Cookies make me uneasy. Chinese food makes me nervous. Just thinking about the candy aisle in the grocery store makes me uncomfortable.
What's the cause of these seemingly erratic food phobias? I may or may not have a spontaneous peanut allergy.
Let me take you back a year.
It was last winter break, and I was eating potato pancakes cooked in peanut oil, which I've been doing since I was in the womb, when my throat started to itch. I brushed it off as nothing to worry about and kept on enjoying my latkes. But then I started to get very hot. It was like one second I could eat the latke and the next second I couldn't. The next morning my face was completely covered in hives. I was worried, but I thought it was some random occurrence and kept on with my business. I ate more latkes that night and two days later I ate Chinese food; the hives didn't go away, and the itching in my throat got worse with each meal. I started to panic.
The next week I went to an allergist to get tested for food allergies. I was tested for everything under the sun (Did you know that you can be allergic to potato skins?). Turns out, I have a peanut allergy. Sorta. My test result was "on the border." I'm not technically allergic, but I'm not technically allergy-free either. My doctor told me to keep eating normally.
Like that was going to happen. This pseudo-allergy of mine makes things very difficult — if I may or may not be allergic, I may or may not become covered in hives again if I eat peanuts. The worst part of this ordeal is that I know exactly what I'm missing. Sometimes I have a serious hankering for pad thai, and I just can't bring myself to eat it — the unknown consequences are just too frightening.
I had no clue how many foods have traces of nuts in them until I had to pay attention to it. Thousands of foods have the words "may or may not contain traces of peanuts" on their labels. Now, I get the whole legal aspect of these warnings — food manufacturers have to protect themselves in case someone with an allergy does eat one of their products and has an allergic reaction — but do you have any idea how frustrating it is to constantly be between "may" and "may not?" This requires the consumer to make a judgment call every time they want to eat something, and most allergy sufferers always err on the side of caution.
My spontaneous semi-allergy is just the tip of the allergy iceberg. Peanut and tree nut allergies account for 100 to 150 deaths per year in the United States. There is one man, however, who seems to have the answer to the peanut problems in this country: Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna.
An agricultural researcher at North Carolina A&T University, Dr. Ahmedna has developed an allergen-free peanut, which already has a patent-pending. The researchers on his team say that several food companies already have shown interest in the product.
Dr. Ahmedna's peanuts raise issues about biologically altered/genetically engineered foods, but in this instance, where the existence of an altered food can literally save lives, I am all for experimentation. If this product will take the confusion out of the lives of consumers with peanut allergies, then I just may or may not get the courage to have some pad thai one day, and it just may or may not be one of my best days ever.
