Right now half of the Brown household is soy, nut, egg and dairy free. It sucks. This decision wasn't made by choice. It was forced upon us. (It was forced on them, I'm still eating all the things.) The baby is allergic to everything it seems so Alli has to avoid everything to prevent passing it to him. At 3 months old, he has already full control over the house. Yesterday it was a beautiful 80 degrees here. Alli suggested we should go for a walk, which I agreed to. She then asked where should we walk? An answer immediately popped into my head: Ample Hills. That's when the wave of sadness washed over me.
Ample Hills is a local ice cream place. It's all homemade and they have all sorts of flavors with toppings and fix-ins you could ever want. It's basically heaven on earth for an ice cream lover like myself. It's just far enough that we don't go all that often. But it's close enough that it's perfect for a good walk on a nice day. You walk there, get your ice cream and eat it as you slowly walk back.
I'm not a jerk so I couldn't and didn't suggest Ample Hills. We ended just walking to a nearby playground where Graham got to play in the sprinklers. Truth be told, I still ended up getting ice cream. We stopped a grocery store. I got Ben & Jerry's and Alli got some coconut milk "frozen dessert".
When I asked her how it was she replied, "I have fake cookies in my fake ice cream." Have you ever heard a more glowing endorsement? Which brings me to the point of this post: why do people ban certain foods from their diets?
I get it when it's Dr's orders, like in our case. I also get if you're morally or religiously opposed to eating something. I'm talking about the people who are like "I'm not eating any dairy for a month just because." I've found that it's just a pain in the ass. Nothing that's this much of a pain is sustainable. So it seems like these people are just torturing themselves for some predetermined amount of time.
I suspect the answers will be things like weight loss and "so&so guru said [insert whatever demonized food here] is bad for my health". When it comes to weight loss I would just say you're just practicing a form of calorie restriction. So yea, if you eat a lot of dairy and then you stop without replacing those calories then you will lose weight. There are probably easier ways to go about calorie restriction though.
As for health effects, while food allergies are on the rise they only affect about 4% of the population. And yeah some people might be "intolerant" to some foods but this is highly individual. So just because a food doesn't agree with your friend doesn't mean you should swear it off.
Anyway, I just don't think it's worth all the trouble. I mean now I have to find a time when Graham and I can sneak off to Ample Hills by ourselves.
