The Atkins diet is a low carb diet. Instead of bread, people are encouraged to use lettuce. You basically use it as a wrap, and place meat, cheese, and pickles inside it. It works pretty well, especially if you are using the greener, leafier, sort of lettuce. My experience with the Atkins diet this week revealed that I am allergic to (some types of) lettuce. What do I do now?
I am a highly allergic person. I first started discovering that I had food allergies and intolerances when I was a teenager. That was the first time I had allergy testing done. Since then, I’ve become an expert about what foods, substances, chemicals, or environmental conditions are going to make me incredibly sick.
When you start the Atkins diet, you end up eating lots and lots of lettuce. You can have salads, and lettuce is a big part of any good salad. You can use lettuce to wrap up lunchmeat, cheese, pickles, and a small amount of mustard and/or mayonnaise. Those are called “Meat and Cheese Rolls”, but somewhere along the line, my husband and I renamed them “Meat Wraps”. You can eat chicken salad wraps, tuna salad wraps, or cooked salmon wraps.
The “Meat Wraps” are quick and easy to put together. If you can make a sandwich, you can make one of these. The only difference is you are substituting leaves of lettuce for the bread. Technically, “Meat Wraps” are supposed to be a snack. The Atkins diet limits your food choices, and I had to limit it even further to get around my (known) food allergies. This meant I was eating two or three “Meat Wraps” at once, and calling it a meal.
I learned that iceberg lettuce doesn’t lend itself to being wrapped up very well. It tastes just fine, but it breaks. It’s also kind of boring, in terms of flavor. The second week of the diet, I found some romaine lettuce instead, with bigger leaves, that were easier to wrap because they were more flexible. When I finished all of that, (and was starting to tire of it), I selected a very green head of lettuce with smaller, even “leafier”, leaves.
This turned out to be a bad idea. The first salad I had with this lettuce made my lips feel a little odd. The first plate of “Meat Wraps” I had with it made part of my lips and tongue a little bit numb. I wasn’t sure that the lettuce was the culprit until the next time I had “Meat Wraps”. This time, I was experiencing the early stages of anaphylaxis, which was fortunately halted by a quick dose of a strong antihistamine.
It just so happens that lettuce is in the Composite, (or Aster, or Asteraceae) family. So is ragweed, which I am severely allergic to, and dandelion, which I am also allergic to. I experienced a cross-reactive oral allergy when I ate the very green and leafy lettuce. It looks like I will be sticking to only iceberg lettuce, from now on.
Image by wikioticslan on Flickr