Lately I have been dreaming about onion rings...

 ... and I've realised that my body may have been misleading me.

For years I thought I was intolerant to many different fruits and vegetables, but now I'm wondering if that is actually the case?

A few years ago, maybe three or four, I started to have terrible digestion problems; bloating, cramps, flatulence, constipation, diarrhoea, and sometimes stomach pains so intense they would send me to bed, where I would curl up into the smallest ball possible and have to try and sleep (sleep was the only thing that used to help). It got so bad that I turned to Google and discovered IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) which seemed to list everything I suffered from. Knowing that my doctors rarely take me seriously, I decided to do an elimination test to see if I could find the “trigger” foods myself. I started to keep a food diary where I wrote down, without fail, every single thing that I ate or drank (although I didn't weigh food, that's just too much hassle lol). Not only did I write down what I ate, I also wrote down how it made me feel, and also how it effected my toilet habits. By doing this, over many months (and much pain) I found numerous triggers... the whole allium family (onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, chives and all granules, dried forms, salts and extracts containing them), peppers, sweetcorn, mushrooms, beetroot, swede, broccoli, cabbage, grapes, bananas, all squashes and pumpkin, spinach, courgettes, cauliflower, white flour products (bread, cakes, pasta, cous cous, etc), green peas, green beans... in short any veg that wasn't potatoes, sweet potatoes or carrots would give me trouble. Fruit was better, as long as I stayed away from grapes and bananas. Bakery products had to be brown, wholemeal, wholewheat, etc.

As you can imagine I wasn't a happy bunny, although my digestion was happier when I cut all of them out of my diet. The up side was I lost about four stone because I just couldn't eat most junk food, ready meals, pre-packaged foods or takeaways.

Oh, as well as the fruit and veg intolerances I also discovered that lactose caused me nasty trouble, so that meant most milk, cheese, yoghurt, cream , ice cream and anything else dairy was off limits (until I found a brand called Lactofree that I was ok with).  Plus I had trouble with chicken eggs... although I was ok with duck eggs (apart from the high price and even higher cholesterol content!)

Fast forward to about June 2015...

June 15th 2015 I decided to be a vegetarian... I forget now what prompted that decision... I may have written the reasons down in an old diary somewhere, but anyway.  People thought I was mad as I had so many bad reactions to so much veg, how could I possibly be a vegetarian? I admit I wondered myself, but I was determined to try.

After suffering bad headaches and sinus problems I discovered that dairy can cause that sort of thing. I decided to do a two week dairy elimination test to see if that was the cause of my pain. After about a week my sinuses felt a lot better and my headaches had decreased to almost nothing. Then, ten days into the two week test my sister had her birthday. Her fiancé got her a cake that was egg free but that contained cream... I took some lactase capsules (they used to help me digest the lactose so I didn't have a really bad time on the rare occasions I wanted something I shouldn't really have had lol). Within an hour of eating the cake my nose was blocked and I had a headache. It showed me that dairy and I were no longer friends and I decided to cut it out of my life completely... for good!
At about the same time I had been reading more and more about veganism, and all it entailed, and after a rocky start became a vegan on 15th July 2015.

As you can imagine those around me were worried as there were just so many foods I couldn't eat... what the hell does a vegan with so many intolerances to vegetables actually eat?! Luckily I didn't starve to death as I'm fine with wholewheat bread products, rice, wholewheat pasta and had grown used to making my own food from scratch.

I'm also one of those people that is always dumb enough to try things I know I probably shouldn't... and yes, I'm often surprised when I get bad reactions hahaha. However, in this case it proved to be a good thing as I was able to gradually reintroduce a lot of foods back into my diet... mushrooms, sweetcorn, broccoli, spinach, green beans, courgettes, and cabbage (including Brussels sprouts). I also discovered kale and avocados didn't hate me.

The one group that always made me really sad were the alliums as they are in so much food, the basis for so many amazing dishes, and also hard to avoid in vegan “junk food” and sauces (be they cooking sauces, pasta sauces, even stuff like ketchup). The sheer amount of onion powder, garlic powder, onion salt, garlic extract, onion granules, chives, and any combination of the above is astounding... I never knew just how much food contained one or many of them. It was a total shopping nightmare. Either products contained them, or were reformulated without any warning once I had already started using them (like Asda did once with some bbq sauce, lucky for me I'm a habitual paranoid label checker lol).

Fast forward again to about a month ago...

I have bouts of “bravery” regarding food. If my digestion has been doing ok I feel courageous enough to try foods that I normally avoid (that must be the masochist in me). I wanted to see if my intolerance to alliums was still bad, so got some Linda McCartney vegan sausage rolls that contain onion powder (I think) but no garlic so I thought it would let me know if onions still hated me (some people are affected by one, either or both... I was effected by both). I ate two sausage rolls and waited for the problems. None came. No pain, no bloating... nothing. I was pleasantly surprised. One more food to add to the plate. Then it got me thinking... if I could have onion powder, could I have garlic? (Not that I like garlic much, I just had to know). I found a Chinese BBQ sauce that had garlic but no onions and tried it. It wasn't very nice taste wise (although there was some slight discomfort). Then I thought, if onion powder was ok, maybe try something like dried chives. I used some as a garnish on some soup and again, no reaction!

Fast forward to today and so far I have had, onion powder, onion granules, onion extract, garlic powder, garlic extract, dried chives... and a large bowl of home-made leek and potato soup... with no comeback at all! I've had spicy burgers with onions, garlic and peppers... no comeback. I had some green peas the other day... with no comeback! To say I'm stunned is an understatement. I've been avoiding all these foods for years because of problems and now I don't have the problems (at least I don't think I do anyway... my next “try” is actual onion, I've bought onion rings and also red onions as well).

So what could have happened to suddenly make my stomach not hate most of the foods it used to (bananas still constipate me, but I was never much of a fan of theirs anyway lol).

It made me think... why now? What have I changed that could have such a drastic impact on my digestive system? And then one day it hit me... could it be because I'm vegan? Could the meat I ate for years have actually been the trigger for my problems and not the veg? I always had trouble digesting pork, it never liked me much. Steak often made me constipated. Any fish used to repeat on me so much I would want to vomit just to get the taste of it out of my mouth! Lamb would bloat me, and to a lesser extent so would chicken and turkey (although I never realised it). It made me wonder if I had been blaming the veg I would have with the meat for the trouble whereas I should have been blaming the meat! It just seems weird that I can now eat a lot of the things that gave me the worst reactions with no reactions at all... surely if something was so hard on the digestion that it would send you to bed that would never fully go away, regardless of how long between exposures.

Could nearly 16 months without meat have helped my digestive system to heal itself enough so that the “evil veg” doesn't cause any problems? Could the meat have been causing irritation and then the veg merely exacerbating a reaction already there?

Could I actually have been intolerant to meat the whole time and just never knew it?

Honestly I don't have a definite answer to any of those questions. All I can say is that I know how I feel, and that is fine. Maybe a little flatulence (who never has that?) but farts don't give me pain.

I guess that even if I hadn't become vegan for moral and ethical reasons, my body was screaming out for me to become one for health reasons. I just never knew it until now.

I'm going to take it slowly, I don't want to get my hopes fully up only to have them crushed by pain (which has happened many times before, when I've tried things in the past by jumping in head first instead of gently testing the waters with a toe at a time).

It has made me wonder if I should share my experiences with an allium intolerance group I'm in at Facebook? Obviously those with an allergy wouldn't benefit from reading it, allergies can be medically tested for whereas intolerances cannot, it is simply trial and error on the part of the intolerant person that discovers the triggers. But if meat could be behind my problems, couldn't it also be the same for others that might not even realise it?