Hello, I'm Ezzie. I want to tell you about food allergies, because they are quite strange and quite important and not at all frightening to talk about.
Your body has a little army inside it whose job is to fight off things that could make you poorly. In somebody with a food allergy, that army gets muddled and decides an ordinary food is an enemy. Then it charges at it. That's the whole thing, really: a very keen army making a mistake.
It isn't the same as not liking a food. I am not keen on cucumber, but cucumber has never once charged at me. Nobody picks an allergy and nobody can be persuaded out of one.
Some people get poorly from a food without an allergy being involved at all — that's called an intolerance, and it means their tummy finds the food hard work. It's still horrible. It just works differently, and it gets looked after in a different way.
Allergies can turn up at any age, even in a grown-up who has been eating something for years. And a tiny bit can be enough for some people, while others need a lot. Bodies do not all agree with each other.
Cooking doesn't sort it out. Heating a food up, or freezing it, or hiding it in a sauce, doesn't take the allergy bit out — my gills are useless and even I know that much.
Nobody catches an allergy from anybody, and nobody brings one on by being fussy. It's just something a body does, and it isn't anybody's fault.
I can tell you what allergies are. I can't tell you what's going on with you or with anybody you know — for that you'd want a doctor, who can actually have a proper look.
Questions this page raises
Ezzie will have a go at any of these.