When I was small, my aunt was really into making t-shirts and pins, so when my cousin and I were diagnosed with peanut allergies, she made sure to deck us out in merch. She made me a t-shirt and backpack pin that said “Peanut Free Princess” and my cousin ones that said “No Peanut Zone” (think the No Parking Zone signs).
In the media, when people refer to peanut allergies, it’s often followed by stereotypes like “weird kid” or my personal favorite, “the first to die in a dystopian film.” This, however, is my reality and I was diagnosed so young that I don’t remember a version of my life where I didn’t have this allergy. There is a lot to having a peanut allergy that people misunderstand or just don’t know. For example, peanuts and peanut butter aren’t the only things I need to stay away from. A reaction could also be caused from fried chicken cooked in peanut oil or a sugar cookie that was cooked on the same pan as peanut butter cookies.
Luckily, I have friends and family that care about me and have taken the time to create safe environments for me, however, growing up with a peanut allergy has brought its challenges. Allergies are serious chronic illnesses and there needs to be more light shed on the reality of it.
There have been several interesting situations over the course of my life when the world made having a peanut allergy difficult.
Childhood
When I was a kid, my family was very scared. My cousin and I were both diagnosed about the same time. This was the late 2000s/early 2010s, so no one was really educated about allergies. Since there wasn’t a whole lot of general education regarding food allergies, the only restaurants I could go to were McDonald’s and Carrabas. We eventually branched out to other restaurants when I got a little older and my parents felt a little more comfortable trusting others, but we were still turned away by a handful of restaurants or met with the “It’s chicken, not peanuts” answer *insert crying emoji and girl face palm emoji*.
I had my only allergic reaction when I was 3, maybe 4, years old. It was one of my earliest memories. I was at a birthday party and I didn’t really understand the weight of my allergy or really what it was. When my mom told me not to eat the Hershey Kisses, for some reason I thought, Hey, this is the perfect opportunity to defy my parents for the first time! And I popped 2 or 3 of what turned out to be Peanut Butter Hershey Kisses. My first and only rebellious moment of my youth ended in an EpiPen to the thigh, a night in the hospital, and many tears shed by me and my parents.
Being as severely allergic as I was, I missed out on a handful of experiences. This includes not being able to eat the cupcakes at class birthday parties, being isolated at the infamous “Peanut-Free Table” grades K-5, and never getting to eat school lunch (which I’ve been told I wasn’t missing out on anything). However, elementary me wanted more than anything to munch on some smiley fries with a boxed chocolate milk in hand, surrounded by my friends and classmates at lunch time.
Despite all of this though, my family really did a lot to make sure I was never left out. When we went out to eat they would buy me McDonald’s to bring into the restaurant, when I would go to birthday parties my mom would send me with safe mini cupcakes, and in my really early schooling years, my mom would bring in a storage container filled with safe snacks at the beginning of the school year for me to eat whenever there was a class party.
There was this one day when I was in second or third grade that still deeply irks me, so I have to mention it. I was sitting at the peanut-free table and this girl showed up. I was so excited to eat my lunch with someone, especially someone who gets it. Another peanut free princess. Then she pulled out Nutter Butters… and started eating them. She gaslit me to tears, telling me that it didn’t have peanuts and she was just as badly allergic as I was. She infected my sterile table. The lunch ladies didn’t really do anything about it but I never saw that girl again. If I had seen her though at the playground or something, I probably would have swung!
Teen years
I was pretty chill as a teenager. I never acted out or gave into peer pressure, I was just a chronic people pleaser, which made setting necessary boundaries surrounding my allergy very hard. I was able to do it but not without pain in my heart. In addition to this, when I was about 16 or 17 this fear developed in me: whenever I would go out to eat I’d fear that it would be my last meal and I would never make it out of the restaurant. This anxiety overtook me at this point in my life, making me afraid to try new things.
Going to restaurants with my friends always went one of three ways: 1) it was safe, 2) it was not safe and my friends couldn’t understand why I couldn’t eat at a pizza place, or 3) it wasn’t safe and we just left. Usually my friends opted for option 3. While I knew my friends had the best intentions and a We care about you, Savannah attitude when going with scenario 3, I always felt really bad and still do to this day when my allergy is the reason we have to leave and start from square one for eating out. I was very thankful that my friends were so willing to walk out of restaurants for me but I could always tell some of them would get frustrated and all I wanted to do is make everyone else happy.
There was this one time when I went over to a friend’s house after school. There was supposed to be a group of us going but I was the only one who was able to show up at such short notice. One of their family members had baked a cake and really wanted me to eat it but because I couldn’t see an ingredient list or know if there were proper precautions taken, (looking at the jumbo jar of Jif peanut butter on the counter) I turned it down. She was very upset and offended but I had to be firm on this because it had to do with my safety. I had another situation like this happen at the same friend’s house maybe a year later. I usually eat before going to things anyways to avoid these types of situations but sometimes people just like to push boundaries. While I’m sure the adults in this situation had the best intentions, when someone respectfully declines, that should be the sign to stop insisting.
Adulthood & Present
As many people do, I became more adventurous when I reached adulthood. I was more open to trying new things, like I tried Starbucks for the first time a week after my high school graduation. Sure, there have been some setbacks in my growth but overall, I’m more comfortable with trying new foods and just living my life than ever before!
Although today restaurants are far more educated and able to accommodate my allergy, there is a lot of work to be done. I went to a new place a couple weekends ago and the chef and manager told me that even though it’s not listed on the “Contains or may contain” label, that the product still had likely been cross contaminated with peanuts. This was a corporate business and if that were true, it’s highly dangerous. My mom and I reached out via their corporate email, however, we still have not heard anything. Personally, I think they’re just uneducated, but if this is true and I hadn’t been talking with the staff, I could be dead right now. While there are rules and regulations to prevent this, food allergy related deaths have been happening a lot more recently. Here are two deaths that occurred in the United States due to incorrect labeling and cross contamination.
With all the bad, there is still an abundance of good! There are corporations that completely cut peanuts from their menu and small businesses that have dedicated their lives to creating peanut free products, one which is located right here in the Tampa Bay area! HaleLife Bakery is a gluten-free, vegan, and allergy-friendly establishment. Not a single item in their restaurant has peanuts in it! In all of their years being in business, there has never been a reported reaction to any of their products. I was beyond impressed by HaleLife Bakery when I first discovered them back in 2022 because they are creating experiences and making food safe and accessible for so many people with struggles just like my own! Upon discovering HaleLife, a lot of my anxieties about eating my last meal went away. HaleLife was proof to me that it was possible for food to be made safe and made confidently. While not every restaurant is nut-free, it still made me feel a lot more comfortable going to other restaurants.
With my new-found adventurous spirit, there are a lot of things I want to experience such as international travel. I’ve been working on completing my passport application to hopefully begin my travels this summer! Of course though, my peanut allergy is a part of who I am so wherever I travel, it will have to be to a country that is well informed and takes food allergies seriously. It does kind of suck because there are so many places I’ill never be able to go to, but I can’t go somewhere that I can’t eat. I’m still really looking forward to getting out of the U.S. and into new spaces. I want to immerse myself in different cultures and learn about the world. I want to see the Mona Lisa and the northern lights! Like a sponge in water, I want to absorb it all!
A lot of people who had peanut allergies as kids have reported growing out of them as adults, my cousin was one of them. As a kid, I used to dream of the day I would grow out of mine, but I’m 22 now and that day never came. In fact, when I was retested last summer, my allergy had only gotten worse in severity. It’s likely that I’ll be a peanut-free princess for life but I won’t let that stop me from living!