Oral History Project
We decided to investigate the effects that a debilitating food allergy has on an individual’s life. In order to get a sense of what it’s like to live with a food allergy, Liz was interviewed. Liz has a dairy intolerance. In her interview she talks about how she was diagnosed with the allergy and about the struggles that she has to go through on a daily basis with the disorder. In order to get a better sense of how much an allergy affects one’s life, we decided to contrast Liz’s experiences with someone that does not have a food allergy, Billy Brennan. Billy is a 26 year old student at Rowan University. Both interviews can be viewed below.
Interview # 1 can be found by clicking here
I first discovered my food allergy when I graduated high school and I was getting ready for work and I passed out twice. And from that I had to go to the hospital and just a couple weeks later my family just kind of figured out that my system couldn’t tolerate dairy anymore.
I have IBS, which is irritable bowel syndrome. And right now dairy makes me sick and what that is, is because I’m in college I’m all stressed out that’s what my doctors think is causing it all. But hopefully like food allergies change every, I think it’s seven years they change, so I might’ve been allergic to something seven years ago and now it’s dairy. So maybe in another, I ‘ve had this for um three years, so hopefully three years from now I’ll be able to eat dairy. But we’ll see if it’s something else then.
What types of tests have you had, have there been any tests done?
Yeah um I had a colonoscopy, which was not a fun experience. And um I’ve had I you know I think that’s the only thing I’ve had. But I’ve gone to nutritionists. Um I went through their program for six months. And um I actually started they put me on a diet off of everything. I was eating plain chicken, rice, rice crackers. That was basically it. Water. Apple sauce. Bland. Nothing. And then little by little I added something in to see what would trigger me. And of course it was the dairy and then from there I found out I was allergic to beef too. So I haven’t had beef in about like a year, year and a half.
Is it hard to eat out?
Yeah, I have to make sure I talk to the waiter and see. I have to, you know, full on talk to them about how allergic I am to dairy and make sure they know that my allergy’s like for real and not like oh I can’t have a little bit of dairy. No, I can’t have it at all. And that’s also another thing- that people think I’m lactose intolerant, and that’s what they get me confused with, but I’m not. I can’t take a pill and then have dairy. I just, I could take that pill, which I thought that’s what I was at first, and I’ve taken that pill and still get sick.
Is it hard to eat at school?
Yeah, I always make sure I have snacks on me and um by now cause it’s been two three years since it’s happened so I know what snacks I can eat if I am out, like packaged snacks. Um but eating at like a food court, buffet style, that’s really hard for me cause I don’t know if a spoon touched another spoon that was you know used dairy or anything like that so it’s really hard.
Is it hard to buy groceries?
Um when I first figured out I was allergic to dairy it was very hard. Me and my mom spent probably three four hours looking at everything trying to find stuff because lunch meats have dairy in it and um breads have dairy. Um I’m trying to think, just things that you wouldn’t expect. We had to look at all different kinds of chips. Just, honestly everything, just to make sure.
How did you eat before compared to how you eat now?
I ate very bad before. I played a bunch of sports in school so I was always hungry when I came home and I would just shove everything in my mouth to uh fill my belly up. But my mom and my dad they kept the house pretty healthy. You know, snacks here and there, you know, fruits and vegetables. But what really did me in was when I would go over to my friend Steph’s house she would have glazed doughnuts and every junk food. You’d go into her pantry and there was like bags and bags of chips and popcorn and just all this stuff that you couldn’t even imagine. Stuff that wasn’t in my house so I always indulged over there.
Do you think that has something to do with why your body acted the way it did?
Probably. Yeah, I just, I ate so bad. I’m paying for it now.
Is it hard not to eat the foods that make you sick?
Yeah, at first it was really hard. I um cheated, cheated all the time. And I would just eat Cheez-Its, I would have hm I wouldn’t have ice cream but Cheez-Its were the biggest thing to stop eating because my family always keeps them in the house and they’re just so yummy. And just regular cheese with crackers. That was really hard and my dad always likes to eat blocks of cheese. He keeps them in the house and cuts them off and puts them with cheese and red peppers so that’s one of my favorite snacks. So yeah that was really hard. Even now my dad will say like ooh look at this butter that I’m eating and just like rubs it in. He thinks that I don’t want to eat this way, like I’m choosing not to eat the dairy. And I get sick from it, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. So it just kind of stinks.
Weren’t you on a gluten free diet at some point?
Yeah it sucked. Yeah, [the nutritionist] still doesn’t want me on gluten but it’s so hard not to eat gluten. Like dairy’s everywhere but gluten is even more. And when you can’t have dairy or gluten, what can you eat? Nothin! It’s so hard. Especially when my mom makes pasta every Sunday night. Pasta’s so yummy. And for me not to eat it, and bread. Gluten free pasta made me sick because if weren’t allergic to gluten and you go on gluten free stuff it like messes up your body. I found that out after I was eating it. Because I was like alright I’ll try this gluten free stuff. My birthday was coming up and I wanted to have birthday cake. So we got gluten free mix and it was disgusting. But uh after that I was like oh look at this they have like gluten free bread and pretzels. The pretzels are good, gluten free pretzels. Yeah, but everything else sucks.
Did you have to learn how to cook stuff differently?
Yeah, it’s really hard not to use flour. I’m telling you, life changing. Do it for a day. Cause then you have to look at everything. It really is different. Like how in Food, Inc. they were talking like about after something happens it makes you look at the ingredients and stuff. And that’s what happened, you know, now I have to look at the ingredients. It makes you look at the ingredients and see what’s actually in your food.
Liz's way of eating is very particular, making sure that she knows anything and everything that goes into the food that she eats. If she is not careful, she can get very sick. In order to contrast Liz's way of eating, we needed someone who didn't think about what they were putting in their mouth. We needed someone who would open the fridge and eat without looking at any ingredients, or would eat out all the time. So, we decided on Billy Brennan. He is a 26 year old student at Rowan University with an 8 month old baby girl.
Interview # 2 can be found by clicking here
Do you know anything about food allergies?
Uh a little bit I mean uh, well I have a daughter, she's, uh, about 8 months old I think, and we can only give her like one thing new at a time about every 2 weeks, uh like if its going to be fruit, uh, like apples, you can only give her apples, not apples and pears, because if she has a reaction to one you don't know what it is, but thats what we have to do until she develops more, but other than that not too much about food allergies.
Have you ever had health problems that affected how you ate?
Yeah, you know what I did, I started to develop, uh, ulcer in my stomach. I guess it was like, uh 3 years ago. I couldn't eat any spicy food. I only ate bland stuff. Um yeah, no no no, that was after Iraq, um, that could of had to do with it because of all the stress.
I think it was like 6 months they gave me like a stomach pill that helped, yeah, just changing what I was eating. But you know, I really had to watch what I was eating.
Do you ever think about what you're putting into your mouth?
(Laughs) uh, um, yeah, its, its mostly I do, I mean I wish I could eat more healthy. I mean, uh, a lot of times what I eat is based off of how much money I have, like, I know that, um, in a lot of places where they don't have much money like, uh, where its not much money like an area that has a lot of poverty, a lot of times, from what I heard its, um, where peoples waste is a lot higher and all that. Think about it the cheap stuff is the fattening stuff, like McDonald's. There was a time where I had so little money that I had to live off the Dollar Menu.There was a time that I had so many McDoubles that I would rather not eat, than eat.
Do you ever look at food labels when you're shopping? What do you look for?
Um, Yes. Protein. Protein and um, I used to eat a lot of canned soup. You could feel it when you ate a lot of that, um, sodium. Yeah, you feel it. So I look for soups with no sodium or low sodium.
When you're eating out, do you ever ask what's being added to your food?
I don't want to know what's being added to my food. (Laughs) No, Not at all.
At the apartment what do you eat?
Whenever I'm here, I eat fast. Whatever, whatever won't take me too long to cook. So convenient, yeah. Like tonight might be hot dogs. I eat a lot of that. And uh macaroni and cheese.
How about when George (Billy's roommate) is cooking?
I,uh, try to steer him towards steak. Or, uh, some kind of meat.
How about at home?
Uh, see, its even more on the fly when I'm back at home cause the baby and everything. I try to eat, if I even do eat.
(Billy talking about the way he eats)
That's one thing about me. I'm a creature of habit when I eat. Yeah, uh, when George wasn't here last week and didn't cook any steak or anything, as weird as it sounds, I could feel like my body saying I need like a massive, uh, protein or beef or something like that. I could feel it.
Do you ever go into a health food store to shop?
Um, No, I don't think so.
Why not?
(Long pause) Um (pause), well the first thought I had when you asked me that was they usually cost more money like the healthier the food, like I said before, like the cheaper stuff is fatty.
The process of interviewing as a means of research was relatively new to both of us. The process turned out to be very enjoyable and we got some very useful information from them. Both Liz’s and Billy’s interviews gave us insight into their different lifestyles. From the information gathered from the interviews, we decided that we want to further investigate the difference between living with a food allergy and not living with a food allergy. From the two interviews, we could see that there was a huge difference between the two. The only way to find out more is to dig deeper, which we will do in our Collaborative Project.
Interview # 1 can be found by clicking here
I first discovered my food allergy when I graduated high school and I was getting ready for work and I passed out twice. And from that I had to go to the hospital and just a couple weeks later my family just kind of figured out that my system couldn’t tolerate dairy anymore.
I have IBS, which is irritable bowel syndrome. And right now dairy makes me sick and what that is, is because I’m in college I’m all stressed out that’s what my doctors think is causing it all. But hopefully like food allergies change every, I think it’s seven years they change, so I might’ve been allergic to something seven years ago and now it’s dairy. So maybe in another, I ‘ve had this for um three years, so hopefully three years from now I’ll be able to eat dairy. But we’ll see if it’s something else then.
What types of tests have you had, have there been any tests done?
Yeah um I had a colonoscopy, which was not a fun experience. And um I’ve had I you know I think that’s the only thing I’ve had. But I’ve gone to nutritionists. Um I went through their program for six months. And um I actually started they put me on a diet off of everything. I was eating plain chicken, rice, rice crackers. That was basically it. Water. Apple sauce. Bland. Nothing. And then little by little I added something in to see what would trigger me. And of course it was the dairy and then from there I found out I was allergic to beef too. So I haven’t had beef in about like a year, year and a half.
Is it hard to eat out?
Yeah, I have to make sure I talk to the waiter and see. I have to, you know, full on talk to them about how allergic I am to dairy and make sure they know that my allergy’s like for real and not like oh I can’t have a little bit of dairy. No, I can’t have it at all. And that’s also another thing- that people think I’m lactose intolerant, and that’s what they get me confused with, but I’m not. I can’t take a pill and then have dairy. I just, I could take that pill, which I thought that’s what I was at first, and I’ve taken that pill and still get sick.
Is it hard to eat at school?
Yeah, I always make sure I have snacks on me and um by now cause it’s been two three years since it’s happened so I know what snacks I can eat if I am out, like packaged snacks. Um but eating at like a food court, buffet style, that’s really hard for me cause I don’t know if a spoon touched another spoon that was you know used dairy or anything like that so it’s really hard.
Is it hard to buy groceries?
Um when I first figured out I was allergic to dairy it was very hard. Me and my mom spent probably three four hours looking at everything trying to find stuff because lunch meats have dairy in it and um breads have dairy. Um I’m trying to think, just things that you wouldn’t expect. We had to look at all different kinds of chips. Just, honestly everything, just to make sure.
How did you eat before compared to how you eat now?
I ate very bad before. I played a bunch of sports in school so I was always hungry when I came home and I would just shove everything in my mouth to uh fill my belly up. But my mom and my dad they kept the house pretty healthy. You know, snacks here and there, you know, fruits and vegetables. But what really did me in was when I would go over to my friend Steph’s house she would have glazed doughnuts and every junk food. You’d go into her pantry and there was like bags and bags of chips and popcorn and just all this stuff that you couldn’t even imagine. Stuff that wasn’t in my house so I always indulged over there.
Do you think that has something to do with why your body acted the way it did?
Probably. Yeah, I just, I ate so bad. I’m paying for it now.
Is it hard not to eat the foods that make you sick?
Yeah, at first it was really hard. I um cheated, cheated all the time. And I would just eat Cheez-Its, I would have hm I wouldn’t have ice cream but Cheez-Its were the biggest thing to stop eating because my family always keeps them in the house and they’re just so yummy. And just regular cheese with crackers. That was really hard and my dad always likes to eat blocks of cheese. He keeps them in the house and cuts them off and puts them with cheese and red peppers so that’s one of my favorite snacks. So yeah that was really hard. Even now my dad will say like ooh look at this butter that I’m eating and just like rubs it in. He thinks that I don’t want to eat this way, like I’m choosing not to eat the dairy. And I get sick from it, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. So it just kind of stinks.
Weren’t you on a gluten free diet at some point?
Yeah it sucked. Yeah, [the nutritionist] still doesn’t want me on gluten but it’s so hard not to eat gluten. Like dairy’s everywhere but gluten is even more. And when you can’t have dairy or gluten, what can you eat? Nothin! It’s so hard. Especially when my mom makes pasta every Sunday night. Pasta’s so yummy. And for me not to eat it, and bread. Gluten free pasta made me sick because if weren’t allergic to gluten and you go on gluten free stuff it like messes up your body. I found that out after I was eating it. Because I was like alright I’ll try this gluten free stuff. My birthday was coming up and I wanted to have birthday cake. So we got gluten free mix and it was disgusting. But uh after that I was like oh look at this they have like gluten free bread and pretzels. The pretzels are good, gluten free pretzels. Yeah, but everything else sucks.
Did you have to learn how to cook stuff differently?
Yeah, it’s really hard not to use flour. I’m telling you, life changing. Do it for a day. Cause then you have to look at everything. It really is different. Like how in Food, Inc. they were talking like about after something happens it makes you look at the ingredients and stuff. And that’s what happened, you know, now I have to look at the ingredients. It makes you look at the ingredients and see what’s actually in your food.
Liz's way of eating is very particular, making sure that she knows anything and everything that goes into the food that she eats. If she is not careful, she can get very sick. In order to contrast Liz's way of eating, we needed someone who didn't think about what they were putting in their mouth. We needed someone who would open the fridge and eat without looking at any ingredients, or would eat out all the time. So, we decided on Billy Brennan. He is a 26 year old student at Rowan University with an 8 month old baby girl.
Interview # 2 can be found by clicking here
Do you know anything about food allergies?
Uh a little bit I mean uh, well I have a daughter, she's, uh, about 8 months old I think, and we can only give her like one thing new at a time about every 2 weeks, uh like if its going to be fruit, uh, like apples, you can only give her apples, not apples and pears, because if she has a reaction to one you don't know what it is, but thats what we have to do until she develops more, but other than that not too much about food allergies.
Have you ever had health problems that affected how you ate?
Yeah, you know what I did, I started to develop, uh, ulcer in my stomach. I guess it was like, uh 3 years ago. I couldn't eat any spicy food. I only ate bland stuff. Um yeah, no no no, that was after Iraq, um, that could of had to do with it because of all the stress.
I think it was like 6 months they gave me like a stomach pill that helped, yeah, just changing what I was eating. But you know, I really had to watch what I was eating.
Do you ever think about what you're putting into your mouth?
(Laughs) uh, um, yeah, its, its mostly I do, I mean I wish I could eat more healthy. I mean, uh, a lot of times what I eat is based off of how much money I have, like, I know that, um, in a lot of places where they don't have much money like, uh, where its not much money like an area that has a lot of poverty, a lot of times, from what I heard its, um, where peoples waste is a lot higher and all that. Think about it the cheap stuff is the fattening stuff, like McDonald's. There was a time where I had so little money that I had to live off the Dollar Menu.There was a time that I had so many McDoubles that I would rather not eat, than eat.
Do you ever look at food labels when you're shopping? What do you look for?
Um, Yes. Protein. Protein and um, I used to eat a lot of canned soup. You could feel it when you ate a lot of that, um, sodium. Yeah, you feel it. So I look for soups with no sodium or low sodium.
When you're eating out, do you ever ask what's being added to your food?
I don't want to know what's being added to my food. (Laughs) No, Not at all.
At the apartment what do you eat?
Whenever I'm here, I eat fast. Whatever, whatever won't take me too long to cook. So convenient, yeah. Like tonight might be hot dogs. I eat a lot of that. And uh macaroni and cheese.
How about when George (Billy's roommate) is cooking?
I,uh, try to steer him towards steak. Or, uh, some kind of meat.
How about at home?
Uh, see, its even more on the fly when I'm back at home cause the baby and everything. I try to eat, if I even do eat.
(Billy talking about the way he eats)
That's one thing about me. I'm a creature of habit when I eat. Yeah, uh, when George wasn't here last week and didn't cook any steak or anything, as weird as it sounds, I could feel like my body saying I need like a massive, uh, protein or beef or something like that. I could feel it.
Do you ever go into a health food store to shop?
Um, No, I don't think so.
Why not?
(Long pause) Um (pause), well the first thought I had when you asked me that was they usually cost more money like the healthier the food, like I said before, like the cheaper stuff is fatty.
The process of interviewing as a means of research was relatively new to both of us. The process turned out to be very enjoyable and we got some very useful information from them. Both Liz’s and Billy’s interviews gave us insight into their different lifestyles. From the information gathered from the interviews, we decided that we want to further investigate the difference between living with a food allergy and not living with a food allergy. From the two interviews, we could see that there was a huge difference between the two. The only way to find out more is to dig deeper, which we will do in our Collaborative Project.
