Hello everyone,
How’s that one for a title 😀
This one’s about food. Ok maybe it’s also a little about heat but it’s mostly about food.
I share what seems to be getting ever more prevalent in people … and that seems to be increasing levels of food sensitivity. Mine has probably been a thing for quite a few years now, with my body both having the sensitivity to it, plus a certain amount of conditioned resistance from having a steady intake of it over the years.
My particular problem looks to be with Soya. I do have other issues like with orange and ginger but the biggest and most problematic one looks like it’s soya. It’s in absolutely everything these days, you have to be extremely careful looking at ingredients and allergy descriptions to make sure you don’t inadvertently consume something that’s going to cause problems later.
I think it started with me around 15 years ago, with a probable infected bite in my leg while on holiday. The infection was pretty bad and tenacious and took a very long to clear. At the same time, I think it probably rewrote my body’s sensitivities to certain things and one consequence of that was that the infection was spread (by me) from the leg to it affecting me all over. I think it’s where the bad response to orange juice came from, plus it probably activated the soya intolerance.
So how does it affect me ?
Everyone’s affected by different things to a lot of different degrees. You’ll have heard of people who if they’re near a peanut, they react immediately and extremely seriously. Other people cannot tolerate gluten, it’ll properly mess them up. Mine is apparently soya but it’s to a much lower but still serious degree.
There’s sensitivities to milk products as well, too much lactose can cause us problems because it’s very difficult for us to digest.
With soya, the problems I get include :
Cramps – when I escaped from the hospital last year, I was managing cramps on the way back and when I got to the local train station, I had a huge complex leg cramp that made me feel like I’d twisted and broken my ankle. I was able to get home with the help of a taxi person. When I went back the week after, I had a terrible night in the hotel room because pretty much every bit of me was cramping up.
What had happened there was I think the hospital diet had cold turkeyed me on the soya products and my resistance by exposure had gone. So when I got back and was on my usual terrible diet habits again, the soya got in and messed me up.
Digestion – they’re always worried about people going to the bathroom while in hospital. Let’s just say this wasn’t a problem when I got back home. Nuff said 😀
Skin issues – it makes me break out and the skin irritation makes me cause even more damage. As soon as the second cast was off on that Wednesday back in the hospital, I was attacking the arm really badly and had to cope with the consequences of that until the next cast was taken off a month later.
That’s where the bread link comes in … my local supermarket have IDEAS about what to sell. I’ve recently had to swap from Kingsmill (good bread) because it wasn’t stocked any more. The acceptable looking substitute was Hovis. Nope, it’s made with soya flour. And my arms are messed up again after a month’s worth of being on the bread with soya. It’s not just Hovis, the Warburtons teacakes taste great but … soya flour.
Throat inflammation – this is a scary, because I think the soya was damaging something in my oesophagus leading to problems swallowing some foods. That seems to have mostly gone away over the last 6 months, which is good because it was a Scary. I’d take a bite of steak, try and swallow it and it would get stuck part of the way down. SCARY.
And there’s a few more symptoms too.
What complicates things is the attitude of the providers of our food and other products to the allergies and sensitivities that we have.
Ben and Jerrys and the otherwise wonderful Farm Shop at the motorway services both believe in being eco friendly, which means they use soya in everything they do. I cannot have their products. Other companies use Soya Lecithin in their chocolate as the emulsifier instead of the old E number. I cannot have their chocolate. I used to default to KFC because it does taste good. I cannot have their food because all of it is “May contain soya.”
It’s fine when people are direct with the allergens and declare it as a definite. The people (like KFC) who declare it as “May contain …” are a much bigger problem. One of the things about identifying a food problem is research and data. If it’s “May contain”, then sometimes you’ll get away with it for a while. And then another time you’ll have had a KFC in the first motorway services and nearly been sick in the car on the way back. Yep, that’s almost happened with me a couple of times and I had no idea what caused it. Also putting “may contain” on every single allergen should give all of you alarm bells because it’s suggesting that they have very little controls on their food preparation and potential cross contamination.
Costa’s hot chocolate is another which comes in the “they probably don’t realise it has soya in it” category. I have coffee in the Costas now, the hot chocolates always seem to cause me consequences later. Note, that’s not intended as shade towards Costa … I just have that feeling that there’s something else going on their with their hot chocolate that they’re not aware of. Or I also have an issue with hot chocolate.
The Warburtons teacakes were a classic thing for the “may contain” trap … because they do taste really good and they’re just better than the Tesco ones. But … sometimes you’ll be fine, sometimes they’ll be like a knife in your insides.
One note there – all the people above are quite open with their allergens. It’s listed quite plainly within their warnings and ingredients. The soya is almost certainly in there for taste cos all the stuff above (and the PizzaHut Can’t Believe It’s Not Cheesecake soya bombs) tastes good going on delicious. What we need to do is be very careful about making sure we look for those warning labels.
And that’s what we get with the food intolerances. It’s not just food as well. My eyes are always quite sore and I attempted to help them by using an eye mist spray. I had to stop after a couple of days because I was increasingly wheezing and struggling to breathe. It was another Scary. The UK site said “it’s fine!”, the NZ site for the same product listed all of the allergens and … you guessed it : Soya Lecithin emulsifier.
Apologies for the picture quality there, it’s the best I had to work with at the time. That’s Knightenator, a very lovely streamer lady from here in the UK. She’s absolute chaos, absolute mayhem, the streams are a lot of fun to surf in and … she talks a huge amount of sense when it comes to her own food problems. Knight’s afflicted by being coeliac and has extreme problems when it comes to gluten.
I’d highly recommend giving her a follow on the various socials because as well as being highly informative about trying to find gluten free products to survive on, she’s just plain fun to watch. It’s not just the gluten free, Knight also loves to show us Disney and other fun stuff like the Magic the Gathering pop up.
I think that’s about it for me today before the heat goes above a level where I can think clearly …
One last plea for me – if someone says they have a food sensitivity, take them very seriously. Don’t make it something to be embarrassed about, because that either makes people not go to that place again (the local Harvester made it a Big Thing, I never ate there again) or it makes them more likely to not mention it and then suffer the consequences when you’re out of sight. That’s how it goes with me, the soya doesn’t hit me immediately, it’ll slowly creep up behind me and whack me later.
They may also have a complex allergy where they haven’t been able to lock down exactly what the problem is. This is the position a very dear and close friend is in. Something is messing them up extremely badly but no one has been able to identify the cause yet. Huge hugs there.
The food sensitivities are very real for us and can have very serious consequences, even if those consequences don’t show up immediately. My plea to you as a general reader is to absolutely take what people say about allergens on faith, believe the person totally and do what you can do to help them just plain survive.
Like the taxi driver did a few hours after I had a Mars bar which almost stopped me from being able to walk unaided.
Thanks for reading everyone !
Oh I’m still wondering where I can get my bread. I’m looking for : No Soya Flour. Thick slices. Doesn’t get lost to mold after a few days.