GARLIC.......who knew?

I have heard that many people are allergic to peanuts, milk, eggs, shellfish, and soy.

Did you know...

there are many people allergic to GARLIC!

Last night we were entertaining friends and my buddy (let's call him Dave) tells me he is allergic to garlic. The worst part is that he is Italian. At first I laughed because I didn't truly understand how bad his allergy was until he started describing the symptoms; bloated stomach, bad gas, diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, and headaches.

Darn it! I was about 5 minutes away from ordering pizza. I know there is garlic in the pizza sauce so I asked him what should we do. Dave asked if we could make one of the pizzas half no sauce / half sauce. I said sure.

So the pizza arrived and it was a little difficult to tell which side had sauce.

Let me interrupt myself to complain on how cheap pizza places are by giving you barely any cheese and barely any sauce. The markup on pizza is like 500% so put some stuff on my pizza. I am not going to name any pizza places, but I will tell you that their name rhymes with Jappa Pon's.

Okay. I feel better know. Back to the story.

So after woofing down 4 pieces of pizza and 10 hot wings I commented on Dave's stomach. I said, "Dude, your starting to get a gut like me. You need to get a job and stop being a bum." He looks at me and says, "I think I ate a piece of pizza with sauce." So a few minutes pass and his stomach is starting to become rock hard and he is looking like his water is about to break. So, the concerned friend I am, I immediately pull my cell phone out and tell him to stand still so I can get a shot of his stomach for my blog.

here is a shot of his stomach. Dave's original stomach is normally flat.
So now I am freaking out. It is going to explode and I am googling "allergic to garlic" like a mad man. I find out that there are tons of people like him who are living in hell. They not only are complaining that they can't eat out in restaurants because every dish has garlic. They are also having bad reactions to food products that contain garlic, but don't list garlic on the ingredients list. Did you know labels don't have to list garlic because the FDA considers garlic a non-allergenic ingredient.

I feel for these people and especially to my pregnant friend. Just out of curiosity I tried to find one item in my food pantry that didn't contain garlic. Everything I read contained garlic in some form.

I joke around with Dave a lot, but this is a serious problem. If you have any further info for my friend Dave please write me here at Blog and Cookies.

If you don't have any further info for my buddy Dave then go order a pizza from Costco and start a blog.