Sometimes small things means a lot

Part 1 Allergies

(It says Part 1 in the title because I have some topics that fit in this category, but they are too different one from the other to put them in just one big post, that’s why it’s part 1, I hope you like them.)

Living in a different country from which I was born, makes me realize that some subtle differences can improve someone’s life, not necessarily yours nor mine, but the lives of the people we care about.

Having a close family member, my sister, with a nut allergy, has made me realize about many things since I been living with her all my life and even now, on the other side of where our homeland is, we are still living together.

It also has changed my shopping behaviour and even the way that I do a routine task like picking a restaurant, or what to do when invited to a certain place, and many other things that I will explore in more detail.

Supermarkets

When in a supermarket, with every food product that I pick, I must read the ingredients before putting it inside the cart, to see if it has something that might kill my sister or if it has something that might affect her in different ways. It helps that in Canada you can find in every product with no peanuts a tree nuts a “no nut” sign, but I have to read it anyway, because as I mentioned before it might contain something else, such as sesame or other cereals/grains, sometimes if it said that is peanut free it may also contain almonds or other tree nuts.

That’s not the case in Chile, it is way more complicated in there. First of all, there are signs but not (according to me) helpful ones. Their signs identify high sugar, high cholesterol, high saturated fats, etc.

From left to right “high sugar content, high in calories, high in saturated fats, high in sodium”

Let me be clear, if I’m going to buy a chocolate bar or an ice cream, I’m 100% sure that that is not a salad. And the worst part is that sometimes they are inaccurately labelled.

There are some helpful signs (again according to me :)) that does exist in Chile, for example, the lactose-free or the gluten-free ones, and that’s because you can actually find some lactose and/or gluten-free products. But as far as I know, there are NO nut free chocolate bars or ice cream or any sweet thing that regular people may consume on a daily basis. At least if it “may contain peanuts or walnuts” or “produced in a place that also produces nuts”. She is ok with those, the real danger for my sister are almonds.

Buying the ones that said “may contain…” or “elaborated in a place…” is actually like gambling with fate, one time she was eating a chocolate bar that didn’t contain any nuts but it was elaborated in a place which produces products with peanuts, and she almost ate one. In simple words, that shouldn’t have been there.

If that happened to a peanut allergic person, the outcome would have been way different, it could have killed that person. When something like that happened, if you try to call customer service they give you more problems than solutions, but that’s a story for another day.

Restaurants

What I do like to do is picking restaurants here in Canada, especially in Toronto. With my sister and my Muslim friends, it’s an adventure to find a “no nuts halal place” to eat, I love going through the menus, the easy part is looking for the halal place but try to find one with no sesame, especially when talking about middle eastern food, that’s the real challenge, but we have succeeded many times.

Honestly, I love to find new places to eat, the discovering of new dishes is like a passion for me and it’s very nice the fact that here in Toronto if I’m not sure about something about the restaurant or a specific dish, I can call the restaurant or ask the servers if I’m there “do you have any nut/sesame free or halal options”. Immediately, they reply yes or no, direct and simple. Sometimes they tell me, “we can’t assure you that the products don’t contain nuts” or “I’m not sure but let me double check with the chef” at least they are always honest. They do take allergies and cross contamination very seriously, they don’t take any risks.

Now, that’s not the case in most restaurants that we’ve been to in Chile, when someone asks questions like “does this pesto have nuts”(there is such a thing as nut-free pesto), and the waiter/waitress instead of going and ask the chef or to someone that may know, like a normal person would do, they reply with some geniuses answers like “it is only pesto” (pesto is basically nuts and basil and some other ingredients).

Comments like those are not rare, in fact, they are very common even though something that simple as going to the chef and ask could save someone life. I don’t really know if the restaurant owners don’t train their employees properly, or we Chilean are very lazy people, we just don’t care, or maybe a bit of everything, if/when I found out I’ll write about it, but I’m sure that the lack of knowledge about allergies play a big part in this problem.

Going to Friends/family houses

This is the same for both Chile and Canada but with different outcomes (most times).

You assume that if you are severely allergic to something and you go to a close family member’s house, they won’t have that what it can kill you, and they won’t even put it on the meals that they will serve you, that’s logical, right?

Well, this isn’t the case at all. They will have it where you are, and they will serve you nuts (in my sister’s case), not in purpose (I hope). But out of ignorance. At least in Chile, most people that I know believe deep in their minds that being allergic to something is like being picky, they don’t really believe, or they don’t want to believe that those things that you are being “picky” with, can actually kill you or send you to the hospital. Again, this is out of ignorance about the subject.

The two different outcomes that I could find is that, in Toronto, when someone is reminded of their guest’s allergies, you won’t see that thing on their plates, maybe in a jar in the kitchen but that’s it.

While in Chile, especially, in my family and family friends, you will see almonds/nuts everywhere no matter who’s invited, and the only thing that they say is “I totally forgot about your allergies” or “be careful with that thing that has almond” when they don’t know that everything that they touch/had touched become uneatable for someone like my sister because of cross-contamination. It’s rather crazy if you think about it, it’s like having a loaded gun pointing someone every time you invited them to your house, if you are a bit clumsy you can cause an “accident”(you can avoid it easily, with a bit of effort) or worse a tragedy.

Final thoughts

I must confess that I’m learning about allergies too, I know why Chilean people are less sensitive to nuts allergies than Canadians, and why they don’t have many nut-free products. That’s because there are not that many people with allergies (in comparison to the whole population), around 2-4% of the population is believed to have a nut-related allergy, there is not even a study to confirm that, that number is an assumption of doctors.

We as Chileans, as Canadians, as people, should know more about allergies because, according to the study from Fair Health food concludes that from 2007 to 2016 Anaphylactic Food Reactions (people allergic to food) Climbed 377%, and 44% of the total of people with allergies are due peanuts, tree nuts and seeds, and those numbers are rising over the years (Fairhealth.org, 2019). And there are some people that have airbourne allergies, which means that if they smell the allergen, it can cause them an allergic reaction, that’s some serious thing to think about it, imagine someone with an airbourne allergy to nuts go to one of the family/family friends mentioned before, as soon as they walk in we’ll need to take them to the hospital or call an ambulance.

Allergies are not a joke and I hope this pseudo-article could help people to understand a bit more about it or at least the next time that someone warns you about an allergy, remember this article and don’t put the allergen everywhere :).

This concludes my first blog post, I wanted to write about something like this for a while, and now that I can, I couldn’t wait, I promise that the next article would be something more fun to read about, if you like it share it, if you didn’t like it share it anyways, maybe you know someone that might like it :),

thanks for reading it.

Bibliography:

Fairhealth.org. (2019). Newsroom | FAIR Health. [online] Available at: https://www.fairhealth.org/press-release/claim-lines-with-diagnoses-of-anaphylactic-food-reactions-climbed-377-percent-from-2007-to-2016 [Accessed 2 Jul. 2019].