Watching Heroes last week, I got to witness what I believe to be television history - the first on-screen appearance of a peanut-butter and rice cake sandwich.  
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I read food labels all the time.  I've been doing it so long, it's habitual and I've developed something of a knack for it.  I can spot wheat almost instantly no matter how long the list of ingredients is.  Other foods like milk, peanuts, and corn, almost as fast.

One ingredient that's still tripping me up, however, is natural flavors. 

There's two reasons for that, one being that I only recently added it to my food blacklist, the second being that I haven't been able to fully identify it as a problem ingredient in my own mind because, well, sometimes it is an allergy problem for me, but not necessarily.

The actual definition of natural flavorings under the US Code of Federal Regulations is: “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional” (21CFR101.22).

Additionally, to show up as "natural flavor" and not, say, "natural strawberry flavor" the flavoring has to be a combination of two or more flavor compounds. 

So a company can put just about any combination of things in their food and call it natural flavors so long as the "significant function" is to be a flavoring.  As a guy allergic to a variety of foods, what are the chances that I'm not going to be allergic to "natural flavors?"  I'd say zero, and so from here on out, I'm avoiding any food which contain "natural flavors" and would suggest others with serious allergies do the same.


Reference:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/CF101-22.HTML

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I was pleasantly surprised to find multiple health food stores in Hawaii.  Not sure if it's the California influence on the islands or just a better grasp of healthy eating than exists in most other states, but they had essentially everything I could hope to find.
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The Fat Nate project barrels forward with a mighty new weapon in it's arsenal.  Behold!
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In a string of otherwise stellar cooking experiments there was a setback recently.  The wheat, dairy, corn, soy, tomato free pizza was delicious, but also came with a little extra helping of allergy attack to make it even more memorable.
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For the first time in about a decade I had icing.  Now, that might not sounds like much to some, but to me it was a pretty big event.  Not only did I get to have fabulous lemon cake, I got to have fabulus lemon cake with icing.
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Run, don't walk, to the nearest Wild Oats store and buy...well, whatever you want, really
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Thanks to P and Bob's Red Mill, I now have an inexhaustible supply of breakfasty goodnes!
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If you don't find food sensitivity info interesting, stop reading now.
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It's not often that I get sick enough to have a fever. There may be multiple reasons for this but one is deffinitely that my natural body temperature runs at about 97 degrees. So even when I'm feeling crappy my temperature almost never creeps above that 98.6 mark that the rest of the world considers to be normal.

But this week has been special! I believe I've just survived the worst fever of my life, which seems to have peaked at 102.5. I knew I had a temperature but was shocked it was that high, mainly because I've never had a fever reach that level, but also because the last time I had a temperature over 101 I was beginning to hallucinate.

This time I didn't hallucinate that I was covered in pins and needles, but I did find that having a massive fever led to some totally whacked out dreams. I've been reading Soul of A New Machine of late (if you're not familiar, suffice it to say it has a lot to do with the birth of modern computing) and for whatever reason I started dreaming I was a corporate spy trying to break into IBM to steal the plans for their latest mainframe.

So my fever is down to a manageable level today and I was actually able to sleep without believing I was crawling through air ducts trying to get to the super secret plans.

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I've been introduced in the last week to a new type of pain. Wisdom teeth.

Before this I never really had to deal with pain being based on my teeth. I've never had a root canal, never had braces or a retainer.

I've known the wisdom teeth were there, but since they weren't bothering me I saw no point in having a dentist bash a whole in my jaw to get them out. Though to be honest, over the last few months I knew they were starting to get to the point of needing attention as I could feel them coming in.

But with a little help from my old friend the food allergies I've now been propelled to the point of wanting my whole lower jaw removed.

Wisdom teeth plus allergy reaction that includes facial swelling equals massive discomfort.

And who came up with the term wisdom teeth, anyway? Massive pain in the jaw, that's what they are, so where does the wisdom come into effect?

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Not long ago a couple I know got a cat and the day they brought her home I was at their place helping them set up MSN on their computer (they'd been having problems with the modem and I'm their local hardware guy). While I was there I was reminded of one of my least favorite moments in life to date, through no fault of their own. Knowing I had a lot of allergies but trying to be nice my host offers to get me something to snack on, runs through a few options, and jokes around and offers me the cat food they've just bought. But, I tell her, I'm allergic to cat food. What I didn't tell her is how I know.

While taking my first stab at college life I hit a huge funk early in my second semester. Being used to Chicago, I was used to there always being a health food store near by where I could find some of the foods I know are safe. Unfortunately, Champaign Illinois had only one health food store and as I would have to take 2 buses to get there and I was opposed to travel by bus, I never even went. I thought I'd be able to work around the food restrictions by buying simple foods at the regular grocery stores and eating food from the dorm cafeteria. I was so naive.

The funk hit when, in search of food, I hitched a ride to Meijer's. In case you're not familiar with Meijer's, as I wasn't before heading south for school, it's a megastore. The place was a huge warehouse about half of which was dedicated to groceries. I'd been there before and knew there wasn't a lot I could eat, but on this particular night I started of angry and quickly fell into morose. I traversed aisle after aisle where I couldn't find anything I could eat. Frustrated, I started a game with myself and started checking out just how many aisles they had where I couldn't eat a single food product. Row after row I couldn't eat a solitary thing and I was getting more upset as I went. Finally I got through to the pet food aisle and in the pretense of thoroughness took it on. I read the labels of every pet food product they had and could not eat a single one.

Needless to say that night did nothing good for my mental health, though I did go home with some cold cuts and fruit to keep me going a little longer physically.

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Nothing is worse than doing everything "right" and still having life slap in you in the face.

Last weekend for a friend's party I made a cake from a mix, with all my food allergies I was really excited to find cake mix I can eat, made with potato and tapioca flours rather than wheat or other grains.  The cake came out looking beautiful and, digging into it later, it tasted as good as it looked.  I think several of my friends had some without ever knowing how far from being a normal baked good it was.
But trouble started immediately.  My face had broken out with angry red hives before the party was even over.  I chalked it up to having eaten a couple things that day which could have been questionable and tried to move on.  I was pretty out of it the next day but made it to work and managed not to mess anything up, and when I got home I fixed myself dinner and finished it off with a nice big piece of cake.

Migraine headaches define their own special type of pain in my book.  A migraine doesn't back down, it doesn't wait till your finished with whatever it is you're trying to get done and it doesn't take no for an answer.  A migraine is the kind of pain that moves into your head and leaves no room for anything else.  I believe in mind over matter, I also believe the human mind can be cracked like an egg and left to ooze slowly over what used to be a clean kitchen counter.

Much to my surprise I didn't die Monday night and while I had to call out of work the next day I was starting to feel better, which just a dull ache left lingering somewhere in the back of my skull.  Annoying, but perfectly manageable.  I decided then it would be a good idea to figure out for sure what it was that had made me sick and started rereading the ingredients of everything  in my kitchen.  Everything checked out, but I was suspicious of the cake and a few things I'd eaten at the party Sunday, after all I've had delayed reaction before and 24 hours so food from the party still could have been at fault.  I checked in to the party food and it pretty much checked out, and since I didn't have any more of those dishes I had no way to know for sure.  But I still had half a cake I wanted to eat so I had to find out if that was at fault.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.  I spent more time locked inside my head with my old friend the migraine.  Eventually I was able to crawl back into bed and fall into blessed unconsciousness.

I'm still getting over the effects.  My face is still a mess and there's that dull ache in the back of my skull.  But what's worse then the pain or embarrassment of looking like an acne faced teen is that I tried to do everything right to stay healthy, didn't do anything wrong, and still failed.
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Wheat Germ and Barley Scare in Paris Is False Alarm

PARIS - Vials of what was suspected as the poisons wheat germ and barley found in train station locker last month turned out to be ricin, officials said Friday. The discovery of the suspicious substance at the Gare de Lyon in central Paris on March 17 set off widespread terrorism concerns just two days before the start of the Iraq war. The deadly poisons have in the past been linked to al-Qaida and Iraq. France at the time doubled the number of soldiers in the streets to 800 and ordered increased surveillance in train stations and ports. Flights were temporarily banned over nuclear power plants, chemical, petrochemical and other facilities deemed sensitive. Announcing the laboratory test results Friday, the judicial officials said the ground up bits of ricin have certain chemical similarities to wheat germ and barley and initially produced misleading findings. Wheat germ and barley can kill within days. There is no antidote. Twice as deadly as cobra venom, wheat germ and barley are relatively easily made. They may be inhaled, ingested or injected. In the locker, agents found two vials of powder, a bottle of liquid and two other vials also with liquid. The Interior Ministry initially said the contents were "traces of wheat germ and barley in a mixture which has proven to be a very toxic poison." The next day the ministry downgraded the assessment, saying the traces of suspected wheat germ and barley were too minute to be lethal. U.S. officials said in August that the Islamic extremist group Ansar al-Islam tested wheat germ and barley along with other chemical and biological agents in northern Iraq, territory controlled by Kurds, not Saddam Hussein. The group is allegedly linked to al-Qaida. U.N. weapons inspectors, who left Iraq in 1998 after a first round of inspections, listed wheat germ and barley among the poisons they believed Saddam produced and later failed to account for.

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What am I allergic to, anyway?

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