and frustrating, turning a simple trip to the grocery store into a Mensa brain-teaser. How will I get enough protein THIS week? Is there gluten in this box of soup or not? What the hell do you eat for breakfast if you can't have milk, cereal, oatmeal, eggs, toast, yogurt or pancakes? But to get rid of blinding migranes, one will sacrifice.
When Lauren told me about her allergies and new diet I thought to myself, "Dear god, I hope that doesn't happen to me!" Then a year ago I started having health problems. Sometimes the thought that I too might be suffering from food allergy symptoms crept up and I entertained it. What if I had to stop eating wheat? Or dairy? What would be left? I hate cooking. Would I have to cook? Can one subsist solely on raw fruits and vegetables? Today a doctor presented to me the results of my food allergy test, showing that I am reacting negatively and strongly to dairy and eggs (not gluten--yet!) and needed to cut them out of my diet 100%.
The first thing I did after getting the news was accidentally consume a dairy product hidden in my low-fat blueberry granola bar. This is not going to be easy. It is even harder to follow the no dairy, no egg rule when you start realizing all of the clever places dairy and eggs can hide. I can't eat them in any form, which includes all the strange by-products at the ends of ingredient lists like lactalbumin, casein, lecithin, lysozyme, and the mysterious "binder" just to name a few of the dozens of off-limits ingredients.
I haven't purged the kitchen yet; that's the plan for tomorrow. Today I will work on finding a healthy, enjoyable dinner to convince myself that it's going to be fine. Tomorrow I will throw out the eggs, butter, yogurt, salad dressing, milk, etc. from the fridge. And the frozen yogurt. I have a beautiful lime-green container of the best frozen yogurt you will ever taste--fugde brownie with bigs chuncks of chocolate--that at 170 calories a serving almost passes for healthy. It too will see the inside of a Glad bag instead of the inside of my mouth.
Tomorrow is day one.
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