Allergy Highlight
Allergy Highlight
Santiago Romero
Put yourself in someone else’s shoes by imagining that everything you eat like everyone else is suddenly everything you are allergic to.
Burritos, Pizza, Burgers; everything that comes from Flagstaff High School is practically all dairy or gluten! There are some people who have to eat specific foods, and even then, they can't get the help they deserve. Even in the Culinary Hall, there are some students who are allergic to at least one ingredient even when they support gluten free and dairy free foods. This is because people are not always able to make their own lunches and would rather buy lunch close to their school that supports their dietary restrictions that can include more than one restriction.
It may seem stressful, but why not highlight these allergies? It may seem crazy to add something to a meal that makes only a few people happy, but they get to eat. If everyone tried hard enough, we could propose better access to things like dairy-free, gluten-free, or even nut-free product awareness. By bringing awareness, people can make others happy by supporting food allergy lunches and encourage everyone to eat more of these products. This is good because they can support food allergy positive products and make them better or just as good as the original product!
One student I know that will stay anonymous dealt with a certain consequence of eating the same foods everyone else does at school. They developed a gluten and dairy allergy, but besides some chips, some Culinary Hall foods and almost all drinks, they learned that the foods they ate did not support their newly developed allergies. These allergies not only irritated their skin but caused most of their acne to not heal properly. A quote from the anonymous student is, “Can we please start focusing on allergy products for everyone to start eating so that way people like me have support before they start having aggressively inflamed skin? Allergies have different reactions for everyone, but this is how foods react for me and it is so mild I barely noticed it after a long time of wondering what was ruining my skin so badly.”
Some products such a Mayo is made with milk now, but originally it was made without and products like Hellmann's Mayo exist today without dairy. There is pizza that is gluten free and REALLY GOOD! Look, I'm not saying that we should give up old foods, but some people can't even eat lunch because they can't pack lunch either. Students don’t even talk about it with each other. At least make this a topic, because any student can have allergies to foods and not have it be good enough. Only the top main allergens like milk, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts are focused on at Flagstaff High School, but without some of these there's at least one other ingredient students can't eat from. This needs to change.