Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
|
|
|
M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
|
|
Sunday, August 14, 2005 Care Not for Carrots When we first met M. Small's birth parents, they already knew that he was developing normally and healthily. So we knew the kid wasn't going to come out with half a bowel or something. The main thing I was worried about was allergies. Seems like everybody's allergic to something, especially kids. You hear about these kids with such severe peanut allergies that they go into anaphylactic shock if somebody brushes them with a Charles Schulz cartoon. Or maybe that's just me. Obviously if he turned out to be lactose-intolerant or allergic to gluten or water or something, we'd deal with it, but we'd prefer not to have to. As it turned out, the only concession we had to make to any special dietary needs was giving him special preemie formula with a higher caloric content. And, you know, that worked. When we started him on baby food around six months, they told us to only start one food at a time and not to give him more then one new kind of food in a three-day period. That way, if he turned out to be allergic to something, we'd have already isolated it and wouldn't have to go through a lot of tedious trial and error. Peas? Fine. Sweet potatoes? Fine. Green beans? Fine. Squash? Fine. Carrots? His throat closed up later that night and made his breathing sound like a muted trumpet being played by an elephant in a wet balloon. But other than that, fine. If you get a reaction after introducing a certain food, you're supposed to try it two more times to be sure it's that and not some other environmental factor you may not be aware of. On the doctor's advice, we tried carrots again a couple of weeks later, but in a smaller serving and with other food. The reaction was proportionally smaller, but it was still there. On the doctor's advice, we skipped the third attempt. It seems that like our new U.N. ambassador, my son doesn't do carrots. As allergies went, we thought, this was a fairly innocuous one. Carrots are easy to avoid, after all. Asking them to be left off your house salad is the biggest hardship you'll ever face if you have a carrot allergy. You might not ever be cast in a live-action production of Watership Down, but it's not going to be hard to find an upside to that. So Trash and I counted ourselves lucky that the biggest problem in feeding M. Small was going to be a heavier rotation of all the other stage-one vegetables. We looked forward to stages two and three with relish. If we'd known then what we know now. You know what single ingredient is in the greatest percentage of mixed stage-two and stage-three baby foods? As it turns out, it's not carrots. It's water. And then it's carrots. I can understand that a jar labeled "Garden Vegetables" is going to have carrots. I can even understand that carrots would be the first ingredient on the list (after water, of course). It doesn't surprise me to see that "Roast Beef and Vegetable Dinner" has plenty of carrots. My own roast beef and vegetable dinners have plenty of carrots. You know what I don't use lots of carrots in? Lasagna. I've made lasagna many times (once from scratch), and never once has a carrot gone into the mix, let alone more carrots than anything else. Same with spaghetti. Trash makes this amazing spaghetti that has about nine hundred ingredients. Carrots are not among them. And yet these are the second item in the ingredient list on the baby-food version of both of these meals, as well as any number of others where you wouldn't expect to find carrots. I mean, peach cobbler? Please. It makes a cynical kind of sense, I suppose. Carrots are probably a cheap filler ingredient -- unlike shiitake mushrooms, for example -- that they can use a lot of. And doing so with carrots won't piss off the FDA -- unlike grass, for example. You don't see peanuts in baby food, because lots of kids turn up allergic to those, but who's allergic to carrots? It's like being allergic to celery. It's basically water in vegetable form. What could be more innocuous? But, of course, my boy is special. Don't worry, I do realize just how lucky we are that he's not allergic to water or air like some kids are. I'm a little disappointed that he can't experience spaghetti or lasagna until he's old enough to enjoy the carrot-free varieties that Trash and I will make for him (although the latter will be disappointment if he turns out to be allergic to barbecue sauce as well). But then, any carrot-intensive versions of those wouldn't be any sort of spaghetti or lasagna we'd recognize, anyway. And please don't suggest a baby food-processor, because life's too short and babyhood's even shorter. Yesterday he had part of my gyro. I was just glad I'd thought to order it without carrots. Today's best search phrase: "pizza man delivers pizza to a house the , girl sucks his from inside the pizza." I'd feel more qualified to comment on that if I didn't feel so out of touch with pop culture these days. posted by M. Giant 5:11 PM 23 comments 23 Comments:We were discussing this issue yesterday. We visited some friends whose otherwise delightful baby is extremely allergic to dogs. We're planning on having a kid soon, and we're terrified that it'll be allergic to our first-born aka the dog. What is it with kids these days? If they're not listening to their hippity hop, they're going into anaphylactic shock. Seriously though, it kinda freaks me out.
By It freaks me right out too. When we were kids and someone had "allergies" it meant they had snotty noses in the spring. Now entire SCHOOLS have to ban foods cause if you whisper "cashew" too loud, some kid keels over. What the hell happened?
By I love hearing your stories about M. Small and the cats. My mother has severe anaphylactic allergic reactions to all nut and peanut products, and she's amused by the increase in allergy awareness. She carries 2 EpiPens and a supply of Benadryl tablets on her at all times, and so far she's made it to 63. Your boy will make it too.
By I love hearing your stories about M. Small and the cats. My mother has severe anaphylactic allergic reactions to all nut and peanut products, and she's amused by the increase in allergy awareness. She carries 2 EpiPens and a supply of Benadryl tablets on her at all times, and so far she's made it to 63. Your boy will make it too.
By He may outgrow the carrot allergy. My daughter projectile vomited carrots (and only carrots) the 1st two times we gave them to her. By the time she was a little over a year, she was eating them just fine. I know, not much of a consolation during the baby food stage! Maybe try an organic line like Earth's Best to see if they don't put them in everything?
By Seriously the world has gone bad. I had asthma as a kid (occaisonally took a puffer, mostly just sometimes had to slow my breathing carefully)...but after about six years of no puffer carrying, I ended up in hospital yesterday needing more treatment than ever.
By Speaking of allergies...my mother raised 7 kids. Recently I received a desperate phone call, "Your brother has a prescription for penicillin and we can't remember if he is allergic to it!!! You need to call me ASAP!" Geniuses. The only kid with allergies was ME, the youngest one. How hard is that to remember? I am allergic to horses, dogs, cats, dust mites, penicillins, macrolides and nuts. I'm so fun. Why don't you go ahead and get M. Small a carrot tattoo so you never have these problems?
By My toddler is allergic to peanuts, and I just want to say thanks for the tip about the Charles Schulz cartoons!
By Too many carrots can also turn your child ORANGE. And when your child is a redhead, orange skin isn't too flattering. We had trouble with the carrots in stage 2 and 3 foods as well and just started making our own. It isn't that hard, just throw well cooked veggies, rice or pasta, some meat, and maybe some cream of chicken or mushroom soup, water in a processor, whir... and there's your baby food.
By
Carrot allergies turn out to be pretty common, maybe 25% of food allergies, and there does seem to be something about the damn things.
By While I do not put carrots in my spaghetti my mom occasionally throws some in hers. She started it when I was like 22 so one day at dinner there was a big HUH? moment but we all just kpet eating.
By You know who else was allergic to carrots? Mel Blanc.
By Life is too short to make your own baby food UNLESS you're already making something anyway. Whenever I was making something for the rest of the family I would just throw a cup or so of it into the food processor and freeze it in ice cube trays. One or two ice cubes is about a single serving size. Well rounded meals - thawed when ready. Convenient and way less expensive than commercial baby food. - Trish
By Drat, I thought my son was unique because of his carrot allergy and now I find out it's almost as common as his allergy to sulfa drugs. The good news is that he outgrew the carrot allergy by the time he was 10 and now thinks baby carrots are an acceptable potato chip substitution. The bad news is that's the only veggie he'll willingly eat.
By
I have a similar reaction to carrots, but not to organic carrots for some reason.
By I've heard that carrots are used to cleanse land from various contaminants. Just harvest a crop or two and then test the soil. Of course, you'd throw those carrots away.
By
I'm 22 years old and I've been allergic to carrots since I was 8..or at least thats when we discovered that.
By Think about other illnesses that have popped up since we were children-namely ADHD (whoever heard of that in the 70s), juvenile diabetes, allergies a plenty...what is different these days? VACCINES. Look into it- investigate the "illnesses" we vaccinate our children against and you will find that they are more likely to have an adverse reaction to the innoculation than to die from the disease. Not to mention vaccines are made with MONKEY tissue to cultivate the antibodies...doesn't that just seem wrong? It HAS to mess with their systems somehow and I think we are just seeing the beginning...
By I just found out my grandaughter is allergic to carrots too, I'd never of a carrot allergy before! In going through the shelf of baby food I keep at home for babysitting purposes I discovered the same problem you did - almost every mixed food has carrots in it! I am dumbfounded - that really limits what we can feed her considering there aren't that many alternatives to begin with.
By
I came across this looking for info on the carrot allergy. My son has a rash after eating carrots. we were told try again after a few weeks. Same result. My wife, a scientist, read the NIH link. Very helpful.
By
Hilarious commentary! "You might not ever be cast in a live-action production of Watership Down, but it's not going to be hard to find an upside to that."
By my daughter is 7 and allergic to carrots. She knows the first thing to tell people is her allergy. and if you go out to it, order all carrot free food. It can be done. Just make sure the kids know what to look for at school lunches.
By It would take less time for you to make your own carrot-free baby food than it took to read all those labels to find out if they had carrots in them. I know this because I have food allergies. I spend a lot of time reading labels in stores. I decided to make my own baby food right off the bat because of the likely hood of my son inheriting them. But I will never treat HIM like a pain in the ass (unless he is actually being one) about this issue, just the major food companies that resisted labeling and still don't identify major allergens like gluten.
By 
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
