Beef - It's What's for Dinner. This is a familiar ad I grew up with - this triggers all kinds of happy memories from grilling out to the theme song from Rogers and Hammerstein's Rodeo. I was raised on the gold standard of beef - grass fed. Twice a year, my Dad would scope out a prime specimen among the hundreds of unknowing bovine candidates in our pastures to become our dinner for the next six months. He'd carefully select the best one out there, load it up in the trailer and roll off to the butcher 80 miles away. A few days later, we'd pack empty coolers in the back of the Suburban and bring Bessie back to the deep freeze as steaks, roasts, ribs and ground beef.
Because I was raised on such lusciously wonderful beef, I haven't been particularly impressed by the grocery store's efforts at what they call beef. This has apparently been a lucky stroke for me. Several years ago, I had a student who was diagnosed with a beef sensitivity, along with sensitivity to tons of other crazy things like olives. She was a high achieving student, but reached new heights after she quit eating beef. A couple of years later, my Mom's skin rash that had been diagnosed as Lupus and subsequently as a Latex/Lanolin allergy was so bad she changed doctors. She was diagnosed with all kinds of crazy food allergies, including beef, watermelon and Brazil nuts. She never eats Brazil nuts, so cutting those out was obviously not a problem - the other two were. But after she quit eating foods she was sensitive to, her skin rash totally disappeared after plaguing her for constantly for more than 10 years. It was when my sister-in-law was diagnosed with similar crazy allergies, including a sensitivity to grapes, that I started to pay attention to my own reactions to foods I eat.
My culprits: almonds, soy, fruit whose juice is red, melon/squash, and...you probably saw this coming...beef. I went to the hippie grocery store last weekend (as opposed to the regular folks grocery store with lower prices and *gasp* corn fed beef) specifically to buy the good stuff. I made this super-licious spaghetti with meat sauce to store away for lunch this week. I've been eating it like gangbusters because of just how yummy it is. I've been increasingly indescribably uncomfortable, and I've lost sleep because I've had acid in my mouth all night. Then last night, I had a pretty wonderful grass-fed burger at a party along with several tums. I think it was about halfway through the fireworks that a light bulb came on over my head that the Beef was making me sick. I hadn't eaten any of those other foods in weeks because I'm very careful about not eating them. It had to be the beef.
So - this discovery doesn't really help me today. In a few minutes, I'm off to get antacids to get me through until the Prilosec kicks in. I've already had as much allergy medicine as I can have and stay awake for work today. So, goodbye grass fed drips of grease down my happy hamburger eating chin, goodbye chunk of savory Sunday pot roast, goodbye to the sizzle of Ruth's Chris steakhouse, and goodbye spaghetti with super-licious meat sauce - we had a good run. Now to find an allergist to get official confirmation of my own crazy food allergies. And more Tums.
No comments:
Post a Comment