Fear is something I instilled in my parents early on, from the first time I developed hives and couldn’t keep food down, to age two-and-a-half where my poor eating habits had developed into an eating disorder that would eventually require a semi-permanent feeding tube. I was born with anaphylactic food allergies to a host of widely-eaten ingredients in the Western world, making my childhood a perilous minefield of making sure a cashew or walnut was not out there somewhere, trying to do me in. My situation is not unique, and children are being born at an alarmingly increased rate with allergies to eight major foods in the United States. I am the first wave in a great tide of children just like me, and the advances that are made to accommodate me will ultimately make the paths of those behind me much easier. Being such a pioneer should make me feel noble, but instead I am incredibly envious of the ease and flexibility with which those future children will live their lives.
My mother has a saying: food allergies only affect what you can eat. This is a sentiment echoed by almost every upbeat, overprotective allerparent I have ever encountered, and technically, she is correct: it is only my immune system preventing me from digesting milk protein correctly. Unfortunately, food is such a large part of the human experience and biological life that avoiding it is impossible—allergies are simply going to affect more than what is served at the dinner table. This has become increasingly apparent to me since moving out of my Saf-T-Zone home, where nary a peanut is allowed over the threshold.
My allergies, and whether I could be accommodated at the dining hall and subsequently be allowed to reside in the dorms, was a major deciding factor during my college search—while my peers were comparing financial aid packages and researching the best programs for their fields of study, I was tracking down the numbers of university nutritionists and dining hall staff in a desperate attempt to answer Can I eat here? with a definitive answer.
On a more daily basis, my allergies can limit me from going to restaurants during their lunch rush, when I know my requests for clean gloves and clean knives may result in a “technically” safe bagel with an accidental smear of cream cheese along the side, or any number of innocent and potentially fatal mistakes that can occur when servers are in the weeds. The dating scene, which can be rough at best, is further complicated by first-date hurried explanations of hey, I just met you, but should I go into anaphylactic shock at this dinner tonight please inject my thigh with this medication and then call 911.
My allergies often make the decision of whether to go on school trips or participate in clubs where the amount of work that will go into making sure I can eat or bring along my own food adds hours to an already packed schedule. Uncertainty is the biggest obstacle: if I can’t guarantee that I will be able to get food for myself in a study abroad program, the risk of having a reaction in a foreign country with little command of the language is simply too high. The kicker is that, with the right answers, and a little more assistance, most of these obstacles could be easily overcome, and simply recognizing my allergies as a real, and often restrictive condition with some potentially catastrophic side effects would make a huge difference in what I can push myself to achieve.
In fact, my allergies may ultimately decide for me on whether to have children—the idea of creating some super-allergic offspring with someone who carries similar allergy-carrying genes to mine frightens me greatly, as I recognize how restricted those children may be when leading their lives.
“The world might even have a cure for food allergies by the time you are ready to have kids,” my boyfriend gently reminds me, but I have lived too long with dairy-free frozen treats that actually contain trace amounts of milk to give the world much say in choosing how to handle my condition, much less those of any future children.
Fear and caution are not unique to the food allergy world, but they are enormously pervasive. Food allergy parents are often portrayed as bordering on paranoia, and this stereotype is not wrong. In a world where tempura paint, Play-Doh, or a stray dirty spoon could all mean a trip to the emergency room for little Sophia or Daniel, it is no wonder that many parents are forced to instill this same sense of over abiding cautiousness in their food allergic little ones. Yet this paints the world in very dark colors, and teaches fear and avoidance as synonyms. It is true that peanuts should be avoided in the diet, but they should never be feared, as they are not intentionally going out of their way to harm anyone.
The very vocabulary of both the medical diagnosis and the food allergy community reinforce this feeling of fearfulness. The word “safe” is unavoidable. I grew up with “safe” meals and “safe” cupcakes, “safe restaurants” and making sure I was “safe” carrying epinephrine autoinjector, inhaler, and antihistamine at all times—to the park, to dance class, to prom. An emphasis on safety promotes a lack of risk-taking, which is good if your kindergartner is unsure if there are tree nuts in those brownies, but has negative consequences for your teenager who has become tired by being made to carry a clunky EpiPen during gym class and may opt to simply leave it at home.
It’s a Thursday, and I am explaining to my mother about my newest project: combating the omnipresent fear of food for allergic individuals on campus.
“Just remember, dear, food allergies don’t define you,” she says (it is the party line for a camp I once attended for food allergy kids), a supposedly empowering phrase with as much grounding in reality as “You can be anything you want when you grow up.”
“No, wait, Mom—they do, actually, they do. Food allergies do define me, and that’s okay, because it’s a part of my identity. It’s who I am when I wake up in the morning and who I am when I go to sleep at night, and they might make my life more difficult, but…I suppose I just have to deal. And it is alright if they dictate some of my decisions, but they can’t dictate all of them.” I can hear my mother sighing on the other end of the phone—there are many opinions on how to handle a child with food allergies, and my mother has done her best to make sure I fit in the best I could when growing up at home. But for my parents, and many others, the fight for safety for their children and a pervasive feeling of fear will always accompany their view of food allergies.
The difference? It does not mean that it must accompany mine.
IVeditor 
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