What we learned about food allergies in India

An article written by an India Mike with as a "Do's and Don'ts" for travelers to India who suffer from food allergies. There is little awareness in India about complications related to food allergies, specially in the smaller, remote areas. This article is a must read, if you do suffer from food allergies and are planning a trip to India.

This post has been promoted to an article, and can be accessed in it's entirety here:

What we learned about food allergies in India

First rate post! I'll make this thread sticky.

Excellent info! I'm impressed that instead of muttering you just went on and found out how to do it! Great going! Should be helpful to many.

Hey, cool--this is my first "sticky" post anywhere!

My motivation for writing all this is to encourage other allergic folks to share their experiences. When I started prepping for my trip, I surfed allergy and medical web sites to check on travel info. While there's lots of info for North America, South America, and Europe, stuff for Asia and Southeast Asia is nearly non-existent. They basically say "India and China are risky," and leave it at that.

While the nut allergy may be a hassle, the nightshades allergy has occasionally had us stumped completely. During the summer, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are in full season, so that's what cooks are using. For many Indian recipes, once you remove the tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers, you're pretty much left with some ghee, onions and spices on the plate. I'm hoping to get in touch with other travelers with allergies of this magnitude, for support and suggestions.

I can only imagine. Should be a real pain in the you-know-where I imagine. All the more power to you!

<Walks off feeling slightly embarrassed at never having any eating problems whatsoever>

I wouldn't have a clue what to cook for you!

I think India must be a nightmare for the allergic....

For us most clues as to what to cook come from the produce-wallah. In Rewalsar, because the food choices are restricted to whatever local farmers are growing, what we do is check out what's new at the wallahs' shortly after they get their main delivery for the week. If something looks really good, we buy a bunch of it and bring it back to the hotel for the cook to cook up. Sometimes it's easier to ask what the kitchen's got than to order off a menu--sometimes a tasty variation can come out of whatever's in stock...Basic indian recipes like dum or masala are pretty adaptable.

I'm the person with the nightshade allergy. It certainly IS an adventure traveling anywhere when you have sensitivities to very common foods. Fortunately, unlike the person with the nut allergies, mine are not fatal if I do happen to ingest an allergen. Although, must say, sometimes it makes me *wish* I were dead LOL! Fortunately, one of our traveling party speaks Hindi quite fluently and can ask easily enough about suspect foods. I've also learned to say emphatically that I don't eat certain things - it's an interesting introduction to new languages, that's for sure! In more traditional areas, I can simply say "Ayurvedic" and they get it as, in the treatment of certain illnesses in the Ayurvedic system (arthritis in particular) tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and sweet peppers are eliminated from the diet. Enough people understand THAT that usually one can at least claim reasonable health problems.

What is trickiest is when the original poster and I try to go to eat somewhere *together*. It becomes a Monty Python sketch with potential dire consequences. Particularly in those situations where a lot of things are made with coconut or coconut milk (which she can't eat) or garnished with pistachios or almonds (ditto) most of what I CAN consume is lethal to her.

Anyway, up in the north where we're living, I eat rather a lot of fried noodles of one sort or another, and a lot of roti, rice and curd with fruit. I'm nervous about the winter...

Haha at least you're keeping your sense of humor I see!

I don't know, what struck me about this thread and what makes a lot more sense to me than the average guidebook, is they'll often be handy to give you the words to "I'm a vegetarian" -- never mentioning that in most places that will get you treated like a leper with some mysterious extra disease. (And never mentioning having studiously mastered the art of saying I'm a vegetarian but I'd like some squid however. I know it's technically wrong, but try learning beef-no pork-yes fish-gladly tofu-always on a 3-week trip). Whereas in most places if you simply ask what's on the menu (long list follows that you can't understand anyway) and you smile and politely ask OK can I have any of that without fish and meat, you'll usually be OK (you may have to scrape out some fishy bits but oh well).

I know it's a bad comparison to an allergic situation which would be far more serious and harder to explain, but you sometimes wonder. About the guidebooks I mean.

Anyway and again, kudos to you. Happy (& healthy) trails!

Humor is really the best thing to hang onto in these situations, because often the alternative is something called "justifiable homicide."

I still remember a meal at a very expensive restaurant in Los Angeles. Our waiter marched proudly up to our table to report that he'd checked with the chef, and the dessert I wanted to order contained no nuts at all. Just marzipan.

Without screaming, I said, "Thank you. Please bring me a scoop of chocolate ice cream in a glass bowl."

Since it's Diwali, I thought I'd add a holiday update to this thread. The firecrackers and "Hydro-bombs" are still going off as I write this.

The holidays (in just about any country, not just India) tend to be the most dangerous time of year for folks with allergies. There's a lot of food that's homemade, the ingredients won't be listed anywhere, and there are any number of social situations where you just get handed stuff to eat, without knowing what's in it. I don't know how many times I've had to be firm with a host or hostess, because a coy "just try it, you'll like it" is no preventative for anaphylactic shock.

So, Diwali. In Rewalsar, Himachal Pradesh, the treats are turned out by the hundreds by local sweet shops, and stacked in inviting piles in front of the stalls. You can buy a box of just one kind of treat or an assortment, by weight (1/2 kilo, 1 kilo, and so on). The sweets are not wrapped or labelled, and the boxes are generic packaging with no nutritional information. This is one of those situations where it's good to familiarize yourself with the local cuisine beforehand. Too, the sweets are just placed in the box all together, so cross-contamination is highly likely.

Wandering around town today, folks tended to have a box of sweets available for offering to friends who stopped in. There were also people going by offering bites of this home-made treat or that. I had one lady plop a spoonful of some kind of rice pudding in my hand today. Looked delicious but unfortunately was studded with walnuts. I explained in my winning combination of good English and horrible Hindi that I couldn't really eat the stuff, but was happy to eat the 'spirit" of the food. I then mimed putting the food to my mouth and eating, without actually touching the rice-and-walnut mixture, and that seemed to satisfy everybody.

Anyone else have holiday adventures with their allergies? If you did, I'm really interested in hearing from you.

You can be fairly sure that, apart from sugar, milk products and nuts are fairly high on the lists of possible ingredients of those sweets.

I have a sweet tongue. I can eat chocolate all day: I love the look of those sweets. As soon as I put one in my mouth I know I couldn't eat another for three days.

You're much healthier (even apart from the allergies) staying away from them!

From that perspective, even the treats I can eat are pretty dangerous. Stuff like jelebis (deep-fried sugar syrup) and gulab jamun (deep-fried dough balls soaked in sugar syrup) are yummy, but they're so sugar-soaked I only have them 2-3 times a year....

Among the other treats I can do are a fudge made from cooked-down milk, and some new treat I tried tonight, kind of a splintery-textured golden sweet that melted on the tongue. Didn't get the name of it, though....

I know just what you mean from that description!!! Don't know the name, though.