Now you can have pumpkin spice milk on your pumpkin cereal!
Also interesting: “almond beverage” rather than “almond milk.”
Category: Food
Walk for Food Allergy: Studio Edition
Today I joined hundreds of people at the CBS Studios in Los Angeles to raise money for Food Allergy Research and Education through the FARE Walk for Food Allergy.
We skipped last year and decided to join this year’s event at the last minute. Rather than walking along the shore at Long Beach, this year’s course ran through the CBS Studios lot. It started on what looked like a suburban New England street, and wound past production trailers, soundstages, prop storage, and even the Los Angeles river….
…such as it is. Other parts of the river are much nicer, even navigable at times, but this stretch is basically a concrete drainage ditch inside a bigger drainage ditch. It looks bleak now, but during flood years the channels fill completely, preventing the city’s streets from flooding instead.
Wait, Walk for What–Who–Why?
FARE funds studies to explore the causes of food allergy and develop new therapies. They run outreach programs to make it safer to visit restaurants, or just be at school or the workplace.
Food allergies can range from mild to life-threatening — yes, people die — and those of us on the far end of the range need to be constantly on the watch for hidden ingredients and cross-contact between foods we can eat and foods we can’t.
Free Shavocado!
This sign used to say FRESH AVOCADO. But for several years, it’s said something more like FRE SH AVOCA DO. I’m not 100% certain, but I think they may have actually moved the SH further from FRE and toward AVOCADO a few times…and now they’ve finally just added another E.
After I posted it to Instagram, a friend on Tumblr pointed out that the “Free Shavocado” tag already exists. I found a short video of the sign in its “FRE SH AVOCA DO” state, narrated by someone giggling and saying, “Come to Del Taco! They have free sha-VA-ca-doo!” Even funnier: The restaurant updated the corporate sign between then and now without correcting the spacing.
Or maybe that’s when they decided to “fix” the spelling instead!
Why would you risk eating out with a food allergy?
On every news story about someone who experienced a severe allergic reaction outside the home, there will be someone who says, “If it’s that dangerous, why would you even risk it? Keep your kid at home and make all their food yourself from scratch all the time!”*
Let’s think about this.
A car could kill your child. Today, tomorrow, years down the line. This is not a hypothetical. This is a fact, and it’s a risk that you live with.
Why on earth would you risk letting your child cross the street? Keep them at home! Don’t let them out of the house in case someone jumps the curb!
That’s…not exactly practical, is it?
You don’t keep your child inside 24/7 to avoid cars. You take them outside, with precautions. You teach them to stay on the sidewalk, cross at corners and crosswalks, and look for cars before crossing. You walk with them until they’re old enough to walk safely on their own.
You rely on drivers to follow the rules of the road…but you still look both ways in case someone’s distracted or feels entitled and plows through a red light anyway.
And then your children can live their lives out in the world instead of being frightened recluses who hide in the basement whenever a car goes by.
You can’t eliminate risk 100%, but you can manage it.
The exact balance is going to be different for each person with an allergy.** But it’s not unreasonable to expect the food industry to follow basic safety procedures to avoid cross-contact — and to not introduce a danger that wasn’t there to begin with.
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*Even if you have the time to prepare every meal at home, there’s still the risk of mislabeling or cross-contamination in the supply chain. Right now, there’s an ongoing recall of baked goods produced with peanut-contaminated flour. A year ago, supplies of cumin were tainted with peanuts. That impacted everything from prepared foods down to bulk-bin spices. Everyone’s at risk with the massive listeria recall of vegetables, allergies or no.
**Heck, it’s different for each of my allergies, and I’m one person. I’ll cheerfully walk into a coffee shop that serves almond milk and soy milk, but won’t set foot in one of those burger places that plops a bin of peanuts on the table. Even with my Epi-Pen. That’s just playing live-action Frogger.
The office snack tray. Or as I call it, the minefield.
Sure, there are a few things that don’t have peanuts in them (or at least aren’t supposed to). And there are potato chips too.
I’ve taken to bringing my own string cheese and keeping it in the fridge. It’s one way to be sure there’s something I can eat safely.