I know I'm not answering the question

[cjsmith]

People ask "What CAN you eat?" and I say "Well, no _________, no ___________ of any kind, no ________ including __________ ..."

That's not what they asked. It's the best and shortest answer I have at the moment, but it's in an unhelpful and inconvenient form. The harried admin trying to order lunch for thirty-five will understand only that I cannot have anything the restaurant offers. The guy doing the Costco snack-food run can read labels for an hour and still not find something I can eat. It's not even, when you get right down to it, a useful answer for myself. I know mainly what to avoid. It's a lot faster and easier to know what to go find.

[LJ-CUT TEXT="After five-plus weeks looking around, I can at least start this list now."]
If something's on here, presume that what's there is just that thing plain: ie chicken, NOT honey-roasted chicken or Kentucky fried chicken, JUST chicken.

I can eat these ingredients:
All vegetables except potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips.
Almost any meat or poultry. (Careful of the sugar-cured stuff, maple sausage, and the like.)
Eggs.
Any herb or spice I can currently think of.
Mustard (the condiment as well as the spice).
Oils such as olive oil, sesame oil, peanut oil.
Butter and margarine.
Soy products such as tofu.
Some fruits people don't tend to think of as fruits, such as tomato. (Need more examples here)
Any cheese. There are fussy details here, but frankly, this will do.
Unsweetened plain yogurt.
Any nuts.
Peanuts (technically a legume, but they're okay).
Unsweetened peanut butter or almond butter.

I dislike, but can eat:
Broccoli.
Mushrooms.
Artificial sweeteners.

I can eat in moderation:
Beans and legumes.
??Coconut??
??Milk??
Very dark chocolate with almost no sugar in it (careful of those "89% dark" but "16g sugar / serving" bars! Grab the "5g sugar in the whole bar" kind instead).
Lemon juice or lime juice used as flavoring or in cooking.

The basic things to avoid:
Sugars, fruits, starches, grains.

Nonobvious corollaries - also avoid:
Most commercially-made salad dressings, ketchup, bbq sauce, chili sauce, salsas, canned soups, marinades, dips, spaghetti sauces, Chicken Tonight sauces, and the like.
Most spicy foods made in Chinese restaurants in America.
Most fast-food burgers - full of sugar even if you ditch the bun.
Corn in any form including corn starch.
Alcohol including those stupid Atkins-bar "sugar alcohols".
Caffeine (may be unrelated to the yeast control diet, but it's listed in my treatment handout).
Fish or seafood of any kind (completely unrelated; these simply make me throw up).

Basically, if it isn't a fruit and isn't bread, and it's on the periphery of the grocery store instead of down one of the aisles, there's a good chance I can have it. If it is commercially prepared, there's a good chance I can't have it.[/LJ-CUT]

More helpful yet would be lists of made things somebody could buy rather than lists of raw ingredients. I'll get there.

Comments

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

In 1991 I developed an anaphylactic reaction to milk protein. I can eat anything else, just not those proteins. This excludes milk, butter, whey (in many products), yogurt, cheese. I told so many people that I couldn't have milk protein, only to be met with the question "So can you have eggs?" that I started telling people I couldn't eat anything that came out of a cows udder. Some people still ask about eggs. I guess our high school biology curriculum is somewhat lacking!

For office meals, conferences, and other events, I write VEGAN. Now I am not a vegan - I am in fact very much a carnivore - but for caterers, party planners, and office administrators, vegan just makes sense; they can identify with it, and also can discuss it with caterers. So far, I haven't died from anything at an event or on an airline; though I had one close call, at the Portland convention (apparently my description of a hams sandwich on whole wheat, no butter and no mayo, inspired the short order cook to add cheese. I guess they thought it would be boring otherwise.

Anyway, if there's a common diet that excludes the things you can't eat, try giving people that, even if it restricts you more than you would like.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Apparently a lot of people assume that mayonnaise is a dairy product as well (so says a friend whose daughter is allergic to milk). Is it the color that causes the free-association?

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

Real Mayo isn't a dairy product. However, if you examine the huge jars that caterers buy, more often than not you'll find whey added. Whey, being a by-product of cheese production and other milk processing, is very cheap. It also works really well as an extender in many products. It doesn't affect the taste much, but does lower the overall cost of the product.

There's a really good chance that mayo in a restaurant will NOT have whey in it - but given that it is used in many cheap catering brands, I can't take the risk of going into anaphylactic shock from it, so I just never order mayo in a restaurant, unless they can produce the jar or package. I do eat mayo at home, because I have the packaging!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. Anaphylactic = Not Good. At least if I screw up, all I'll get is another hard-to-cure chronic illness; if you screw up -- quite possibly by someone else's mistake! -- you could get a trip to the ER, or worse. Yikes.

So far, my diet is more restrictive than the ones I know the names of. Maybe I should write that I can eat only those things a vegan *cannot* eat. ;-)