life in mokievision

I recently discovered I might not be allergic to coconut after all.

When is an allergy not an allergy? When it's Oral Allergy Syndrome, also called Pollen-Food Allergy Syndrome (along with several other names, because everybody wants to be the one whose name gets used on House M.D.), in which regular nose-based allergies masquerade as food allergies, due to certain fruit and veggie proteins vaguely resembling problematic pollen proteins.

Basically, it's like your body mistaking a dust-bunny for a spider and wigging out inappropriately.

Outside of allergy season the problem food isn't a problem, because your body hasn't been primed by pollen and pushed into kill it with sneezing! mode. The heat involved in cooking and canning can also denature the troublesome proteins, which is how some folks can be allergic to a raw fruit or veggie but able to eat the same item cooked--because they're not allergic to the food itself, even though they are having an allergic reaction to it. Either of these could explain why I've been able to eat coconut just fine until recently, mostly baked in cookies or simmered in soups, but also just noshing on raw flakes without any ill effect. I just happened to do it at the wrong time of year this time.

The upside of this, apart from that OAS usually doesn't cause anaphylactic shock, is that it would also explain why my late winter/early spring allergies have been so bad since moving to this neighborhood: birch.

I used to live next to Tower Grove Park and the Missouri Botanical Garden, two big green spaces dedicated to growing a large variety of greenery, pretty much all of which I tested allergic to back in middle school. Apart from swollen hands when walking past a bushy area on Magnolia Avenue, though, my allergies just translated to a runny nose and some occasional sneeziness--and good luck narrowing down which bit of all that greenery was responsible for which sneeze. (Especially since the allergy scratch test throws a lot of false positives, as dracunculus pointed out.)

What the old neighborhood didn't have, and this neighborhood does, was a lot of birch trees. Specifically, a cluster of them half a block down from my current apartment.

In springtime, two of the biggest cross-reaction offenders are birch and alder trees. Depending on where you live, anywhere from 20 to 70 per cent of people who are allergic to birch and alder pollens will also have oral allergy syndrome. (Janet French, "Oral Allergy Syndrome: Why do Pollens and Foods Cross-React?" Allergic Living 2 July 2010)

The doctor interviewed in that article pointed out that OAS is more common than the legitimately scary food allergies like peanut, which might explain why so very many people believe they have food allergies even after a smug host points out that they just ate something they're supposed to be allergic to. (And fuck you if you do that to people. Seriously.) The article also mentions a point I regularly make, that chamomile and echinacea cause cross-reactions to ragweed because they're in the same family, which makes it really annoying when every suggested cure for your allergy woes is a nice cup of chamomile and echinacea tea.

The author does lose points for bad editing when she inadvertently (I hope) suggests that honey is somehow a plant related to ragweed, rather than that honey could contain ragweed (or related) pollen. That in itself sidesteps the point that many allergy sufferers intentionally eat honey hoping there's allergy-causing pollen in it, due to the old wives' tale that this will desensitize them. It doesn't work, though, because most of the honey on store shelves is (a) filtered, microfiltered, and then filtered some more to remove all possible pollen; (b) heated and treated till it's thoroughly dead so that it won't crystallize on store shelves; and (c) from China, and thus unlikely to contain any pollens you're familiar with. You could try raw local honey, but as someone who gave it a go, just go take a Claritin and save yourself the disappointment. (And the awfulness that is clover honey. Ugh.)

Back to the point! How vile is birch?

Here is the Wikipedia checklist of foods that are cross-reactive with birch: almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, bananas, carrots, celery, cherries, chicory, coriander, fennel, figs, hazelnuts, kiwis, nectarines, parsley, parsnips, peaches, pears, peppers, plums, potatoes, prunes, soy, strawberries, walnuts and wheat. That's not even a definitive list--other lists add all the tree nuts, and coconuts, and peanuts, and tomatoes, and turnips...

If you Google "oral allergy syndrome" and a food, Google will say, "Birch. It's the fucking birch, man."

Birch will take from you everything that you love.

Apart from a visit to an allergist, the only way to know for certain if my coconut allergy is a real allergy or a birch cross-reaction is to wait till the birch stops its arboreal spooging around June or July, and then nibble a little raw coconut while someone stands by with a heavy dose of Benedryl. A preemptive strike on the trees is out, as they wisely chose to be planted in front of a cop's house.

Sneaky, bastardly birch.

Update: TESTED AND CONFIRMED. The same coconut that made me miserable in April and May caused no reaction at all in June. Of course, now my grass allergies are in full effect, so I couldn't taste the coconut, but still...

There's nothing like being slammed with work to steal all the words right out of me.

It doesn't help that a large part of the work involves Googling terminology from specific fields. One fashion-related writing job, and for the next week Amazon and Buy.com send me emails about great sales in leggings, while Pinterest has oh so many fashion boards to share...

"Is that canned chicken?"

With two bowls of slow-cooked and shredded chicken breast in the fridge? No. Why would I open a can of shredded chicken when I already have shredded chicken?

Ugh.

I prefer fresh ingredients over tinned veggies and heavily processed boxfuuds, not out of a puritanical fear of any edibles that come from a container but because I'm cheap: ingredients go farther than prepackaged meals, and I don't have to worry about the sugar/salt/fat tango*, or the corn/dairy industry shoehorning in fillers to earn those subsidies. I keep a good supply of tinned and boxed food on hand for weather troubles and scheduling issues, but generally access to fresh food isn't an issue, since I live within walking distance of two supermarkets and a summer veggie stand. Time isn't even an issue: in the same time it takes a Pinterest mama to pull up a "3 cans + 2 boxes = homemade meal!" recipe, open her boxes, Instagram it and throw it in the oven, I can have my ingredients sliced, diced and cooking.

It just doesn't make sense to rely on boxfuuds in my situation.

If I don't tell older relatives what the meal is made of, it's the tastiest damn thing they've ever put in their mouths. If I reveal that a meal doesn't contain at least one can of Campbell's Cream Of Soup, or one box of Cheezy Noodle Product, they look at the dish like it's toxic. I don't know if it's generally generational or just my family, but there seems to be some kind of deep distrust of, well, cooking. Like it's not food unless someone opened a box.

And forget leftovers. Forget any big meal meant to store or stretch over several days, unless it's boiled (to death) ham'n'beans. "Eh. I'm not in the mood for that." Mood? You don't get to be in the mood to waste $15 of chicken that you requested.

"Is that canned chicken?" Would she know the difference without asking? Nope. And yet she didn't want it unless it came from a can.

No wonder my grandfather was such a cheap bastard, if this was what he was up against.

If you're not quite ranted out after all this, I offer: The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater

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* It's difficult to maintain tastiness in a product meant to sit on a shelf for months at a time. Boxfuuds therefore rely a lot on salt, sugar and fat for flavor. If the box claims to be low in one, look over the ingredients carefully, because it's probably high in one (or both) of the others to make up for the cut.

The climate is changing, and the important issue isn't whether this change has been caused by man or is merely influenced by human activities.

No, friends. The issue is how do we save the coffee?

Running Arabica’s chances against three emission scenarios, over three timescales (2020, 2050 and 2080), and with a geographical resolution of 1 Km for the plant’s Ethiopian homeland, the models “showed a profoundly negative influence on the number and extent of wild Arabica populations”, Kew says. (Richard Chirgwin, "Coffee next on climate chopping-block: The looming ARABICA APOCALYPSE," The Register 10 November 2012)

This is how the zombie apocalypse starts.

Or the Rage virus pandemic, because I will surely beat someone to death without coffee.

I'm currently stuck in a horrible depression loop.

I'm pretty sure I know why--the two week heat wave killed my appetite, my sinuses and my sleep schedule, so I'm sniffly despite three kinds of medication, sleep-deprived but not sleepy thanks to the decongestant, and hungry but not feeling it thanks to the phlegm. And then being hot, hungry, sleepy and sneezy all conspired to kill my attention span just as a big job came in, so I'm feeling all of that and frustrated and stupid and worthless.

Fortunately it's the kind of depression that manifests not as woe! woe is me! or I'm not worthy of hygiene!, but as a seething rage that pops up randomly against random people for no good reason. Actor on TV who cannot act, I will kill you with my mind! kinds of rage, pointless and brutal but quickly passing, thanks to that short attention span.

So that's fun.

I'm not sure if I should grab my camera and go hide for a while, or consume vast amounts of coffee and hammer this job until it submits.

Update: And the random brown-out just now answered my question. Camera it is!

Missouri's conservative legislators have recently introduced two bills to force the state's schools to teach Creationism.

The first is House Bill 1227, hilariously called the Missouri Standard Science Act, which would require Creationism to be taught in grade school, high school, and even college science courses. That's the head-on attack.

From the side, however, comes House Bill 1276, a sneak attack on the scientific theory of evolution. In weasel language that pretends to be about encouraging critical thinking, the bill actually enables Creationists to intentionally derail class time to "review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution." [Emphasis mine.]

What's so bad about that, you ask?

Your child is sitting in science class, learning about science things. The next chapter in the textbook is evolution...

Under HB1227, by law that textbook must "give equal treatment [ditto] to biological evolution and biological intelligent design." Intelligent design is, by law, not required to "address the time or sequence of life's appearance on earth, time or formation of the fossil record, and time or method of species extinction." In other words, it is not required to be backed up with any sort of facts or evidence. It is presented solely as the belief-based conviction that it's impossible for life to have developed without a behind-the-scenes intelligence directing it.

But the bill "does not require the identity of intelligence responsible for earth's biology but requires any proposed identity of that intelligence to be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation." No theories about alien colonization. No masturbating Egyptian sun gods wanking the world into existence. No Hindu spontaneous and conscious-less creation. The 'present-day observation' of a supernatural watchmaker is implicitly assumed to be the Judeo-Christian god.

Best of all? "If a scientific theory or hypothesis proven to be false is taught for historical, illustrative, or other reasons, the theory or hypothesis shall be identified as false when taught orally or in writing." That's a sly way of allowing Creationists to toss out evolutionary theory completely, as they frequently (and erroneously) claim to have debunked it, largely based on willful misinterpretation of the word 'theory', which has a specific meaning in scientific parlance.

So, even if you don't want others teaching your child their religion, even if you want to raise your child in your faith and on your terms, or without faith entirely, it doesn't matter: the state will teach your child religion, specifically the evangelical Christian's religion-based argument against science that they don't like.

Again, that's the overt attack. Let's go back to the classroom, where your child is about to turn the page to the chapter on evolution...

Under HB1226, your child's classmate can bring the class to a halt: her mother told her this is all lies, and has given her a pamphlet with discussion points. The teacher cannot say, "That's what some religions say, but that's a discussion for church--back to science!" The teacher has to stop and seriously address, in a science classroom, a religious argument. This is a license for students to evangelize in the classroom. Worse, it's a license to continually interrupt and disrupt science lessons in order to do so, to force teachers to stop and discuss religion instead of teaching science.*

Now imagine it's the teacher doing the disrupting.

Your child is sitting in science class, and the teacher you trust to instruct the class in science has been given a license to denounce it--to put forward not evolutionary theory, but the Creationists' (again, erroneous) claim that they've debunked it. Without regard for your religion and yourbeliefs, without regard for your child's right to an education in accepted science, without regard for their future in the educational system, the state has given evangelical Christians a pass to force your child to study their beliefs.

I honestly do not understand the evangelical point of view on this. They don't trust the state, the schools and the teachers to teach their children about science or sex, but they want to mandate the state, the schools and the teachers to give their children religious instruction? It seems to me that's the one subject you'd definitely want to cover at home.

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* Yes, this happens. A friend and former fundie heard about folks doing it; I witnessed a variant of it in a course on Judaism that a Southern Baptist attempted to derail. (The rabbi reduced him to tears, but still.)