We Can NEVER Eat Out Again

Well, it’s official. There are no restaurants at which it is safe for my family to eat. We can never eat out again. (At least, not unless my kids suddenly outgrow at least half of their food allergies.)

Last Friday we took the kids to the park.

When everyone had been dragged kicking and screaming to the car (they really didn’t want to stop playing), we decided to splurge on Chick-Fil-A for dinner. It was late, and if we waited for me to cook something, bedtime would be completely shot.

From the day Jed received his MSPI diagnosis at 5 weeks old, eating out has been a challenge. Once he got his IgE egg diagnosis, it became more of a challenge.

As a regular American, though, I checked out every restaurant in our area to find which ones could safely feed us. After all, you have  to eat out, right?

Eventually I found 7 restaurants that had at least one item on their menu that Jed and I could eat, and we happily went about our business.

Then we discovered Jed’s Fructose Malabsorption, and the list of available safe eating out foods reduced to TWO restaurants, both of which only had two things on their menu my son could have. (It goes without saying that on my TED for Zac, I could eat at none of these restaurants.)

In the end, Burger King offered plain hamburger patties (no bread, no condiments) and french fries for Jed, and Chick-Fil-A had the kids grilled chicken nuggets with waffle fries.

Those two place were my inexpensive “sanity savers” for days when we had to run errands in town.

Plus, Chick-Fil-A had an awesome play area that I could, for a short while, let Zac play in.

Back to Friday, though.

The message boards reported that Chick-Fil-A recently changed their grilled chicken nuggets to contain soy. Of course, I didn’t remember that until I was ready to place my order, so I asked the lady if this was true.

For a bit of clarification: Jed has MSPI, which is Milk/Soy Protein Intolerance. Long ago, though, we realized that the soybean OIL commonly used in fast food didn’t seem to cause him any problems. So while we avoid soy as a general rule, the occasional fast food splurge was one place where I relaxed my “we hate soy” stance.

One of the things I liked best about Chick-Fil-A, though, was the lack of soy in their grilled chicken nuggets. So I did want to see if soy was now added to the nuggets, and see if there was any way we could get un-marinated nuggets grilled up for Jed – a solution several FPIES Mama’s had discovered was available at their local Chick-Fil-A.

The lady at the drive thru window didn’t know about the menu changes, so she printed out the new ingredients in the nuggets and handed it to me. As I glanced over it, I saw that soybean oil was the THIRD ingredient in the list. So I quickly asked they had any nuggets that were not marinaded already that they could grill.

She didn’t know. She said she could ask in the kitchen, and turned away as if to ask someone. Ten whole seconds later (not even enough time for her to have asked the question), she turned around and told me “They don’t know.”

Right. The KITCHEN doesn’t know. Sure. And pigs fly.

At that point I realized that dehydrated garlic and onion were numbers 8 and 9 on the ingredients list.

SO not going to happen for Jed!

Also, I was in the drive thru window. Not exactly the best time and position to begin making specific queries about ingredients and any extra accommodations that could be made for food allergies. I’d already used up what reasonable wiggle room I had in my questioning.

So I asked one last thing: “Did you also change the recipe for the waffle fries, or are they still the same?” Obviously Jed could no longer have the nuggets, but at least I could get him some fries to hold him over until we got home!

She smiled and said, “Oh, no! Those are still the same!”

So I requested they change our order to a large order of waffle fries, paid them, and off we went.

I was very annoyed at the changes in the grilled nuggets, of course. When I first reviewed Chick-Fil-A’s menu years ago, their grilled nuggets were a refreshing change from what I usually saw on fast food menus: very limited numbers of ingredients, most of which were innocuous.

Now, their ingredient list is chock full of CRAP. Chicken meat is number 19 out of 31 ingredients in their grilled chicken nuggets! For Heaven’s sake!

Seven ingredients are major FructMal issues for Jed, and they have “natural flavor” listed TWICE on the list…plus “flavor” listed all by itself.

I hate mystery ingredients.

Sigh…so, Chick-Fil-A is out.

The worst part is what happened the week before this incident. We realized Burger King is also out.

Thanks to our food journals, I’m able to go back and review whatever Jed and Zac ate prior to any reactions they have.

Two weeks ago, Jed had a day where he was absolutely a ROTTEN child to be around. Argumentative, pitching fits right and left, bursting into tears over the slightest thing, belligerent, angry; I’m telling you, it was a stressful, awful day for us.

It was a straight up “fructose” attack.

Reviewing his diet from the day before, I saw nothing that could have prompted a fructose attack. The only thing that had any potential was his lunch at Burger King.

I flipped back through the previous three months worth of food journals and noted that about 65-70% of the time we ate at Burger King, Jed had a fructose attack the next day.

After double checking that Burger King had not changed anything in their ingredients list, it became clear that he was being cross-contaminated with something from BK.

What? I don’t know.

In fact, I speculate that this is only happening at one particular BK, not at all of them; thus explaining why it didn’t happen every single time we ate at BK but only most of the time.

I could call the restaurant I suspect and ask a bunch of questions, but frankly, I’m tired and the energy to go through that just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

It’s easier to just accept the growing inevitability of the fact that for my family, we can never eat anything that I didn’t prepare myself, or have some part in preparing, at least.

It sucks, but there you are. Now, when we go to town to run errands, I pack food for myself, for Zac, and for Jed.

I’m getting a bit tired of planning for a moon landing just to go to Walmart, you know?

But this is our life now.

Turns out? You DON’T have to go out to eat.

Did you ever lose your one safe eating out place due to menu changes? What’s your best tip for taking food on errands?