Food Allergy Awareness Week: We Need to Talk About Food-Allergic Adults
Nearly 26 million adults have food allergies — so why do we think of it as a kid’s disease?
32 million Americans have food allergies, the majority of whom are adults. Nearly 11% of US adults have food allergies. And yet, a lot of the conversation and representation of food allergies centers around kids. How do we create a safer school environment, where airborne allergens are banned and teachers/caretakers are trained to recognize an allergic reaction and administer epinephrine? Parents — often mothers, but not exclusively — share tips online for raising healthy, well-adjusted kids with food allergies, everything from sharing recipes to how to respond to a reaction to how to stand up to bullies.
Advocating for kids with food allergies is hugely important. For one thing, babies and toddlers can’t advocate for themselves, and even young children need a hand knowing when the adults around them are just plain wrong — I know I did. When I think back to my childhood (mostly pre-internet), I could have benefited from greater awareness by my teachers and camp counselors, and from a community of other food allergic-kids.
But new challenges arise in adulthood, and every parent raising a food-allergic kid worries about what’ll happen in the next life stage. Before we can figure out potential solutions, we need to name the problems.
WORKPLACE SAFETY
In non-work-from-home times, the office is a major part of most adults’ lives. That means being exposed to coworkers’ snack and lunch choices. Yet, very few workplaces have guidelines around what employees can and cannot eat. For an adult with severe food allergies (potentially airborne!), this poses a problem. I’ve needed to communicate my allergies to colleagues to ensure my safety, and while some were very accommodating, others were not, and that meant I often had to leave the office when my allergens were around, sometimes working in my car to meet a deadline because of my supervisor’s long allergen-filled lunch. Not every HR department is set up to deal with food allergies (even though they are covered by the ADA), and smaller companies often don’t have HR at all, so allergy advocacy becomes a complex issue of health & safety and workplace capital.
Other areas of work that pose difficulty: offices where “free lunch” is a perk, attending meal-time client meetings, traveling for meetings or conferences, and needing sick days to recover from a reaction. I’ve found that it’s a balance of standing my ground to establish the severity of my allergies (taking the sick days; asking for airborne allergens to be off-limits; getting reimbursed for grocery expenses when I can’t eat out on a work trip) and highlighting that they are not a big impediment (bringing my own food to meetings when necessary or sipping a soda; working extra hard to make up for extra sick days).
RELATIONSHIPS
Dating is big concern for teens and adults with food allergies. When do you tell your romantic partner? What do you do if they ate an allergen before a kiss? What kinds of dates would be fun without food, but not too pressure-filled? I met all sorts of people with various reactions to my allergies before ultimately meeting my husband. One way I knew he was “the one?” Our second date was dinner, at one of the 2 local restaurants I had told him were safe for my allergies. I, unbeknownst to him, had done a successful food challenge with cabbage before our date, learning I could cross contaminate with 6 shreds of the previously airborne trigger. I did the challenge knowing coleslaw was a popular side at this restaurant, so if he ordered it, we wouldn’t have an issue. He asked the waiter to hold the coleslaw, since I’d asked for that; in fact, he asked for the exact same modifications I did. It was a whole Gift of the Magi experience, particularly when I found out months later that he actually really liked coleslaw.
Other adult relationships can be complicated, too. Food is such a huge aspect of our social lives, and telling friends about allergies before every dinner party or outing can get exhausting. Family relationships can also be difficult, especially for adults who discover their allergies later in life and suddenly have new rules for holiday gatherings that never existed before — not to mention in-laws, who may be completely clueless about the severity of food allergies and resentful that a new family member crept into their lives with all these restrictions.
TIME AND MONEY
The two scarcest things in life are time and money (usually). Food-allergic adults have extra limits on both. Cooking and grocery shopping take a lot more time than grabbing takeout, and the cost of groceries for an allergy-free diet can be 30% higher than average! Plus, there are other expenses like premium healthcare to cover the very-probable visits to the ER, specialty medications, Epinephrine, and regular specialist visits — not to mention how expense some of the over-the-counter allergy medications are. It may be more convenient to pop into a CVS for Zyrtec or nasal spray, but OTC drugs don’t count toward deductibles or qualify for co-pays.
It’s not like having food allergies gets you paid more, either. And when you have to work twice as hard (see above) and miss out on what your company considers a part of your benefit package (here’s looking at you, free lunch!), it’s harder to stretch the hour and the dollar.
WHAT NOW?
Increasing awareness that food allergies affect adults, and not just kids, can help mitigate some of these issues. Food allergies should be treated no differently than other severe medical conditions or disabilities — reasonable accommodations in the workplace, increased peer sensitivity, and targeted financial assistance programs to those in need. As we advocate for safer lives for our food allergic kids, let’s consider building a safer future for them as they enter adulthood.