Introduction

 

There’s not really a word for what my kid’s diet is. She’s like a… carnivorous vegan? She can’t eat eggs or milk, but loves pork shoulder. It’s both somehow less restrictive (she can eat meat!) and more restrictive (she can’t have peanuts and garlic?!) than a real vegan diet. There are all kinds of diets- Keto, Paleo, intermittent fasting, plant-based, low-fat, Mediterranean, DASH… But what’s the word for when you want to give your kid a well balanced, healthy diet, but suddenly half of the food pyramid causes anaphylaxis?

And for every diet, there’s a different reason to cut out certain foods. Weight loss? Sure. Heart health? Yeah, buddy. Better for the planet? Combat that global warming, friends. But what about if the diet is not a choice? This isn’t a midlife crisis or another half-hearted attempt at a New Year’s resolution. It’s 100% mandatory. If she eats food from a restaurant and the cooks weren’t careful with it, she might have just earned herself an epinephrine injection in the leg and a 4 hour emergency department visit.

You know how you can tell somebody you’re vegan and not only do they know everything you can and can’t eat, but they also assume you are an animal hugging, granola eating, natural deodorant wearing hippie? I want that. When I say my kid has multiple food allergies, I want people to say to themselves, oh she’s one of those crazy moms. I want them to understand immediately that I want them to keep their kid’s birthday-dairy-plastered-deadly-cake hands AWAY FROM ME AND MY BABY. I want her day care teachers to go, “oh I better always have that epi on hand when she’s eating”. I want my family to automatically know why I’m making everyone wash their hands WITH SOAP AND WATER before they come hold my kid.

“Food allergies” should mean all those things. You should hear food allergies and you should think of My Girl and thank God that epipens exist. But instead, you think of the rows of gluten free baking mixes at the store and people who claim they are allergic to things after getting a questionable internet DNA test. You know, the people who use “allergic” when they mean “intolerant” and make the rest of the world question whether real food allergies exist.

So, if you have a kid with some food allergies and want to commiserate about the good old days when you could eat cheez itz straight from the box and wipe your yellow, lethal milk powder coated hands on your shirt without a care, advice on which peanut butter alternative is the best (JK nothing is as good as the real thing), and talk about the best way to make a muffin without egg, then welcome. I understand your pain. If your kid just got diagnosed with allergies, maybe we can learn stuff together. I have always tried to be understanding of diet restrictions, but there’s no way to prepare yourself when food allergies happen to your family.