Stawberry Allergy OR Chemical Allergy?

My breakfast with mini Arctic Strawberries

that I grow organically in my garden.

Now, that is the question!!! And my girlfriend Cindy of Cindy’s Art and Soul on Etsy brought up an interesting comment the other day when we were talking, and I want to share her idea here with you. Read on… but first I want to apologize for not having posted much these past few days, we've had really bad thunderstorms every day and so I was offline a lot.

For those of you that were reading my old blogger blog, until I moved my blog here on Typepad, you probably know that, unfortunately, I suffer from a good number of allergies (food and environmental).

Back on January 1st 2009, I took the 30-day Pledge to go VEG (eat vegetarian for 30 days and a tree would be planted for my efforts – that’s a win-win if you ask me). Not only did I enjoy doing this challenge, I also saw an improvement in terms of my allergies and my health in general very quickly.

In those 30 days, I realized that by not eating meat, which usually contains various growth hormones and antibiotics (because the animals are susceptible to disease so they pump medicine in them to keep them as disease-free as possible), I felt a whole lot better overall after just a couple of weeks. It was incredible.

During that time, I was also able to confirm what I had suspected for awhile, but wasn’t sure because the stuff is found in about 90% of all commercial/ready to eat foods, that I’m allergic to Soy (Soy beans, Soybean Oil, Soy Lecithin, Tofu), and after staying away from all of these things for a few months, I realized that I wasn’t having any allergies flaring up on me anymore.

Now, this is a big thing for me, because even the so-called non-drowsy allergy meds put me flat out to sleep. I’m talking the kind of sleep that you cannot stay awake even if they paid you a million bucks to fight it. I just cannot function when I take these pills. The brand doesn’t matter. They all do this to me. Heck, even regular Tylenol knock me out. I have no clue why, but it’s as potent to me as sleeping pills would be.

Anyway, back to the point:

After being totally off the allergy meds for a few months (alleluia!!!), I had purchased some commercial strawberries and one evening, I had my bowl (I usually have a bowl of cereals for a snack with blueberries or raspberries) and I broke out in a violent allergic reaction (sneezing uncontrollably, eyes watering like crazy, nose running, breathing became more and more difficult and that turned into an asthma attack - I hadn’t had one of those in years.

Holly dangerous strawberries!!!

I waited 2 weeks and repeated the same exact experiment with fresh commercial strawberries to see if that was a fluke, or if I had reacted to something else (but I eat the same cereals and use the same milk and have had no problems before), and sure enough, I got the same exact reaction.  Nasty reaction.

I tried it again another 2 weeks later. Same nasty allergic reaction. 3 times couldn’t be wrong…. or could it?

I was eating strawberries all the time in the past, it’s my favorite fruit. I was also constantly on anti-allergy meds prior to starting the Veg-Pledge as well (so that probably help to keep this problem hidden). And I was reading about allergies to strawberries that it’s one of the 7 top food allergens. Apparently, it has something to do with the protein in the fruit (the protein linked to the color & taste of strawberries btw) and researchers in a European country have managed to remove that protein, but it removes the color and the taste as well, so they’re still working on this.

Anyway, I was sad all Winter and Spring because I knew that my little Arctic Strawberries growing in my garden would feed everybody else but me, since I thought I was allergic to strawberries.

But all these tempting pretty berries were just too much for me to pass up, so when they started coming up in our backyard and the first few were ready to pick, I had to taste one, then two, then a few more. No reaction.

A couple of days later, I grabbed a few more, no reaction at all. So then a whole bunch were ready at once (a handful) and so I decided to have my bowl of cereal (Kashi puffed cereal doesn’t have soy in it, but some other Kashi cereals do, so if you’re allergic to soy, read the labels to find the Kashi flavors that don’t have soy in there).

Results: NO ALLERGIC REACTION AT ALL!!!

I’ve now had several bowls of my own naturally grown strawberries as pictured above (they are grown with sunshine, water and love, I use nothing else), and I have had no reaction at all. Not once! Not a smidgen, nothing, zip, nada!

So I was telling Cindy about this and then she casually said:

“And what if you were reacting to the chemicals or pesticides that they spray on commercial crops/commercials strawberries instead of the fruit itself?”

LIGHTBULB MOMENT!!!!!

(Cindy, you are a genius!)

So I’m now searching for organically grown strawberries (I haven’t found any yet in my two supermarkets – they have organic veggies but somehow no organic fruits?) because I want to test out that theory. It makes sense, really. A strawberry no matter what type, is a strawberry and it contains that protein that is supposed to be the culprit in creating nasty allergies, but to go from major allergic reaction, tested it 3 times, and have not a smidgen of a reaction with naturally grown berries makes me wonder. I always carefully wash my fruits and vegetables (I'm like Monk on TV, very anal about this stuff), but I'm thinking that the pesticides/chemicals penetrate the cells of the fruit and that cannot be washed off.

Maybe I’m not really allergic to strawberries after all (and maybe it's the case for some other people too) but we could be reacting to the chemicals/pesticides used on the crops – it makes sense!

Has anyone else seen or heard of such a thing?

Anyone has any ideas about this or other similar findings with other fruits and veggies?

Leave me your comments please, while I enjoy yet another bowl of my delicious natural home-grown strawberries without having any allergic reaction what-so-ever :)