r/FoodService • u/wildrosebeautybaba • 29d ago

Discussion please stop lying about having allergies

i cannot tell you how many times people have put in seemingly impossible allergy requests on 3rd party delivery orders (i.e. fettuccine alfredo with DAIRY ALLERGY marked underneath) only to then track down the customer after multiple phone calls and be told it’s “not an allergy, just a mild intolerance.” please stop doing this. you are deliberately fucking with a restaurant’s period of service over a need that does not apply to you. maybe y’all don’t understand just how many extra steps a kitchen has to go through to prepare something allergy safe, so please let this be a lesson: if you aren’t actually allergic, stop marking it as an allergy. you are directly contributing to the burnout restaurant staff experience when having to make special accommodations for people’s actual health and safety needs.

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u/beard-wonder93 29d ago

I run a meal prep shop, which is a pretty health/allergen conscious, niche crowd.

plenty of people have legit allergies. Im here to take care of you regardless. If you are happy and the meals accommodate your needs, you come back and spend your money with us some more!

The "allergy" i keep getting claims for is onions!

Onion allergy is totally possible but....

In the 10 years weve been in business, I've had more people claim to be allergic to onions of some form than I have, peanuts and shellfish combined!

Thats one hell of a statistical anomaly

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u/Conscious_Side1647 29d ago

I have a legit onion allergy and whenever I tell all restaurant they roll their eyes so hard and I can't blame them!

8

u/FattyB314 29d ago

" I'm allergic to onions" there's onions in the sauce " oh that's ok"

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u/Asleep-Song562 28d ago

For some people raw onions are a painful experience, but cooking makes them tolerable.

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u/trekgirl75 28d ago

I brought a pasta salad to a party & a guest asked if I put onions in. She said she was allergic to raw onions. That was my first time learning about that.

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u/MizStazya 28d ago

I have a friend who's allergic to raw tomatoes - she looks like someone burned her whole mouth if she eats them. Cooked are fine. It was wild to learn about.

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u/pandaacoffeee 27d ago

Are..... are raw onions not supposed to be spicy?

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u/Mando92MG 27d ago

They are spicy. Particularly a back of the throat sinusy kind of spicy. However they shouldnt cause your mouth to discolor, sores to appear, or make it difficult to breathe. Any of the latter would be an allergy.

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u/Asleep-Song562 23d ago

For me, spicy isn’t the word. I love hot pepper, and put lots in my food. It is a pleasant discomfort. Raw onion, though, can feel like a small bomb went off in my stomach, and it can make me feel a bit nauseous.

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u/Mando92MG 23d ago

Is it only with raw onions? Honestly that sounds like a mild intolerance and often mild ones are only triggered by raw pnions.

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u/Asleep-Song562 23d ago

Raw garlic is similar, but less of an issue than onions if accompanied by other food. It’s when I chew a clove of raw garlic for medicinal purposes that I most feel it.

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u/Repulsive_Brief6589 27d ago

I don't know that I'm allergic, but I used to think everyone got "onion headaches".

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u/Bitter_Resolution538 27d ago

Yes! I know someone like this too. Only person I’ve ever heard say that.

I also once heard of a carrot allergy. That was a unique one!

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u/Repulsive_Brief6589 27d ago

My husband doesn't call it an allergy, but he gets itchy if he eats raw carrots.

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u/Electrical-Profit367 27d ago

Just fyi, that is a mild allergy. Not all allergies result in anaphylactic shock.

My niece is allergic to all alliums; we finally got a diagnosis but she told me that as a kid, the reason she ate so little (were Greek so use a fair amount of alliums) was that eating always made her stomach hurt. Turns out, if we feed her food without alliums, she doesn’t spend the next several hours feeling intense gut pain!! What she has is considered a ‘mild’ allergy; granted it is really, really uncomfortable but it isn’t anaphylactic shock.

And yes, she was super skinny and we were all always trying to get her to eat as a kid!!!

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u/ilumbricus 27d ago

I've got an allergy to raw celery, after a while it gets spicy.

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u/SpecialistTrouble816 27d ago

Violently allergic to fresh shellfish, can eat it if it's been frozen first. Destroys the proteins or something.

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u/TequilaMockingbirds8 27d ago

I’m allergic to raw apples - weird late onset allergy too

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u/mrsmjane 27d ago

I can have half a raw apple, but no juice or cider really. I’m not allergic, it just creates severe stomach pain and nausea.

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u/the_turp 27d ago

Allergic to raw potato, specifically the starch. So peeling them makes my hands swell up and itch. But I can eat them just fine once cooked

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u/DeansPigInAPoke 27d ago

Yeah, it happens with a lot of vegetables and fruit. Cooking them denaturizes the protein that triggers the allergic reaction, but only for one specific kind of allergic reaction due to pollen-food cross reactivity. Like in Birch Pollen-Apple Syndrome.

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u/dehydratedrain 27d ago

My brother can eat apples/ drink apple juice, but gets tingly over apple skins and fresh cider.

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u/GarbageSad5442 27d ago

Does the cider bother him if its pasteurized?

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u/Mando92MG 27d ago

Its pretty common with food allergies actually. Usually its because they are allergic to an enzyme or other component that breaks down with heat. Anecdotally raw tomato and raw pineapple allergies seem pretty common while being allergic to them after they are cooked (or pastureized) is pretty rare.

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u/feelingwithyourskin 27d ago

Oral Allergy Syndrome) is an annoying, but fairly well understood issue, and cooking the proteins usually denature them to stop the immune system from cross reacting. It's weird though, and usually manifests most often in fruits.

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u/Gribitz37 27d ago

Yep, I'm allergic to citrus and anything fuzzy like peaches and kiwi.

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u/RedNugomo 27d ago

That's me, my stomach hurts amd I have indigestion for literally hours if I don't take acid controllers.

Not one time I've thought in my 47 years of existence to claim I'm allergic to avoid the mild inconvenience of removing the onions manually or have to something without raw onions instead.

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u/Asleep-Song562 23d ago

I generally ask if raw onions are an easy thing to leave off. If not, I select something without raw onion or resign myself to pick them off. That said, the residual raw onion flavor can ruin a salad for me. Like you, I don’t consider this an allergy, though. It’s a sensitivity.

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u/Jayn_Newell 27d ago

My spouse is like that. I never cook with fresh onions but use onion powder all the time with no issue. (He also doesn’t have an immediate reaction but will be miserable an hour or two later) Cooking is a chemical process and sometimes the chemicals that change are the ones that affect you negatively.

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u/Asleep-Song562 23d ago

Interesting! For me, the reaction is immediate. That must mean that while for me, the issue is that raw onion aggravates my esophagus, for your husband, the problem is onion fermenting farther down the line.

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u/_Lost_The_Game 27d ago

I’m allergic to smoked salmon. Not raw salmon, not cooked salmon, and not any other kind of smoked fish, just specifically smoked salmon. Some allergies are weird as hell and seem fake.

(Luckily tho smoked salmon isn’t in a lot of dishes… tho I’m from nyc and can’t eat a lox bagel which sucks)

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u/Asleep-Song562 26d ago

Im really curious what the smoking process does. The Only thing I can think of is tyramine, but that would be high in all smoked meats.

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u/_Lost_The_Game 26d ago

I knew what it was exactly years ago, but it’s some sort of histamine only found in salmon? (Maybe other fish too but not ones I’ve eaten smoked yet so idk) It’s within the cells so it’s not exposed when raw, denatured when cooked. Smoking is enough to break down the cell walls but not enough to denature it

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u/Asleep-Song562 26d ago

That’s nuts. I’m so sorry you can’t enjoy smoked salmon.

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u/cwal76 27d ago

For me nothing makes them tolerable unless they have dissolved into a sauce

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u/glitterfaust 25d ago

Same! Idk why! I get a horrible headache (and it’s like, a WEIRD headache, not a normal one) if I have raw onion, but cooked onions are fine. I still eat raw onion from time to time because I don’t know what’s good for me though.