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I have some food allergies. They are real allergies. I’ve had them since I was quite small; they had to put me on soy formula back when formula was the preferred baby feeding option and dairy allergies were not very respectable. Also, back then — alas, still quite a lot now! — there is a theory that people “grow out” of allergies. Unlike now, this theory was pretty heavy weight and assumed as opposed to carefully monitored for and challenge tested. Also, a component of this theory was sort of, well, how much can this person have before they have to be hospitalized, as opposed to, how little should they consume to enjoy the robust good health of “normal” children.
Because I grew up with this nonsense, I believed in it for a long time, not knowing any better and all of the compliance not having been burned out of me yet. And then I discovered Real Ice Cream on a trip to Boston, back in the Good Years of Steve’s Ice Cream. Also, I had a boss at my first “real job” who would go buy fudge at the shop in the mall and share it ‘round. Great boss; really fun. I have a ton of very, very entertaining stories from that job that I don’t write down. Sorry! Good news tho; the statue of limitations on everything has long since run out. (And yes, I do understand how moving out of jurisdiction can affect the clock. I was in the state for plenty of time. The clock has run out. And I’m still not writing any of those stories down.)
Anyway, real ice cream plus fudge pushed me over the edge, and during the recovery from that I inadvertently discovered that if I read all the labels and stayed away from all milk products whenever I possibly could, I was a whole lot less sick all the time — my stomach didn’t hurt, I didn’t feel like I had a cold all the time and when I got a cold, it was less likely to turn into bronchitis, hang around for a month, and result in a need for antibiotics.
This was amazing! It would be another decade before I figured out the other major allergy category for me (schaaldieren, or crustaceans, neither of which helps with communication because no one knows what either of them mean), altho fortunately, I figured it out before it had progressed very far into contact reactions and I’ve never had an anaphylactic response. In the course of mopping of the last of the food allergies (that I know of!), I realized that I had a problem with some still-seem-kinda-random-to-me things like lemongrass (*sigh*) and mangoes.
And _then_ I remembered how much I loved buckwheat toast. I got some kasha (a lot, sadly) and I ran it through the mill and make buckwheat pancakes. They were soooooo good. I cannot even tell you how fantastic they were. And every morning I had a massive allergic reaction to. . . Something. You would think I would have figured this out immediately, but as a practical matter, the love of buckwheat took a solid week or possibly more to percolate through my surprisingly thick and very, very snotty head. At this point in my life, I finally understood something that people in the field had referred to for years — that often it is a favorite or very exciting and desirable food that is the one you are allergic to. I mean, unfair! Also, pretty sure a sign of a strong histamine mediated cortisol response.
One thing I have discovered over and over and over again is that once I identify an allergen, and eliminate it carefully for a while, when I accidentally run into it hidden in something unexpected, I find it pretty quick, and often based on, “wow this smells / tastes really gross”. Usually, if I have someone else smell or taste the thing that smells or tastes really gross to me, they’re like, I have no idea what you are smelling; it smells fine to me. So, good news! Once you’ve adapted, your sensory system can give you lots of warning! It’s just figuring it out so it can train that’s the hard part.
This is the long way round to saying: R. bought some new flavors of Ben & Jerry’s Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert. One of the flavors is Boom Chocolatta Core, and is advertised as both Dairy Free and Gluten Free, and has the delightful and new to me Kosher marking of “DE”, which means “Dairy Equipment”:
https://oukosher.org/halacha-yomis/i-have-seen-some-ou-products-labeled-ou-de-what-does-de-mean/
The gluten free always makes me a little nervous. LOTS of people hear me describe my allergies (go ahead, refer to above) when I am characterizing them as “milk allergic and some other things like some shellfish” and hear — don’t ask me why!!! — “gluten intolerant”. Because milk is wheat? I don’t know? Cows? WTF? More support for the theory that no one is listening very carefully to the words anyway. So I get offered a lot of gluten free products, and I have noticed over the years that I’m better off with the unlabeled “normal” product than the “gluten free product”, because the gluten free products often have _way_ _more_ milk products in them than the “normal” product (see: gluten free breads of the “cloud” variety). And occasionally, especially in cookies, there is buckwheat.
But honestly, I just did not expect there to be buckwheat flour in a frozen dessert. I mean, sure, there are gluten-free cookies with buckwheat. But what are they doing in my dairy free frozen dessert? Probably helping someone out with their GFCF diet, presumably.
This is now _two_ vegan ice creams I cannot have. There’s the vegan ice cream with vat-created casein in it (allergic to casein, doesn’t matter where it comes from). (First to market example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_Robot . My BIL in NJ attempted to serve it to me. I asked to see the label and I did not consume anyway. We had an entertaining speculative convo about kosher and lab-grown proteins that I followed up with more detailed research on; there will be more developments in that for years to come, I feel sure.) And now there’s buckwheat flour in a vegan ice cream. Mango is usually on the label if included, so that’s probably fine. I guess I just gotta watch out for lemongrass and crustacea.
ETA: As near as I can tell, Boom Chocolatta is the only Ben & Jerry’s that uses any buckwheat. There are two other gluten free vegan options from Ben & Jerry’s (Karamel Sutra and and the Non Dairy Phish Food), if you want to do your GFCF and are also looking to avoid buckwheat (also, if you are in that situation, wow, do I feel for you).
As I was poking around looking for other vegan ice cream that has casein in it (yeah, I really did decide this was a good use of my time, and if you read all the way down to here, you might even agree with me. Right _now_ this seems like a total waste, but I’m going to be staring at a label some day, possibly while under the influence, and need to be able to make a decision that doesn’t involve me getting any sicker than I already am. Background research is how my control-freakiness manifests, it is true, but it is _also_ how I get to keep trying new things without it constantly going horribly awry), I ran across this:
https://fitfoodiefinds.com/chocolate-protein-ice-cream/
I’m not going to get into the whole Protein Makes It Healthy part; you do you. HOWEVER!
“This ice cream recipe is dairy free and made with frozen bananas, cocoa powder, chocolate protein powder, and almond milk!”
I’m like, “chocolate protein powder”? And sure enough, while they do have a guide to protein powder link that links to both plant based protein options that are genuinely dairy free, and whey protein powders, the recommended protein powder further down the page is … Tera’s Whey. They’ve machined the language to CTA, of course:
“Chocolate protein powder – you make this chocolate protein ice cream extra chocolate-y by using chocolate protein powder. Feel free to use whey or plant based protein powder. Our personal favorite protein powder is Teras Whey.”
Yeah, that’ll make dairy free ice cream for sure. *eye roll* I would say, “Well, I’m sure anyone who carefully read all of that would keep it straight in their head, but RKTs literally have three ingredients (rice krispies, marshmallows and some sort of fat), two of which contain no milk products at all, and one of my sisters swore up and down that she’d made it safe for me and had still used butter. Sure, she’s a fucking psychopath (this is not the sister who I travel with frequently, obviously) who has it in for me, but mistakes are pretty easy to make and calling a recipe dairy free and inviting people to put mystery powder in it and then including dairy-full mystery powder as a recommendation does seem kinda dodgy.
Because I grew up with this nonsense, I believed in it for a long time, not knowing any better and all of the compliance not having been burned out of me yet. And then I discovered Real Ice Cream on a trip to Boston, back in the Good Years of Steve’s Ice Cream. Also, I had a boss at my first “real job” who would go buy fudge at the shop in the mall and share it ‘round. Great boss; really fun. I have a ton of very, very entertaining stories from that job that I don’t write down. Sorry! Good news tho; the statue of limitations on everything has long since run out. (And yes, I do understand how moving out of jurisdiction can affect the clock. I was in the state for plenty of time. The clock has run out. And I’m still not writing any of those stories down.)
Anyway, real ice cream plus fudge pushed me over the edge, and during the recovery from that I inadvertently discovered that if I read all the labels and stayed away from all milk products whenever I possibly could, I was a whole lot less sick all the time — my stomach didn’t hurt, I didn’t feel like I had a cold all the time and when I got a cold, it was less likely to turn into bronchitis, hang around for a month, and result in a need for antibiotics.
This was amazing! It would be another decade before I figured out the other major allergy category for me (schaaldieren, or crustaceans, neither of which helps with communication because no one knows what either of them mean), altho fortunately, I figured it out before it had progressed very far into contact reactions and I’ve never had an anaphylactic response. In the course of mopping of the last of the food allergies (that I know of!), I realized that I had a problem with some still-seem-kinda-random-to-me things like lemongrass (*sigh*) and mangoes.
And _then_ I remembered how much I loved buckwheat toast. I got some kasha (a lot, sadly) and I ran it through the mill and make buckwheat pancakes. They were soooooo good. I cannot even tell you how fantastic they were. And every morning I had a massive allergic reaction to. . . Something. You would think I would have figured this out immediately, but as a practical matter, the love of buckwheat took a solid week or possibly more to percolate through my surprisingly thick and very, very snotty head. At this point in my life, I finally understood something that people in the field had referred to for years — that often it is a favorite or very exciting and desirable food that is the one you are allergic to. I mean, unfair! Also, pretty sure a sign of a strong histamine mediated cortisol response.
One thing I have discovered over and over and over again is that once I identify an allergen, and eliminate it carefully for a while, when I accidentally run into it hidden in something unexpected, I find it pretty quick, and often based on, “wow this smells / tastes really gross”. Usually, if I have someone else smell or taste the thing that smells or tastes really gross to me, they’re like, I have no idea what you are smelling; it smells fine to me. So, good news! Once you’ve adapted, your sensory system can give you lots of warning! It’s just figuring it out so it can train that’s the hard part.
This is the long way round to saying: R. bought some new flavors of Ben & Jerry’s Non-Dairy Frozen Dessert. One of the flavors is Boom Chocolatta Core, and is advertised as both Dairy Free and Gluten Free, and has the delightful and new to me Kosher marking of “DE”, which means “Dairy Equipment”:
https://oukosher.org/halacha-yomis/i-have-seen-some-ou-products-labeled-ou-de-what-does-de-mean/
The gluten free always makes me a little nervous. LOTS of people hear me describe my allergies (go ahead, refer to above) when I am characterizing them as “milk allergic and some other things like some shellfish” and hear — don’t ask me why!!! — “gluten intolerant”. Because milk is wheat? I don’t know? Cows? WTF? More support for the theory that no one is listening very carefully to the words anyway. So I get offered a lot of gluten free products, and I have noticed over the years that I’m better off with the unlabeled “normal” product than the “gluten free product”, because the gluten free products often have _way_ _more_ milk products in them than the “normal” product (see: gluten free breads of the “cloud” variety). And occasionally, especially in cookies, there is buckwheat.
But honestly, I just did not expect there to be buckwheat flour in a frozen dessert. I mean, sure, there are gluten-free cookies with buckwheat. But what are they doing in my dairy free frozen dessert? Probably helping someone out with their GFCF diet, presumably.
This is now _two_ vegan ice creams I cannot have. There’s the vegan ice cream with vat-created casein in it (allergic to casein, doesn’t matter where it comes from). (First to market example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_Robot . My BIL in NJ attempted to serve it to me. I asked to see the label and I did not consume anyway. We had an entertaining speculative convo about kosher and lab-grown proteins that I followed up with more detailed research on; there will be more developments in that for years to come, I feel sure.) And now there’s buckwheat flour in a vegan ice cream. Mango is usually on the label if included, so that’s probably fine. I guess I just gotta watch out for lemongrass and crustacea.
ETA: As near as I can tell, Boom Chocolatta is the only Ben & Jerry’s that uses any buckwheat. There are two other gluten free vegan options from Ben & Jerry’s (Karamel Sutra and and the Non Dairy Phish Food), if you want to do your GFCF and are also looking to avoid buckwheat (also, if you are in that situation, wow, do I feel for you).
As I was poking around looking for other vegan ice cream that has casein in it (yeah, I really did decide this was a good use of my time, and if you read all the way down to here, you might even agree with me. Right _now_ this seems like a total waste, but I’m going to be staring at a label some day, possibly while under the influence, and need to be able to make a decision that doesn’t involve me getting any sicker than I already am. Background research is how my control-freakiness manifests, it is true, but it is _also_ how I get to keep trying new things without it constantly going horribly awry), I ran across this:
https://fitfoodiefinds.com/chocolate-protein-ice-cream/
I’m not going to get into the whole Protein Makes It Healthy part; you do you. HOWEVER!
“This ice cream recipe is dairy free and made with frozen bananas, cocoa powder, chocolate protein powder, and almond milk!”
I’m like, “chocolate protein powder”? And sure enough, while they do have a guide to protein powder link that links to both plant based protein options that are genuinely dairy free, and whey protein powders, the recommended protein powder further down the page is … Tera’s Whey. They’ve machined the language to CTA, of course:
“Chocolate protein powder – you make this chocolate protein ice cream extra chocolate-y by using chocolate protein powder. Feel free to use whey or plant based protein powder. Our personal favorite protein powder is Teras Whey.”
Yeah, that’ll make dairy free ice cream for sure. *eye roll* I would say, “Well, I’m sure anyone who carefully read all of that would keep it straight in their head, but RKTs literally have three ingredients (rice krispies, marshmallows and some sort of fat), two of which contain no milk products at all, and one of my sisters swore up and down that she’d made it safe for me and had still used butter. Sure, she’s a fucking psychopath (this is not the sister who I travel with frequently, obviously) who has it in for me, but mistakes are pretty easy to make and calling a recipe dairy free and inviting people to put mystery powder in it and then including dairy-full mystery powder as a recommendation does seem kinda dodgy.
