Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (14 page)

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 learning 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”:

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