Don't Kill the Birthday Girl

by Sandra Beasley

  As a culture, we’re playing with fire. For centuries Asians have included soy in their diets with little ill effect, sure. But there we’re talking about primarily fermented products such as miso and natto, at an average of 9 grams a day. Here, we’re talking about soy shakes that serve up twice that daily amount of unfermented protein in one to-go cup, complete with bendy straw. No one knows why peanut allergies have ratcheted up so rapidly in their severity. If the same happens with soy—which, unlike corn, is already one of the “big eight” allergens in terms of its prevalence—we’ll have put ourselves in a culinary chokehold.

  Another troubling complication of our relationship to soy is the fact that people have a capacity to react to the allergen even without soy-sensitive IgE markers. This is part of a subset of food allergies known as oral allergy syndrome (OAS), usually found among adults with severe hay fever, in which close similarity between a food protein and pollen protein causes cross-reactivity. Essentially, your mast cells mistake one for the other. Almonds, apples, celery, and peaches are confused with alder pollen. Grass pollen has a molecular echo in melons, tomatoes, and oranges. Ragweed pairs off with banana, cantaloupe, and cucumber.

  Often the full extent of the reaction is nothing more than a tingling, itching, or swelling around the lips and mouth, perhaps with gastrointestinal complications. Skinning or cooking a fruit, such as apples, may sufficiently denature the proteins to disrupt this effect. But other OAS targets, such as celery, are stubborn in their allergenicity. And the soybean? Soy does a wicked birch impression so convincing to the body that ingesting soymilk has triggered anaphylactic reactions in people sensitive to the tree pollen.

  Why is soy so popular, again?

  The bean is not evil. It’s just a plant, one that offers complete proteins. But it has been manipulated far beyond its original forms, with even its waste products (lecithin) now marketed as all-purpose emulsifiers.

  Though he was a pioneer in food science, George Washington Carver was also an advocate of farm-to-table eating. He often dined on wild mustard, turnips, and tomatoes gathered locally, using pig’s feet or possum as a condiment rather than the main course. He decried those who would “make pretty plates” or value ease of preparation over nutritional value.

  Long before Pollan came along with his manifesto, Carver warned us that “the science and practice of agriculture are intimate and inseparable companions, and under no circumstances should be divorced.” This is not the future he had in mind.

  • • •

  Maybe this is jealousy talking. Maybe my resentment of King Soy is really aimed at Princess Vegan: those cute girls my sister’s age, a decade younger and lither than I am, nursing their soy lattes and running in shorts that declare BROWN and UCSD across their trim posteriors.

  I have never “gone” running. I have run from dogs, and I have run toward buses as they pulled away from the stop, but I don’t think that counts. I do recognize the value of physical exertion, in theory. In 1999, I bought tennis shoes, as part of a summer spent trying to convince myself that I enjoyed racquet-ball matches at the William & Mary recreation center with my then boyfriend. The shoes’ bright purple Swooshes promised a breakthrough of physical prowess. I would play! I would love it!

  The whites on those shoes are still white. The laces’ double-knotted bows are, I believe, vintage spring 2003.

  I can’t blame lack of opportunity. My father was determined to see, early on, if I would take to a sport. I remember the Saturdays when he would take me out to the fields behind various local high schools. He’d tote a big nylon sack filled with every imaginable piece of gaming equipment—aluminum bat, softball, mitt, football, soccer ball, basketball, tennis racket, two tennis balls, and, in what had to be sheer desperation, a volleyball. He pitched, caught, lobbed, set, and served, all the while looking for some raw spark of talent on my part.

  I played along, happy to spend time with my dad. Every ball I hit or kicked dribbled lazily along. If there’s such a thing as bunting in soccer, I am a master. I served the tennis ball short. I served the volleyball wide. After two hours, I asked, “Can we go to Long John Silver’s now?”

  He would have better luck when my sister came along; his principal concern over her vegetarianism was that it would not provide enough calcium and protein to sustain her not inconsiderable soccer skills. For me, between the chronic asthma and the allergies to pollen and grass, it didn’t feel like I was meant to be running around outside. Sports are all about developing confidence in your body. I didn’t trust mine.

  With so little physical exertion, I was not the skinniest child, though I don’t ever remember being teased for my weight. In middle school, the difference from one girl’s figure to the next became more obvious. I hoped the pudginess of my curves were not noticeable compared to my elaborate choices of skirts, necklaces, and brooches.

  In the eighth grade, while on a sleepover at my best friend’s house, I pulled out one of the Mead composition notebooks she used as diaries. Melody had left the room to go talk to her mom. The diary wasn’t hard to find; she kept them lined up along the headboard of her bed. I opened the marbled black-and-white cover and thumbed to the page that described our meeting on the first day of school, assigned as science partners.

  The first thing she noticed about me, she had written, was my creamy, pale skin. She is funny and a little rotund, she had written.

  Rotund?

  I had spent hours picking out my outfit for that first day—the short black skirt that my mother described as “flattering,” the strands of multicolored seed beads, and my one button-down shirt that, because it was draped silk, did not pucker awkwardly when I turned to the side to eye my burgeoning bustline. The shirt was a shade that the saleswoman at the Limited called “cinnamon,” and I called “orange.”

  I blushed. I must have looked like the Great Pumpkin, I thought. The diary was back on the shelf by the time Melody returned to the room, but the damage was done to my self-esteem.

  My mother, then in her early forties, was and is a strikingly beautiful woman—a onetime Cherry Blossom Princess for the state of Illinois (though, as her mother insists, “it was much more about academics back then”)—who didn’t keep much junk food in the house. Even if she had chocolate syrup and ice cream around, I couldn’t have eaten them because of my milk allergy. Where were these extra pounds coming from?

  It would take another decade for me to recognize that the problem rested on minor dietary choices (Pringles over pretzels, skin-on versus skinless chicken) exacerbated by a major case of overeating. If my mother made Rice Krispies treats in the morning, I’d have eaten half the pan by 4 p.m. I once ate an entire pack of chicken wings in two hours.

  It was not that my parents had ever forced me into the clean-plate club; even a slightly “off” feeling was grounds to abandon a meal. Yet when we found a Sandra-friendly food, particularly when traveling or being hosted by others, I was encouraged to feed until I was absolutely, 100 percent full. And then just a little more.

  I remember breakfasts of not one, not two, but four McDonald’s hash browns, with 36 grams of fat—80 percent of my entire recommended fat intake for the day. We knew it wasn’t healthy. But we also knew they’d stop making those patties at 10:30 a.m. And no one knew how long it would be before I found a safe harbor to eat lunch.

  Somewhere along the way my mind stopped connecting a satiated stomach with any instinct to stop eating. I will eat until an available dish is exhausted. In the case of a whole roast chicken, that means after I’ve used my little finger to tease the last of the moist meat from the crevices around the scapula. In the case of a trip to Five Guys, that means every last fry crumb in the bag. In the case of a party at my house, that means using every leftover slice of rosemary bread to swipe up all the remaining garlic hummus, long past the hour when dip has started to dry and flake off the edges of its plastic tub.

  In the last few years, I have forged an uneasy truce with my appetite. I am learni
ng to cook, and occasionally (particularly with company), I’ll sit down with an actual meal: turkey with quinoa and curried root vegetables, or tomatillo chicken with black beans and guacamole. But more often, accepting my instinct to gorge, I settle for striking a nutritional balance over multiple meals, rather than on any one plate.

  “What do you eat?” people usually ask upon first hearing of my allergies.

  “Plenty of things,” I answer. “Couscous, chickpeas, almonds, fish, apples, oatmeal, spinach, wild rice, chicken, broccoli …”

  All true. I just don’t admit that—outside of restaurants and other special occasions—it will probably be only one or two of those foods at any given time, with the barest of dressing or sauce, heaped in a bowl intended for serving to a table of four.

  I suspect that the regimen associated with food allergies elicits disordered eating patterns for many people. But it’s hard to find a commiserative community. In public we fixate on the opposite dynamic, in which those with disordered eating patterns use food allergies to justify their behaviors. Anorexics claim they have gone vegetarian. Bulimics chalk up gastric distress to “some kind of intolerance.” Celebrities pass on bread during an interview, then assure the media that it’s not that they don’t eat carbs—it’s that they’re allergic to wheat.

  A 2010 article in the Daily Beast touted “The New Star Diet Craze”:

  “Gluten-free” living was, for years, about as sexy as living with diabetes, a conversation-killer and a dinner-party bummer.… Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, a gluten-free diet has become synonymous with enlightened eating, an intellectual aesthetic with its own raft of studies and its own celebrity cache. In fact, Hollywood is suddenly overrun with gluten allergies. Jenny McCarthy is convinced it contributed to her son’s autism. Gwyneth Paltrow blames it for her extra “holiday” pounds. The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck says it caused her years of chronic pain. And they all gush with near-religious fervor about their restful nights, their clear skin, their freedom from seasonal allergies, and the general joie de vivre their wheat-free regimens bring.

  Does anyone else see the weird logical leap made here? An article that cites three celebrities who have given up wheat for reasons other than food allergies (Hasselbeck has celiac disease) announces Hollywood is “suddenly overrun with gluten allergies.” In other words, allergies are something you claim for the sake of being contrarian (“Despite all this, or perhaps because of it”) or justifying an extreme diet; they are a stylish look, like cinched belts or faux-hawks, you can don for one fashion season and ditch the next.

  In 2007, pop star Jessica Simpson announced to an interviewer for Elle magazine that the minor internal bleeding she experienced while filming Employee of the Month was explained when “doctors found the presence of the little bugger thought to cause ulcers.” Somehow further (though unsubstantiated) discomfort led to a diagnosis of allergy to “cheese, wheat, tomatoes, hot peppers, coffee, corn, and chocolate.”

  Huh. If the “little bugger” of H. pylori bacterium was a problem, then their mention is a bit of a red herring—diet is not a key cause for peptic ulcers, though a bland diet is recommended during recovery. More relevant may have been the fact that coming off 2005’s The Dukes of Hazzard, this was the skinniest stretch in Simpson’s adult career. All of her newfound allergens happened to coincide with many of the foods one would embargo to maintain a size-2 figure.

  I can’t remember allergies mentioned in a single episode of Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica (I admit I watched far too many), though there were plenty of eating scenes. As commentators at the Consumerist website were quick to point out, her sensitivity to cheese, wheat, and tomatoes hadn’t kept her from signing on as Pizza Hut’s spokeswoman. Based on my milk allergy alone, no amount of money could make me pose with a slice of pie within an arm’s reach of my face. Hives and vomiting don’t make for a pretty commercial.

  It’s hard to be sure where the truth lies when someone like the actor Billy Bob Thornton opens up about having allergies to wheat, shellfish, and dairy—as well as obsessive-compulsive disorder and past anorexia. The celebrity allergies I find most credible are linked to public incidents—as when the singer Kelis had to be rushed to a Zurich hospital after being exposed to nuts while on tour—or are attributed to stars with no rabid fan base. No one is craving trivia about comic Ray Romano so they can scribble peanuts under the “Dislikes” column of his Tiger Beat poster.

  I do not live or die by whether Jessica Simpson can secretly enjoy the occasional morning coffee and Danish. This is no more my business than was my sister’s decision to become a vegetarian. But that’s the thing about body politics; it’s impossible not to have a gut take on these issues, and it’s always rooted in the bias of your own skin and bones.

  Almost ten years into her decision, Christina is still a vegetarian. Even if she changes her mind tomorrow, it will have been no mere indulgence or whim. What once seemed like an older sister’s wisdom, I now recognize was my stubborn resistance to admitting she was old enough to make her own choices. I’d like to think I’d not make that mistake again. But allergies tangle the ties that bind us, whether bloodlines or food chains.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gilding the Gouda

  Luring the average American into becoming a “foodie” is now a multibillion-dollar industry. I have taken the bait, after years of eating in a manner that was at best ascetic and at worst disordered. There is no other explanation for my decision to wake up at eight on a Saturday morning, catch a taxi downtown, and find myself at an event populated by men like Mike. Mike, whose chest hair froths beyond the top button of his Hawaiian shirt. Mike, who will be handling our loin today.

  “That’s good,” Giada De Laurentiis says. She moves her hands in small demonstrative circles, encouraging him to massage salt and pepper all over the pork’s surface. While the rest of the undercaffeinated audience blinks owlishly from our seats, Mike has jumped up to share the stage with De Laurentiis, host of the show Everyday Italian. Confident and beaming, in his midfifties, he knows his way around a loin. I’m transfixed by the feisty tuft of silver chest hair above the collar of his dark shirt. Does he comb it out each morning?

  A large crowd has settled into the 2,700 seats that occupy one section of one room in the gargantuan Walter E. Washington Convention Center. This is the kickoff cooking demonstration of the fourth annual Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show. There will be standing room only for Paula Deen and Guy Fieri later this afternoon. But we have come to watch Giada “because,” as my friend Amy puts it, “she is so beautiful.”

  Giada is a slim-hipped waif, dressed in clingy layers of gray silk fit for a ballet dancer. A black scarf loops loosely around her neck, lending bulky modesty to an otherwise bare collarbone. Her amber hair sits in a high bun on top of her head. On me, the style would look like junior-year homecoming. On her, it looks perfect.

  Because Mike is so gung ho in his meat prep, Giada is free to step to the front of the stage and take a round of questions. Question one is “How do you stay so thin?”

  “You can eat anything,” she says, “if you eat it in moderation.” She will claim this three more times during the course of the hour.

  Our host’s petite beauty emphasizes the surreal, dollhouse efficiency of the cooking setup that surrounds her. It’s as if the producers chopped a kitchen in half: a gleaming fridge, two ovens, a stovetop, a sink with running water, a food processor, and a blender, all wired and ready to go in a “room” with only one wall. Whatever it costs, the organizers can afford it; this convention has just been named one of the fifty fastest-growing tradeshows in the country.

  I missed the first wave of Food Network enthusiasm in the midnineties, when housewives flocked to Emeril Lagasse’s dynamic broadcasts. A second wave of cooking-show love crested around 2002, washing over my fellow graduate students and other underemployed twentysomethings. Friends debated Mario Batali versus Bobby Flay, but I stayed out of it. My knowledge of co
oking shows consisted of dim childhood memories of whatever came on PBS after Sesame Street: Julia Child, The Frugal Gourmet, Louisiana Cookin’ with Justin Wilson—all of whom worshipped at the altar of butter, cream, and fat, or, as Graham Kerr of The Galloping Gourmet called it, “hedonism in a hurry.” Even Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook was always throwing a little chopped egg into the stir-fry. Why taunt myself?

  Then came Rachael Ray. Love her or hate her, Ray raised the profile of extra-virgin olive oil (“EVOO”) right as a number of health studies began touting the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Even before catching her show, I’d noticed her impact in restaurants. Turning down salad dressing, which used to puzzle waiters, now solicited a cheery if initially indecipherable “Eeeveedoubleoh, then?” The acronym became so pervasive that it was indexed by The Oxford American College Dictionary in 2007.

  So here I am on a Saturday morning, another convert. Giada twists the cap off the big green bottle of oil, readying her vinaigrette. She charges Mike, his hands already slick, with dropping any pungent ingredients into the blender. He asks if he needs gloves.

  “No, you don’t need gloves,” Giada says. Then she reconsiders. “Unless you do. Are you allergic to garlic?”

  Mike shakes his head and goes to work. This is a new era; Julia Child never asked about food allergies. As Giada loads the raw tenderloin into the oven and—the magic of television—pulls it out, fully cooked, from the other oven, I sigh in satisfaction with the rest of the audience. Not only could I make this meal, I could actually eat it.