No Dairy or Die — How Dairy Could Kill me
Imagine going to the supermarket and being able to buy and eat anything at all from the shelf. Does this seem like a hard ask, or something that may not even pass your mind. I often see people walk past the rows and rows of chocolate bars, with so much choice I am often very surprised that they do not take them all. This is what it is like being limited by what I can and cannot have. I have a rare disorder called Galactosemia, it is so rare that my spellchecker does not recognise it. It has a lot of things that are associated, but what it affects on a daily basis it the inability for me to have dairy products. If I did happen to have dairy, I would be okay for a one off, but if it were to be continued then it could be something that seriously affects my health and potentially kill me. For reference, if people wish to look up the condition, the article of Wikipedia can be found here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactosemia
Life can be quite easy nowadays, with food labeling being something that has massively improved in the past few years, however eating out can be something of a struggle, with not being able to see what is in the ingredients myself, I often find it very difficult to trust whether the food that I am getting really is dairy free. Dairy can be found in so many things, there is almost always the potential for dairy to have found it’s way onto an item of food on the menu. Therefore, I tend to order a vegan option which would eliminate any chance of there from being dairy on the plate at all. Of course, this means that I avoid meta when I am eating out but it does mean that I do not need to worry about having butter lathered all over it, as people do not often think when they have finished the disk and could easily throw butter on steak as they typically do, forgetting that the customer has ordered it dairy free.
Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash
This is not something that is new for me by any means, this has been the case since I was born. I do still often wonder what a Mars bar tastes like, or a Twix, this is the main thing which does make me feel a bit sad, that I will not ever be able to know without getting myself ill. There are long term things that could happen such as things going wrong with my eyesight too, this is why I have to be really careful when reading ingredients to ensure that I do not accidentally have something that I am not allowed!
I guess the reason for this post really is the fact that I want to make a point of the labeling on packaging being so good nowadays, but I still think we have a way to go in regards to eating at restaurants and eating establishments. It may be that I am just a bit too scared and do not want to risk contamination, which would not be a disaster, it would only be too bad if something did actually have dairy in it, such as bread for example is a very difficult one, as there is no way for me to know whether there is actually butter inside the bread itself. I check ingredients everyday and I make sure there is no dairy involved in what I eat, but it still is something that I have to make an active effort to look after every day.
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