Each grocery trip, I spend hours looking at food, emailing companies, and talking on the phone for a single product. My name is Mia, and I was recently diagnosed with Alpha Gal Syndrome, which is becoming increasingly popular as the years go on. In short, it is caused from a Lone Star tick bite, and makes the body allergic to any mammal or mammalian byproducts. This tick is spreading rapidly across the country.
Of course, it seems easy enough to avoid dairy, beef, pork, etc. But hidden in the ingredients is mammalian byproducts, or they are not shown at all! I have to contact each and every company about if a food is Alpha Gal safe; if the food has “sugar, natural flavors, may contain…” etc. Even down to vitamins, that could be derived from either plant or animal sources, and it is not required for them to say. This could mean anaphylaxis for me if I choose wrong.
Examples include, some sugar is filtered using bone char from mammals, but the FDA does not require companies to list this. Similarly, “natural flavors” is on many things we eat on a daily basis, but for someone like myself, with AGS, this could mean a life or death situation. But the FDA doesn’t care if these are listed!
All in all, if we were to create a label to certify products as Alpha Gal safe, this would protect myself and many others from another anaphylactic reaction. It could also be labeled as Vegan safe on most products, and this would be helping those that simply have that food preference or other health condition as well. Life shouldn’t be this difficult for someone to eat and enjoy food with my condition, because of the poor labels on our American food! Thank you for reading.