So, with my flight looming [10 days], I've started to put a lot of thought into travelling. What should I ship home? How am I going to keep my suitcases under 50 pounds? How am I going to get my two suitcases from the house to the closest Piccadilly tube station? It's a seven hour flight that cuts across two meal times. What am I going to eat?
That's right, I even have to consider what I'm going to eat. Because I have the dreaded nut allergy.
And yes, this is a rant.
Eating when you can't prepare the meal yourself is always a bit like taking your life into your hands. Yes, there are lots of nut free products out there, but for some reason they never make their way to restaurants, or airports, or train stations, or bus stations, movie theatres, university campuses... I could go on forever. For someone, like me, with a severe anaphylactic allergy [it takes less than a minute from the time a walnut touches my tongue, to the time my tongue starts to swell and my throat starts to close] planning your next meal is just one more travel hassle, and it's a big one.
I can't just go to my university's library for the day. I have to plan a meal, or I have to eat chips, or leave campus and walk to the nearest Subway. Or, as I frequently do, eat something and hope I don't die. When eating out, I am the person who has the potential to ruin the entire social experience of eating together [and don't kid yourself, eating together is a very important social experience]. Why? Because maybe the restaurant will just say, "Oh, everything may contain nuts. We can't guarantee." Then you have to delay everyone else's meal to haggle with them. "Well, can you please just ask the kitchen staff to be careful?" Sometimes restaurant staff claim something doesn't have nuts, then when you return and get a staff member who actually brings you their Big Book of Allergies, you feel ill and itchy as you realize you could have died last time you ate there because, yes, that meal does potentially contain nuts. You can't eat dessert, or if it's a sit down, three course meal, your dessert is a lazy fruit plate and everyone else looks at you with pity while eating whatever chocolate-y goodness the chefs cooked up.
I'm not a perfect nut-allergy martyr. My allergy turned anaphylactic in my late teens, so I remember clearly being able to just eat. And I still sometimes just eat. Tim Horton's, or ice cream cake, or something that only might contain almonds because hey, that's one I barely reacted to on the test! It's really stupid because obviously that muffin isn't going to worth it when I'm dead. And it's selfish, because if I die, everyone around me has to watch that happen. It's pretty traumatizing to watch someone suffocate to death.
But even I don't risk it if I'm in the air [because the Atlantic Ocean doesn't have an emergency touch down hospital and an Epi-Pen lasts between 10 and 20 minutes], on a boat, or in a foreign country. So, naturally, I've collected a lot of stories about all the weird crap I've had to eat when there was nothing else available.
In the airport in Budapest, the only thing I could find that was tree nut free was a mixed pack of mini chocolate bars, and even that wouldn't have been suitable for a peanut allergy sufferer because one of the types was Snickers. Oh, and one of the types had coconut. So, I pretty much bought the mixed pack so I could remove the Mars Bars and eat them.
On my way to Austria, there wasn't a single thing I could eat in the Heathrow Airport that wasn't junk food. So, I bought a 'may contain nuts' chicken wrap, ate it well before boarding, and hoped I didn't end up missing my flight for a hospital trip.
In a Brussels train station, even the Mars Bars had, 'may contain almonds and hazelnuts,' on the packaging. My dinner consisted of a pre-packaged Belgian waffle, and hours later my hostel roommate gave me an orange because all food related places were closed by the time I made it back to Paris.
My breakfast when travelling on the Eurostar between Paris and London consisted of Milk Buttons [a Cadbury chocolate product] that I picked up on my way to the tube station in London because it was one of those, "I NEED TO EAT OR I'M GOING TO PASS OUT," situations.
I stupidly held off eating so I could easily clear security at JFK in New York, thinking there would be more restaurants after security, and not wanting to end up hauled aside for additional screening because, gasp, food! Well, it turned out there was one convenient store type thing, an expensive steak restaurant, and McDonalds. This is by far the weirdest of my stories because first, McDonalds refused to sell me a cheeseburger because, apparently, in New York you can't just buy a cheeseburger meal. You can buy a two cheeseburger, two fries double meal, or a kids' pack. I ended up buying a kids' pack and getting weird looks from my fellow passengers. You know the kind. The judgmental, "Who does she think she's kidding, fatty," look. As if I would choose McDonalds if I had the option to eat something else, and you know what, even if it was my choice, it's not your business. Don't judge me, bitches. And besides, it's your country's fault for being so weird. I can get a cheeseburger meal in every other country, America. Then, looking around the convenient store, my options ended up being the grossest cheese crackers in existence, and plain M&Ms. In North America, plain M&Ms only may contain peanuts. It's the peanut M&Ms that will kill you, as their warning includes almonds.
...But back to those crackers.
These weren't goldfish cheese crackers. They were like the fast food of cheese crackers. Greasy, disgusting, and with a weird aftertaste. I hated them, but was at the same time so grateful for them when Icelandair informed me that they didn't know if their food was nut free or not. I hated them again when I got to the airport in Iceland at 6 in the morning and realized none of the shops were open. With a 5 hour flight to Heathrow to go, and only gross cheese crackers and M&Ms to eat... Yeah, I was mad. At least security let me take the food through though, gross food is better than no food.
So, there's my selection of eating while travelling stories. What brought this rant on, you may be asking. Well, recently, someone quite close to me launched into a rant about how annoying people who bring McDonalds onto a plane are. With their gross food, stinking up the plane. Why can't they eat a sandwich?
Well, you know what, sometimes a sandwich isn't feasible. As you can see, if airplanes required you to travel with healthy food I pretty much wouldn't be able to travel. You try lasting a long flight on an apple.
You don't know why these people eat McDonalds on planes. You really don't. Don't be mad at them. Be mad at the food companies that slap a caution label on every, single one of their products because they don't want to be sued [and who can blame them?], and it's easier and cheaper to alienate their allergy suffering customers than it is to create a nut free factory, or to even bother to research what sort of allergens are in their products.
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| I totally wasn't kidding about Tescos. It is on, literally, everything that belongs to the Tesco brand. |
Blame airline companies, like Air Canada, who have several different meals to choose from, including an Asian vegetable dish, a fruit platter, a low sodium meal, and even gluten-free or a low cholesterol meal, but not one option mentions nuts. Not one. They might be all nut free, they might all possibly contain nuts. But I don't know because they don't see fit to mention this information when you book with them. I'm not taking a 7 hour flight and not eating that entire time. So, yes, in 10 days I will be the person you hate eating the McDonalds.
My life long difficulty finding food while travelling is much more uncomfortable than you having to smell McDonalds for an hour or two.
Deal with it.
<3 Jade
