I don’t have food allergies, but I do have food intolerances, which can kill slower, via manutrition and dehydration.
I can’t digest legumes or alliums. Period. End of. It isn’t an immune response, it’s a poison response. Those are not foods, to my body. Those are poisons.
Alliums include: garlic, onions, shallots, spring onions, chives
Legumes: peas, beans, soy
These are some of the most common foods in the world. They are in every ethnicity’s cuisine. They are in everything.
I too have had people say I should kill myself rather than live with the inability to have garlic and onions. I have had the “we should all stop eating meat” crowd tell me that I’m “throwing a tantrum” and that they’d rather have me die of malnutrition than let me eat the only protein I can digest. I was punished over and over and eventually kicked out of a homeless shelter for having “too many dietary restrictions”, even after getting a doctor’s note from the doctor that diagnosed me.
IBS is not uncommon, it’s so common that a lot of people assume common adverse reactions to FODMAP foods are normal when they are signs of IBS–and it’s a continuum. Some people, like me, absolutely cannot eat what their triggers are, but there are other FODMAPS they’re fine with. Some people have milder responses to FODMAPs. Some people, like my mom, basically can’t eat ANYTHING triggering or they are violently and dangerously ill for sometimes weeks on end. And sorry to talk about gross body stuff, but diarrhea can kill you, particularly if you do not have ready access to sanitary toilets and water and the ability to lay down (I was homeless on the street when I was diagnosed with IBS, I did in fact almost die).
Imagine having food poisoning all the time.
I am not in any way saying it is as sudden in its lethality as anaphylaxis.
But it wears you down. It takes away hundreds of sources of nutrition. I struggle with things like vitamin D deficiency, iron deficiency, scurvy, and on and on. The list of triggers is as long as my arm and it’s mostly vegetables. It isn’t just one food that makes me sick, it’s hundreds. Whole chunks of the food pyramid are just poisonous.
The prejudice is the same. The danger of someone else poisoning you on purpose, out of spite, is the same. The inability to eat adventurously is the same. The inability to engage in the most basic of human social behaviours, sharing food, is the same.
Because to many people, we are both the same thing: A Picky Eater.
And being A Picky Eater is apparently a capital crime, as in the punishment is death.
You are cut off from a huge source of sensory play and enrichment. You are cut off from doing anything but cooking from absolute scratch. You are cut off from a huge piece of human social experience. You are cut off, as illustrated above, from education. These are not small things. These severely lower your quality of life every second of the day. They isolate you from having friends or meaningful social interaction or an education. They force you to pick between not eating at all and using up all your energy on cooking from scratch; guess which choice I usually end up picking when I’m too depressed!
All because other humans will not accommodate you.
Because food allergies and intolerances don’t HAVE to be a disability. It doesn’t have to be this way. Abled people MAKE it one, for no good reason than laziness and cruelty.
And dietary restrictions are seen as something of a luxury, I can tell you that right now. Hospitals, asylums, shelters, group homes, schools, charities, rehabs, and other institutions simply will not accommodate anyone with food allergies or intolerances in my experience–like at all. Period. They would rather you die. I actively dread the idea that I might end up in one again someday, because I know I’ll starve to death while being blamed for it and mocked the whole time.
I don’t even bother asking for accommodation anymore, I simply tell people I will not go out to eat with anyone, I will not accept food gifts from them, if they want me to come over they have to let me cook, and the isolation and depression are the price I have chosen to pay for my safety. But I can only do this because I’m no longer homeless and have the luxury of a kitchen and a private home. That is not a guarantee for many, and it wasn’t always for me.
People are extremely, extremely cruel about food. Extremely cruel. Food allergies and intolerances are my big example of the Social Model of Disability, because again, these don’t have to be disabilities. Abled people MAKE them so.
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