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Hot Take: Traveling with Food Allergies
14 Plays4 days ago
I have a lot of feels and personal experience living and traveling with severe food allergies, and wanted to highlight the issue because of the tragic story of influencer Dominique Brown. I hope this advice for fellow travelers, friends of folks with allergies, event organizers, and tour operators will bring safer practices and awareness.
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:01
Speaker
Greetings, fam. Welcome to a spirit in the material world hot take. I'm your host, Jana Zinsi, also known as Jazz. So these hot takes are an experiment. They are not a full episode, but there's things that are coming up in our cultural zeitgeist that feel like I want to give attention to. So bear with me. This is a ah short message but something really important that I wanted to share and I felt really compelled to speak about it.
Dominique Brown's Tragic Story
00:00:37
Speaker
There's a story about a beautiful young sweet influencer named Dominique Brown.
00:00:43
Speaker
She was part of the Black Girl Disney community, really beloved, had so many friends online, but I'm sure offline as well. And she tragically passed away earlier this month because of a food allergy. She was at an influencer event a couple of weeks ago where they knew about her serious food allergies and yet somehow something in the food set off her allergies.
00:01:09
Speaker
and she was sent to the hospital and passed away. There hasn't been much conversation about this at all. There's been a few reports here and there, but relatively quiet, perhaps maybe because Disney is connected to various mainstream outlets and there might be fear around that, even though this wasn't specifically their event.
00:01:33
Speaker
For my understanding, you know or perhaps it's because she's a thick black woman and you know the press isn't interested.
Travel and Allergy Management Tips
00:01:41
Speaker
But anyway, as someone with serious food allergies, I had to address this and I offered some tips the other day via TikTok and wanted to share them here for the record because they're important for travelers, they're important for folks with allergies, they're important for people who love folks with allergies, event planners, and tour operators especially.
00:02:04
Speaker
So I hope you will take some notes. This won't be the first time that I'll speak about this, but I hope that it is helpful to you and your loved ones. Peace. Hey, what's up, community? I wanted to jump in and um speak a little bit about ah living, traveling, eating with severe food allergies. um You may have seen or you may not have seen the story about a beautiful young influencer. um Her name was Dominique Brown, and she's a beautiful influencer, black girl, love Disney. And she passed away tragically because she was at an event, believe it was last week, and ingested something, ate something um that she was allergic to. And so as someone with food allergies,
00:02:52
Speaker
ah This hit me really hard because there I get countless, countless, countless times where I've told a server, told a flight attendant, told whoever that I have an allergy. um And then they're like, no, it's fine. and There's nothing in there. And then I eat it. And then I ah know immediately My whole day is going to change. My whole night is going to change. Am I going to have to go to the hospital? Do I need to bust out my EpiPen? What ride am I going to go on? And that is a truly off frightening thing. So I just wanted to offer you know a couple of tips for folks who, one, have food allergies, and two, um friends and loved ones or event organizers, tour operators, how to deal with food allergies. Number one, if you have food allergies,
00:03:40
Speaker
always have some Benadryl on you. um It's really really really that's my like number one tip and Benadryl depending on the severity of your allergy may or like it will help but you may still have to go to the hospital you may have to use an EpiPen it's you know it's situational but my um I always have I have Benadryl like in random pockets in clothes in bags ah you know And there was a time where I didn't have health insurance and I didn't have EpiPen. And so if you don't have an EpiPen, try to get one. That's easier said than done. They're very expensive. um But if you're an international traveler, see about getting them internationally. I bought EpiPen in the Dubai airport. There is a pharmacy in the Dubai airport and I bought
00:04:28
Speaker
EpiPen, after I had a scare on an Emirates flight a few years ago, and that's a whole other story. Emirates was terrible. I will never, ever um mess with them. And this kind of goes to my next point.
Event Organizers' Responsibilities
00:04:44
Speaker
If you're an event organizer or you know tour operator, whatever, um you really need to make allowances and be very, very, very mindful and intentional about people with food allergies.
00:04:56
Speaker
So briefly, I was on a flight to Cairo. And the menu listed chicken with pine nuts, beef with pine nuts. And I'm like, OK, well, I can't eat any of those. And it had like some appetizers, hummus, and this other thing. um And so I was like, cool, bet.
00:05:24
Speaker
I'll just eat the hummus and this other thing, which looked like red hummus. I told the person, the flight attendant, I have a nut allergy, so can I just have the you know hummus and whatever, the appetizer thing? And so she was like, sure, no problem. And then I start eating this thing that I thought was red hummus or red pepper hummus. It was not. um Found out later it had some kind of walnuts or something in it, did not know the flight attendant didn't put so much together. um And then so I have like anaphylaxis on a flight, not a vibe, not a good time had to take an EpiPen. I had an expired EpiPen. So I use that on the flight.
00:06:11
Speaker
And then they gave me like an oxygen mask and everything. They do have EpiPens on the flights. But the thing that I found out that was like most interesting to me and and problematic is that the flight attendants don't know what's in the food. They're like, oh, we don't know. And when I talked to Emirates.
00:06:28
Speaker
when they didn't have a section on their website to note peanut allergy or anything like that, they basically threw it back in my face like, well, it was your fault. You should have noted that in your reservation, which doesn't make any sense because you didn't have nowhere to put it on the site. But anyway, that's a whole long story. And the reason why I share that is because Event organizers, you know, tour operators need to take this very, very seriously. People can die as we see this has happened to this beautiful young woman, you know, um, and so whatever you can do, maybe it's going to be more expensive to, to, if you're planning an event to actually, you know, find out what's in the food, don't just use disco or whatever the heck company it is, like actually work with independent chefs.
00:07:21
Speaker
um And make sure that they know the food allergies and also like make them that. Doesn't have common allergens like you don't have to serve things that have nuts in it. You don't have to serve things that have shellfish in it as a shellfish lover. I get it, but also like I'm not pressed. So just thinking about, you know, what are the things that you can do?
00:07:43
Speaker
Um, you know, we live in a world where our food system, everything is processed and stuff. And, um, you know, made in a factory with peanuts, made in a factory with soy, made in a factory with whatever. So if you're using independent chefs and cooks, then you'll have a better like control over what's in the food and you can better um work with people who have allergies.
Learning from Dominique's Story
00:08:09
Speaker
And my last thing, this is super long always, is that um if you're a friend of somebody that has allergies, like I'm so grateful for my friends, my bestie.
00:08:20
Speaker
If I, if I forget and flip up to tell the waiter, she'll be like, excuse me. My friend has an allergy. So shout out to Christine. I see you. Thank you. both Um, but honestly, like, you know, even if you're traveling by yourself, put it in a note top.
00:08:35
Speaker
in the language of wherever you're going um before you go and show it to folks. But also, if you're like traveling with people that you know have food allergies, you know just try to be aware, try to help people out, learn how to administer an EpiPen. It's super easy. um you know Be an advocate, have a tag team because I promise you, it's really, really, really, really, really exhausting to be doing your job. Like me as a person with food allergies, if I tell you that I have a food allergy, I'm trusting you.
00:09:05
Speaker
to tell me what's up. I'm trusting you. to make sure that I don't die or have to go to a hospital. So, you know, it works both ways. And, you know, I just feel really, really, really sad for the family and friends and community of Dominique Brown and, you know, blessings and prayers to her and her loved ones. This was preventable and should not have happened. And I pray that, you know, we as a community learn from her story and lift up her story, lift up her work.
00:09:36
Speaker
um so that this doesn't happen again. Thanks for listening. Take care, y'all. Bye.