What we learned about food allergies in India

What about soy and/or soy lethicin? Has it made the Indian scene yet?

In North America it is used in many sweets and almost all chocolate products. I think even Chickens are fed with it.
It's the only thing I'm really allergic to and is becoming increasingly more prominent in today's food sources and thus harder to avoid.

i feel for you. i have a friend who is deathly allergic to sunflower seeds/oil. it always amazes me how casual and careless the waiters usually are to his requests.
friend: "is that made with sunflower oil? i am extremely allergic"
staff: "I doubt it." just stands there
friend: "could you find out for me please, i dont want to go to the hospital."
staff: "oh, you want me to check? ok." wanders around the kitchen asking random people, comes back. "no"
friend (skeptical): "are you sure?"
staff: "pretty sure"

talk about putting your life in someone else's hands.
his solution is to not eat out very much

PeakXV: I don't know about soy lecithin--my guess is that any sort of pre-packaged foodstuff requiring an emulsifier is suspect. Soy oil is in use in India. I think Gokul brand cooking oil is pure soy. Look out for generic "vegetable oil" products: those tend to be a blend of different oils, including soy. On TV I often see ads for safflower oil and soy oil, promoting them as healthier and "more vegetarian" alternatives to regular ghee.

Actually, you have my sympathy for the soy allergy--I know one other person with this problem. It means that just about all Asian cuisine is off-limits, since soy sauce is such a basic seasoning, in addition to all the pre-packaged foods...

robotvoice: We've found that restaurant waiters and such just don't grok "extremely allergic". What does work is a very assertive use-words-of-one-syllable approach like "I can not eat [allergen]. I will die if you feed it to me. If I die you don't get my money." We try to make it clear that a cook who's quick on the uptake will get a lot more of our business. Since I've actually had a couple of adventures with anaphylactic shock (not in India, but elsewhere), I have no problem walking out of a restaurant or dhaba if they don't get it.

I'm scared sh*tless about the food. Travelled through China, Japan, Korea, HK, Taiwan, etc. with no problems. My partner has Chron's Disease. We need to avoid milk, nuts, and hot pepper-like spices. Any suggestions on basic non-theatening fish dishes (whole fish?), rice mixtures, or meat dishes for me? I'd rather be safe than spend the trip doubled over with the runs.

I think if you've already survived Korea (lots of spicy food) and China (some regions use nuts heavily) you'll do OK in India. Reading up on the cuisine really helps--skimming a cookbook or a food blog can be really useful. LP has a cuisine guide for India, although I don't think it addresses allergies.

I checked out your other posts, and it looks like you're spending most of your time in Mumbai and Delhi, both of which are major metropolitan areas. I wouldn't worry about the food unless you're spending a lot of time in "Old Delhi", eating a lot of traditional Indian food. "New" Delhi has sushi restaurants, places that serve Western style brunch, and a TGI Friday's, even.

South Indian cuisine makes use of a lot of seafood and coconut milk--which is not cow milk, but milk squeezed from the coconut meat. Pulaos and biryanis are rice mixtures that tend to include nuts. You'll want to be careful of curries that have been cooked with yogurt. "Masala" anything has been cooked with a spice mixture that can be pretty fiery. Your partner might want to check with a doctor to see how ghee might affect their body--it's butter, but clarified with all of the milk solids cooked out.

If you come north, I'd say give Tibetan cuisine a try. It's bland simple cuisine with very few spices in the food--hot pepper is a condiment you add later. Most meat is boiled sheep or water buffalo, veggies are of the cabbage/onion/carrot variety. Stay away from djuma, though.

The LP phrasebook I have includes phrases for requesting that things be cooked with no spices, or no oil, or so on. Check it out, and see if it'll work for you.

Ghummakadz, wonderful! Thank you. Surprisingly, in Korea we got treated to vegitarian (and lousy American). In China, it was dumplings, duck, and lots of whole broiled fish. We had sushi, french, etc. you name it in Shanghai and HK. Except for the pig's ears and duck feet that I had "to accept" on behalf of my girlfriend. grrr...thank god for that clear whiskey.

I'll check out Lonely Plant's book...that will help a lot. Thanks for the advice very much.

We'll be in:

11/29 Chennai
12/1 Mumbai
12/3 Delhi

Thanks for the soy alert GK. Although it is constantly in the top ten list for food allergens, it continues to infiltrate the culinary world. I just heard where KFC is switching to a soy-based oil to avoid trans-fat consumption. Not that I ever dine there ..... but other restaurants will surely be watching their trial run and possible success with soy.

So I am the person with the serious nightshade allergies (tomatoes, potatoes, bell pepper, eggplant, tobacco...) partnered to the person with severe allergies to all nuts, coconut and many pulses (peas, lentils, etc.) living in India. I think I mentioned that I ended up eating a LOT of fried noodles and dumplings.

Well, life has just become even MORE complicated! I've developed gallbladder problems (probably from eating too many fried noodles) which means I need to go easy on the dairy products, avoid eggs and generally eat an extremely LOW FAT diet, particularly avoiding rancid oil or transfats. Right. In India. Where one often suspects that the dumplings, noodles etc. have been fried in strained, recycled motor oil from the 1950's. I am practicing saying, "I eat plain rice, boiled carrots, cabbage and bananas." and I'd better refine that or I'm likely to get boiled bananas.

Have you tried the 'Dalith Cuisine'?
People living on the street have places (on the street) where for a few Rs they can get some cooked rice with some kind of Masala sauce topped on it. Just ask for the rice (or better try to have a streetkid get it for you as they don't serve westerners).
If you are not allercic to Curd you can live on Curd rice (a good remedy also for upset stomachs). Would be less than 10 rs in most eateries.

Oh, we eat at the little street places whenever possible. Unfortunately, in tomato season, that "bit of masala sauce" usually contains a tomato or two in the pot as a cheap source of flavour. They'll say "oh no, not tomato" - which translates to "It's not *BASED* on tomato, but a bit went into the sauce to stretch it. Everything does. Hopefully it will be better in the winter. Curd rice sounds wonderful but people say it's a Southern thing and we're in the farthest of far north. I'm not allergic to dairy. We're up in the Tibetan cultural area so I also eat a lot of tsampa (roasted barley flour) which can be mixed with curd into a kind of porridge. Thing is that I have to limit my dairy now cuz of the gallbladder problem.

Annoying thing is that I'm truly omnivorous by nature - I LIKE almost everything and am not a picky eater at all. I happily eat street food, unknown substances, innards (Nepal has wonderful fried innards) and alien vegetables. I've developed these allergies quite late in life (I'm 51) and it's horribly frustrating because I do want to be able to eat whatever looks interesting.

this sounds like Sona Papdi. delicious.

after reading this thread I don't think I would eat at all unless I had prepared it myself.

I thought of suggesting showing a video of someone having a anaphylactic shock to explain just how serious your condition is to waiters/chefs but I doubt whether this would put my mind at rest if I were you. (esp. after the post about marzipan)

Just a quick update to this thread for those with nut allergies, especially if you have a sensitivity to peanuts.

Turns out roasted peanuts are a common street food when in season. The roaster-wallahs tend to trundle around with big carts just loaded with the peanuts in a pile, and a fire pot stuck in the middle of the pile. I suspect the firepot tends to slow-roast the peanuts a bit more, while the smoke acts as insect repellent. At any rate, most folks eat the peanuts right after purchase and throw the shells in the street. So, roaster-wallahs tend to generate a lot of peanut-based dust and smoke wherever they're parked. If you are extremely sensitive to peanuts, you definitely want to stay upwind of a peanut roaster--I discovered one afternoon that the dust and smoke can be thick enough to affect the lungs, even when not visible.

Also, many peanut-wallahs sell popcorn. Typically the popcorn is just piled next to the peanuts, without any containers or dividers. The popcorn is also roasted in the same pot as the peanuts. Cross-contamination danger is extremely likely. Popcorn is also sold in small unlabelled bags at a lot of general needs stalls. Since the popcorn may be provided by a local peanut roaster, be cautious about buying local popcorn snacks.

This is a quick overview for allergic folks traveling to Dharamsala...

McLeod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala) is a pretty cosmopolitan place in terms of food. It gets enough international visitors that food sensitivities are pretty easy to work with. Most restaurants serve a combination of Tibetan, Indian, Chinese, and "Continental" food. There's an assortment of Italian, Israeli, French and German restaurants, as well as a number of vegetarian spots. Many cooks and waitpeople speak some combination of Tibetan, Hindi, and English, so it's easy to communicate any food requirements.

As the capital of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, Tibetan food tends to predominate. Although a lot of Tibetan cuisine is meat-based, there are some vegetarian options, especially with momos (dumplings) and thukpas (soups). There is a Tibetan festival dish that's somewhat related to biryani that includes nuts, but usually only served on special occasions.

The street snack selection is mostly Indian or Tibetan. The Tibetan snacks tend to be things like potato or vegetable momos, although I did spot one gyuma (blood sausage) seller, frying up her wares at the corner. Indian snacks include peanuts, popcorn, and the dal/namkeen mix made in a brass pot. (Anybody know the name of this snack? And what's the pot called?)

This is such a helpful thread, thanks very much. I suffer from acute atopic dermatitis (some of my triggers are nuts, wheat and synthetic fabrics) and hay fever, and I suspect that the country I live in (Nigeria) is similar to India in that awareness of allergies is quite low. One perennial problem for me is how difficult it is to buy the antihistamines, corticosteroids etc that I constantly need here in Nigeria - they're tough to find and hugely expensive when you do spot them. I was just wondering if anti-allergy meds are easily available in India's big cities. Thanks!

I'm sure those meds are available, but you need to have the name of the substance, NOT THE BRAND NAME. If you take Benedryl for an antihistamine, for example, you need to ask for Diphenhydramine HCI 25mg.