Citric acid has been our family’s “kryptonite” for 3 generations. The story goes that one Christmas as a child, my maternal Grandmother Gloria and her family had received a crate of oranges as a Christmas gift. Over the ensuing days, she gorged herself on a sizeable quantity of oranges and then developed a severe allergy to citric acid. After this point, whenever she would eat anything containing citric acid, Gloria would break out in hives in one or more parts of her body. The red, raised, itchy blotches would eventually die down by avoiding citric acid in her diet. But, it certainly made eating harder, she had to be very careful she didn’t ingest it accidentally.
What she would find, along with my mother, and then myself and my 3 brothers, is that citric acid is a SUPER preservative. It has been used to preserve everything from blood to soda pop, jelly to pizza sauce. I bet anyone reading this post can find a number of products in their own kitchen that have this ingredient on the label. Beyond that, citrus is used in vast quantities of food preparations – cocktails, salad dressings, salsas, juices, and even more cocktails (generally I could find 1-2 drinks on a 10 drink cocktail menu that didn’t have citrus). Even water served in restaurants is often served with a slice of lemon.
So, our childhood was spent eating homemade snacks and meals, and we rarely went out to eat (because the ketchup, french fry oil, and the fountain soda pop all had citric acid). It also made the slices of orange at youth soccer matches a big temptation for me. I would occasionally sneak a slice. And it wasn’t that we would DIE by ingesting citric acid, so the consequences weren’t THAT dire. But, if you had an allergy attack, it was pretty uncomfortable for a couple of days until the hives died down.
While my uncles never experienced this allergy (as far as I know), and my other brothers mostly grew out of it in adulthood, my allergy stubbornly held on until recently. That is because I decided to break my allergy by “microdosing”. Very simply, I slowly added citric acid to my diet in increasing amounts over the days and weeks of this summer. It first started by leaving a slice of lemon in my glass of water, or using jams that had citric acid in them. I then graduated to tiny mandarin oranges, and my niece and I would have a “mandarin of the day”. Finally, as of writing this post, after microdosing for months, I’ve not worried about citric acid for the last week. I put lemon in my water, I eat guacamole that has lime, and I’ve officially had the second Capri Sun of my life…and I can honestly say it was a little disappointing.
I purposely tried to break my allergy during this summer so I could eat easier when I am in New Zealand. I no longer have to worry if I am getting too much citric acid, or trying to find food that doesn’t have citric acid in it. It will be much easier to travel, and I’m going to enjoy myself more because I will be able to more fully experience the food and drink of New Zealand. But try as I might, I can never quite get rid of my mother’s voice in my head. She too tried to break her allergy in college. She says she enjoyed days of oranges with no consequence…until one day when she was walking across campus and was hit by a massive allergy attack. She still suffers from the allergy to this day.
Will I too revert and suddenly become allergic again one day? I guess I won’t know until it happens, but, I believe it won’t happen. Partly it’s because I’m the 3rd generation for this “curse” and 3 is a very important, very powerful number to me, and I believe, to the universe. But it’s also because in all other respects besides this allergy, I am a very healthy 37-year-old man (who can sometimes pass for 29!) and so I shouldn’t be held back by this type of allergy. I also found a way that made sense to break this allergy, I followed it, it worked, and now I’m maintaining consumption of citric acid in normal quantities which will continually expose myself to it.
Only now do I realize there could be so many “lessons” for this story about my family’s citric acid allergy. It could be a legend about the sin of gluttony and how its effects can be felt for generations. Or maybe this is a story about balance, and how your life is negatively affected when things swing way out of balance, but you can profoundly affect your life for the positive by keeping things in balance. It seems that both of those are could be true lessons.
But really, this isn’t a class or Sunday school, and I’m not your teacher or therapist (although all of those things are good to have in your life). The point I want to make is to know your story, tell your story, and derive meaning out of your story, because I can assure you, there IS meaning there. Your life proves it!
I’m also just saying good-bye to an allergy of 38 years. I’m excited to get my drink on and finally experience a FULL mojito or margarita. And if you are one of those friends that STILL remembers this about me, you can finally fuhgeddaboudit!
So Good-bye Citric Acid Allergy. You will not be missed! And hello oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit. I have a feeling we are about to become very good friends. 🙂
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And finally, since you’ve tuned into this post and gotten ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM, you get to enjoy an awesome song. SPOILER ALERT – this song is actually being featured in the September playlist I am creating. The name of that playlist is “ReDefined” and it can be found (along with all of my playlists from this year) on Spotify. See the links below.