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I think this is the result of so many people saying they're "allergic" to things that they aren't. Which is probably the result of other people trying to sneak in foods that someone says they don't like, just to "prove" that the food is okay.

So non-allergic people claim allergies, which makes a whole lot of other people disbelieve the allergy claim, even when it's true.

And of course, allergy symptoms can range from a temporary stuffy nose to a rash to a severe reaction. So some people who are truly allergic to some things will continue to eat them in small doses, and just deal with the reaction. So some people hear "allergy" and think that it means very little, if that's the sort of allergies they're used to.

Anyway, servers might accept it better if you just say that you always become violently ill a few hours after eating X and leave the word "allergy" out of it.

There was this girl in the sorority I worked at that is allergic to poultry, that is a strange one. My mother had a friend who was allergic to strawberries.

My husband becomes quite, quite ill from even a smidge of avocado. The same with bananas. He never liked avocado, but he did like bananas. The symptoms are the same with both.

Any type of food with mushrooms makes me extremely sick. I feel weird telling people because they think I'm just being picky.

What constitutes a food allergy? Though I've never gotten hives or anything from it, I've never been able to keep fried seafood down. It was really sad for me when my parents made the connection when I was little because I loved popcorn shrimp and fried fish. To this day I still love the smell of fried seafood, but luckily the thought of it grilled or broiled or blackened sounds more appetizing than fried.

My significant other gets violently ill when she consumes even a trace amount of garlic. Symptoms include extreme gastrointestinal distress. She's gotten to the point where she can smell it coming from the pores of people who have consumed it during the previous week or so.

I grew up on southern Italian/Maltese foods. It's been challenging and fun reworking recipes without that mainstay.

My husband is allergic to mango...not the actual flesh but the leaves and sap. He found this out when we were living in Hawaii and had a giant mango tree in our back yard. The doc told us mango is in the same family of plants as poison ivy and many people are allergic...go figure.
I also knew a woman allergic to cilantro and related foliage like celery/carrot leaves. If she ate any thing with cilantro she would get hives and begin wheezing.

Mushrooms. I have only ever met one other person in the world that is also allergic to them. Granted, it isn't a very serious allergy (I get loads of cancer sores in my mouth for a few days to a week after eating mushrooms, or anything in which mushrooms *used* to be, like a creamy sauce).

Now, honestly speaking, I have never really cared for them or hated them, and since the allergy isn't that horrible, if I am a guest somewhere, or trying to make a good impression and end up being given something that has mushrooms in it, I won't exactly throw a fit and demand something else. But, if it's just myself and a friend, or just me, then I will. Just to try to avoid a few days of mouth pain.

Someone was asking and there IS a difference between a true allergy and a sensitivity.

An ALLERGY is the body overreacting to a PROTEIN and it triggers histamines which causes all the nasty and violent side effects (think bad hay fever) like swelling of tissues such as throat, tongue, other mucous membranes, etc. Typically with most allergies you'll react worse with each successive exposure to said allergen, and allergies can develop at any time (for example with medications someone may take an antibiotic occasionally for years and suddenly have an allergic reaction out of nowhere).

A sensitivity or intolerance tends to be a reaction to a carbohydrate component of a food, such as lactose (milk sugar). This can cause general low-level unpleasantness and discomfort, but is not as serious as a true allergy.

Sorry, my Registered Dietitian side popped out for a moment. :) Go back to talking about food.

BTW - pretty much all foods DO contain fat, carb, and protein, even if just in microscopic and inconsequential quantities, hence ALLERGY to a fruit, etc.

Avocado, bananas and latex all have similar proteins, so if you are allergic to one of those you might want to watch out for the others.

When I was a child I was allergic to: beef, chicken, wheat, corn, carrots, lamb, milk and scores of other things. My third grade teacher called my mom to see if I had been packing my own lunch because it just had lettuce and radishes in it. My mom told her that was about all I wasn't allergic to. After 9 plus years of allergy shots I have no food allergies any more. Trees, plants and animals are another story though...

Mine's not a food, but medication. And not just medication, but apparently any medication - pills, liquid, it doesn't matter - made by a particular pharmaceutical company. Which I will not name lest I get sued, despite the fact that these reactions have been verified by our family physicians.

When I was a teenager I got mono. Though it wasn't a bacteria, they put me on a regimen of penicillin to prevent complications. After about two days I had a spectacular, bumpy rashlike reaction. They stopped the meds and the rash went away. At the time they assumed I was allergic to the penicillin, but a few years later I had a heart valve infection that required penicillin, and so the doctor ran multiple needle-prick allergy tests. No reaction to the penicillin itself, but when they tried a sample from the same company that had made the penicillin I'd used a few years earlier, bingo! Same reaction (though much more localized, of course). He told me that I should always list that brand name as an allergy.

Fast-forward ten years. My son was 3 or 4 years old, and he had an ear infection. The dr gave us a prescription for a regimen of penicillin - a cherry-flavored liquid. When I brought the scrip to a local pharmacy, I told the druggist to avoid filling the scrip w/ penicillin made by Brand X, and I explained my allergic reactions years before. He wrote down the info, and later I picked up the bottle.

You know where this is heading, right? After 3 doses, my son broke out in the same bumpy rash.thing. So I brought my son when I brought the bottle back, and told the guy that he'd better refill the scrip w/ penicillin from a different vendor. He looked stunned. What an ass he was. (But he did it right the second time, though I had to get the dr to call him and tell him not to use Brand X for the scrip. And needless to say, we stopped going to that pharmacy after that scrip.

(I have since found out that it's either one of the filler ingredients that Brand X uses, or a coloring agent they use, that's the culprit.) Anyone else ever hear of an allergy of this sort?

Yes...I have that same trouble! I've tested very positively for many foods and have to stay completely away from wheat, oats, barley, and many others, including cinnamon and most nuts. Cinnamon makes my mouth itch and tingle and then everything starts up, including my asthma. I also can't eat things like quinoa or amaranth--even though these are supposedly gluten free! I've also got many airborne allergies and chemical sensitivities--including to the ink on some magazines and most newspapers. They all set me off in a big way! So, I completely sympathize with you all very much! People have a very hard time believing I'm so allergic to so many things! Unfortunately it's very true, but I avoid them all and am tolerably OK! :0)

I also know someone allergic to poultry. He hates Thanksgiving. But my Dad is allergic to Macadamia Nuts, to such a degree that he gets taken to ER every time because his throat swells up. Doctor says next time it will likely close before he can get to a hospital, which means death is likely.

But like you say, many people think its a joke because its so specific. He is totally good with the usual nut allergies like peanuts. And its so severe and sensitive. Its happened where the chef prepared a dessert with mac nuts and didn't wash his hands before preparing my Dad's dish and some of the oils got onto my Dad's food, and that sent him to the ER. So if we see mac nuts anywhere on the menu, we have to let the servers know.

I used to be really allergic to strawberries and would get hives on my butt shaped, strangely, like strawberries. That went away in my mid-20's, though every time I eat them now, I still feel like a daredevil.

I have this thing called OAS (Oral Allergy Syndrome) where there's a bunch of food I'm allergic to. It affects only my mouth. My lips and the inside of my mouth get all tingly and itchy and feel really swollen. It's essentially like having hay fever in my mouth. My doctor says it's really common. The foods that are the worst are my favorites - mango, avocado, bananas, tahini, sometimes apples. People who know me believe me because they know how much I love the above foods. People who don't know me don't believe me unless they or someone they know has it. This does not stop me eating these foods, BTW, I just take an antihistamine an hour or so before I eat them and I'm fine.

I can't eat from salad bars or eat any salad where they used preservatives - especially on lettuce. It has sent me to the emergency room.

@MarseyDotes--that was very interesting and informative. I'm glad to have learned something new! It makes some of those allergies/sensitivities make a little more sense.

@Pavlov--Didn't have to read the name to know that was your comment! LOL

@Amandarama - Since it's a different med, betcha it was a liquid filler or the coloring agent in it. (You might want to have an allergy test since, as I found, the problem appears to be inheritable.)

My wife is Deathly allergic to onions and leeks. Full blown respiratory distress, gastro intestinal and emergency room quality reactions. Try to find a recipe without onions. No restaurants anymore, I have tor read every label for everything we buy. May have to do with her allergy to Sulfur and sulpha based medicines.

I get the itchy-tongue-swollen-lips described above when I eat cherries. I think it's a reaction to the pesticides though, and not the actual fruit.

However, since the reaction isn't enough to kill me, I still eat cherries... Just call me Danger Girl (NOT).

My mom has a serious alcohol allergy--it's kind of a moot point, though, since she's a teetotaling Baptist and only found that out by accident (on my parents' honeymoon, of all times). I once had a pretty bad allergic reaction to hard cider, of all things, and haven't touched it since. Other alcoholic beverages are just fine.

I also used to have a mild dairy allergy as a kid, but I think I grew out of it as it doesn't bother me anymore.

Interesting to hear all of these. I get intense cramping and lower intestinal reactions from consuming sucralose/ splenda, but I have no problem with aspartame.

@perfunctory, I get that same "mineral stomach" symptom you describe when I eat raw spinach (only raw, I can tolerate medium amounts of cooked), or zinc lozenges.

@akk328, the rash originally started on my hands, mostly. It was an on-and-off thing for a long time, with no relationship to anything that I could point to for sure. Then one fine morning I woke up scratching my legs. Yup. Both legs. Next morning it was on my face. Looked like windburn, but it itched like crazy. And my eyes were puffy and swollen. Nice look.

Next time I had a major reaction, even my ears were itching. Tops of my ears were peeling, and inside my ears itched. Earlobes were swollen. Face was a mess.

Sometimes I wake up with it and it seems better later in the day, and sometime I wake up fine, but by evening and itchy patch appears somewhere.

I'd love to figure out what causes the rash, but so far it's a mystery.

@nagala - it sounds like the OAS thing I mentioned earlier on the post. Pineapple is a typical food for people to react to in that way. It'll make my mouth a little itchy also, but for me, it's not nearly as bad as some others.

My aunt is allergic to corn! She can have things with High Fructose Corn Syrup and the like, but things like corn tortillas and such give her an allergic reaction.

I myself am not allergic to anything, but I am very sensitive to certain foods, like candy that is strongly grape or pineapple flavoured or oily tree nus (I love cashews, though). I can't eat doughnuts, certain cookies, or cake unless I'm craving it. All of these foods (plus some others I'm not thinking of) give me bad headaches that progress into strong migraines if I don't treat it with something strong near the beginning. It's even worse if it's hot, if something's on my forehead, or if I'm staring at a screen (I.e. TV, Gameboy, computer...)

My youngest sister is allergic to nectarines. It was way worse when she was younger, though. She would break out into hives all over her face.

My other younger sister has wierd time periods every few years where she's violently lactose intolerant. It usually leaves in a few months, though.

My grandmother (on my mom's side) is (was) lactose intolerant, and so is my father. I find it strange that I'm not.

My grandmother used to drink milk every day when she was younger (teens, I believe) but one day she just woke up and was lactose intolerant. She couldn't have ice cream, or even too much cheese. She was like that for 30-40 years. In the last year or so she hasn't been lactose intolerant at all. It just disappeared, oddly enough.

Another one of my aunts is allergic to tree nuts, but she can have small portions of walnuts.

Whew! That was a fun (long) post. I guess my entire family is weird. O_o