Month: November 2018

I can’t believe it happened. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving and I went to the grocery store(s) and got everything I needed for the holiday. And, get this. I actually remembered to grab all of my reusable bags out of the trunk of my car and used them. Suck it overflowing-drawer-of-plastic-bags. You’re not getting any bigger today. Feels good.

A day later and I am still currently reveling in this momentary feeling of success and calmness. Procrastination used to be my M.O., but I don’t get the stressful luxury of leaving things that are food related to the last minute anymore. When food allergies are involved, the holidays take you to a whole other level of stress, anxiety, planning, organization and time management. My Type A loves it, my full calendar hates it.

There are great articles out there giving people tips on how to navigate the holidays if you or your child has food allergies. How to stay safe and how to talk to your family about the seriousness and safety issues associated with the chaos. But what happens when family chooses the presence of pie over the presence of people?

Now I’m one of the lucky ones. Most of my family is willing and able to accommodate to my children’s food allergies. They take it seriously and respect my wishes when it comes to the food I allow around my them. I get the menu and recipes from everyone and then offer brand suggestions for the ingredients. I am currently navigating about five or so different text and email communications about food ingredients and that number will continue to increase into the 11^th hour. The constant communication can be very stressful and time consuming, but a small price to pay for me and my family to feel comfortable and attempt to semi-relax during the actual event.

It’s good to remember that every parent who has a child(ren) with food allergies will have a different comfort level in regards to what they will feed their child and what environment they will allow their child to be in.

It’s not about keeping your child in a bubble. It’s about risk assessment and partaking in the risks you are comfortable with. For example, you will never in a million years see me go into a Five Guys or Texas Roadhouse* or other restaurant that thinks it’s a good idea to have buckets of peanuts all over the place. But that doesn’t mean I won’t go to a restaurant to get my kids burgers or steaks. Ok, well they are not getting steaks. They are 2- and 3-years-old. If I am giving my 2-year-old steak I would be creating a monster and have no one to blame but myself.

Also, I will not purposely feed my kids food that share production lines with peanuts. This level of caution can be much more difficult when someone has multiple food allergies, but since I am lucky enough to only have to avoid peanuts at this point, it is a manageable thing to do.

Here is the best universal type of example I can give to help you understand:

Close your eyes. Actually, don’t close your eyes. That’s not going to work. Unless you have someone else available to read this to you. So just really, really try and picture this…

You are standing in a food manufacturing facility. You see the conveyor belt type looking production lines and big stainless steel machinery. The factory workers are all dressed in the appropriate attire—white lab-type coats and aprons, hair nets, gloves, etc. They are loading up the machines for the production of vanilla ice cream. There’s milk, sugar, etc all loaded in the machinery and ready to go. They fire up the machinery and one by one the ingredients plop into cartons, go down the line and get sealed up ready to ship to stores.

However, right before this machinery was used for vanilla ice cream production it was used for anthrax production. Or rat poison production. Take your pick.

All day long the same machinery cranked out boxes and bags of poison. But, no need to worry. After they stopped production on the poison the workers broke down the machinery and washed it before they started making the ice cream. But really, you don’t have to worry, the ice cream is totally safe to eat.  Not a drop of anthrax or rat poison was left in any crack or crevice of those machines. Trust me, just eat it.  It’s not a big deal, you’ll be fine. I mean, they washed the equipment really, really well. 

So, would you eat THAT ice cream or would you eat the ice cream that was made in a facility where it was anthrax and rat poison free?  Peanuts are our fucking rat poison. I get that is hard to understand when peanuts are not universally harmful, but they are poison to my children.

Again, but wait. There is a really thorough cleaning process. Its fine…**

Have you ever cleaned a knife that was used to spread peanut butter?  A simple rinse doesn’t take it off.  Think about how much you must scrub to get peanut butter off of a knife. Have you ever opened your dishwasher only to still have food particles on your dishes? Have to had to really dig in the corners of a hand held food chopper to get every last particle out?  

Because of all of this we are very particular about what manufacturers/brands we use.  The law states that companies only have to list intentional ingredients on their labels.***  Some companies choose to go the precautionary steps farther and label with statements like “may contain…” or “made in a shared facility with…” or “made on the same production lines as…” etc.  These statements are voluntary and not always consistent.  I personally choose to support companies that are a combo of safety and transparency.

So, back to the whole family- holiday-get-together thing. In many cases, families who have kids with food allergies—especially toddlers and babies who are starting to be mobile and put things into their mouths and don’t understand the seriousness of food allergies yet—will often ask for their family to accommodate and not have the allergen present. Especially if it is something easy to omit. But what I sadly see are people get straight up pissed and defensive of their pecan pie. How dare you suggest we bake an alternative pie to the precious pecan pie? Gasp.

I get that food is the center of many events. I get that certain foods are tradition. I get that you don’t want to suffer because of someone else, but wow. I am amazed by the number of people out there that put a food item before the presence of a family member.

I see on food allergy support groups so many threads of people asking for advice on how to handle unaccommodating family. Responses will vary from telling the person to simply not go, to suggesting the person try and educate and explain the seriousness. I fall somewhere in the middle. I am all about education until someone just doesn’t seem to care. I won’t waste my breath for long. At least in the moment. Maybe next time. But I will gladly take the time to talk to the people who will listen and will do anything I can to support their willingness to support me and my family.

So this Thanksgiving what am I thankful for? I am thankful for those in my life who are willing to choose to include my family rather than take the easy way out. I am thankful for those willing to follow my strict food rules without rolling their eyes. I am thankful for the online support groups to support those who don’t have as much family understanding and acceptance. I am thankful that the food allergy we have to manage is somewhat easier in certain ways than others. I am thankful to those who are taking the time to read this and want to learn about the seriousness and struggles of food allergy families. I’m thankful for you sticking around when the seriousness sometimes outweighs the sarcasm I typically exude. Thanks peeps. You’re swell. Unless you pick pie over people. Then you kind of suck. Eat that pie on your own time. Plus pumpkin>pecan.

*At the time of this blog post Five Guys and Texas Roadhouse have free peanuts available at their restaurants

**I believe that staff thoroughly clean the equipment and follow their company’s cleaning policies to the best of their abilities

***As of the date of this blog

Ugh, I hate that feeling. That feeling when you consciously know you are about to make a bad decision, realize the whole time you are participating in said decision that it isn’t a good choice, and then afterwards wanting to kick your own butt for allowing yourself to go through with what you did. Instant regret.

I’m not talking about all those poor decisions that plagued our teens and twenties. I was usually blinded by something when dating the bad boy or taking that extra (or 5^th extra) shot of tequila. The bad decisions of my younger years were usually associated with alcohol, poor spending habits, and the questionable fashion trends of the early 2000s. I don’t think I want to know the amount of money I spent on Von Dutch, Juicy Couture, Captain Morgan, or Parliament Lights. What I’m talking about now is something a little different.

However, I do like to think that all the questionable choices I made back in the day were learning experiences. I will absolutely call them street smarts or learning experiences or whatever else to make myself feel better about them. And because of those experiences my kids aren’t going to get much by me. I am very grateful that social media and smart phones didn’t exist back then. Yikes. It’s enough that there is plenty of photographic evidence in a pile of photo albums tucked safely in my basement thanks to the commitment I made to always have a disposable camera in my purse.

Ok, let’s get back to the present day feeling I first referenced. The decision that triggered this regret themed post. That rare decision I recently made. What caused such turmoil?

Going through the fast food drive through.

Ugh, I’m hideous. Don’t look at me.

Also, I’m not sure if the fact that fast food consumption being one of the most questionable decisions I currently make in my life is a really good thing, or a really sad thing. I’ll have to reevaluate some things in my life.  Anyway…

What is it about fast food that is so wonderful and horrible at the same time? That awful deliciousness. The guilty pleasure that I can’t even truly enjoy because I regret eating it before I actually eat it. I regret the decision to eat fast food when just the possibility of getting fast food simply crosses my mind. I regret it when my car drives itself into the drive though line. I regret it as I place my order into the speaker. I regret it when they swipe my card (which, by the way, is way more damaging on the pocketbook than it used to be, WTH?). I regret it as I shovel it into my mouth and I really, really, really regret it the minute I retrieved and inhaled the final french fry from the bottom of the greasy bag. Damn you and your salty deliciousness.

I go through this mental mindf**k about once a month and it is always the same. When still having what we will call baby weight to lose, these snap decisions weigh more heavily than they should.  Most recently, I indulged a few days ago, but I noticed the feeling of guilt and regret was different this time.

It wasn’t the calories. It’s wasn’t the money spent. It wasn’t the “undoing” of the healthy eating I was otherwise doing. Instead it was a guilty feeling that I was able to take advantage of the convenience of utilizing a drive through safely when a person with food allergies doesn’t get the luxury of making this bad decision.

I was able to place my order, get my food, and slide into a parking spot to quickly eat my food while I was in the middle of running multiple errands that day. I didn’t have to give it another thought. When you have food allergies and decide to hit up a fast food restaurant the idea of going through the drive through is something that doesn’t really cross your mind. The drive through is meant to be quick and simple and there is nothing quick and simple about getting meal out with food allergies.

Now I am going to assume there are people with food allergies who utilize the drive through without a second thought. I have a family member with a cashew allergy—something that isn’t a staple at fast food restaurants—so I know he is able to take advantage of this convenience. But for those with dairy, gluten, egg, peanut, multiple allergies, etc…it isn’t so easy.

The simple act of asking for a hamburger and stressing that you can’t have cheese due to a dairy allergy could mean that someone may plop the cheese on the burger out of habit, then see on the ticket there shouldn’t be cheese, simply pick the cheese off the burger and serve it anyway leaving behind dairy “residue” which could in turn trigger an allergic reaction. That’s all it takes.

When you go through a drive through and are a faceless voice in a headset with no ability to witness the preparation of your food you are taking a huge risk. One I personally will not take when my children’s lives are at stake. I’m not trusting enough.

I can count on my hands the number of times I have done fast food for my kids. Never through the drive through. Here is what the process looks like*:

1. Look at the restaurant website. Note how prevalent the allergen is the food served there. Decide if the risk is low enough to attempt to get food there. Even if the restaurant is somewhere we’ve gone before we will check out the menu since items (especially since seasonal and dessert based items change frequently).
2. Go to the restaurant. Don’t utilize the drive through, but instead park and walk inside.
3. Assess the environment. There have been times it was so busy and the staff seemed overwhelmed and disorganized that we changed our minds because we didn’t feel safe and walked out. If we did choose to order the first step is to alert the cashier of the allergy and gauge the response.
4. If the response isn’t a deer-in-headlights look we will typically place an order and ask the food preparers do a quick wipe of the food prep station and change gloves. This is a request that sometimes a manager will actually instruct staff to do at first mention of the allergy without our prompting. When that happens we feel as if we found a “good” place.
5. Get the food, verify the proper protocol was followed, and take the food home to eat. At this point we have never eaten inside at a fast food restaurant. Usually one of us will go while the other parent stays home with the kids. In the event we bring the kids with to play in the play area, we will play for a while and then order the food to go.
6. Eat the food and stare at my children like a hawk, not allowing me to really relax and enjoy my meal. I have anxiety and trust issues even if I watched the entire process go down.

So, that’s what a trip to a fast food restaurant looks like for many families with food allergies. It’s not simple. It’s not quick. I could have likely made a meal in less time than it took to go through this process, but it gives my kids some sense of normalcy even though it is stress-inducing on many levels. And yes, I go through the same regret process shoving fast food in my face at my own kitchen table just like sitting in a car in a fast food parking lot. Dang those fries.

*I do not work nor have I previously worked in a fast food restaurant. I am not aware of the actual protocols in each restaurant that are (or should be) followed when a customer notes a food allergy. I am giving my perspective of what I experience and witness as a customer.