Wine and What You Need to Know if you have Food Allergies
I LOVE WINE! I love drinking it with friends, at celebrations, with my husband curled up on the couch after a long day and when we are on vacation watching the beautiful sunsets. There is nothing like having a glass of wine and enjoying it with the people in your life that mean so much to you.
When I was in college at 21 years old (right before graduation) I was in France studying abroad. Our professor had sommeliers come to teach us about wine. We had these cute little spice viles passed around and had to guess what each of them were…I didnt do well on this “test” but it was interesting. I loved walking into the small privately owned wine stores with incredibly beautiful wine bottles lining the walls and shelves, some etched with flowers right into the glass. My time spent in France most definitely started my love for wine.
Fast forward to meeting my husband in Dallas in 2007 he had already been invited, taken and passed his first level sommelier test. It was a bit sexy to me that he could order delicious wine like a pro when we went to a nice dinner. He knew all about the winemakers, the regions, soil types, etc.
For the past 14+ years we have been drinking some of the best wine around the world. We have a framed Chateau Mouton Rothschild mural with paintings for the labels shown from all the incredible artists hung in our dining room next to our gorgeous wooden table that resembles something you can find in an old french estate. Mouton Rothschild Paintings for the labels
When I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2010 we started to be a bit more careful about what we drank when we attended celebrations and events. Wine was my gluten free go-to drink. I never thought anything of it until 2020 and 2021 when I started having severe allergic reactions to food. Prior to getting a blood test for food allergies at my PCP’s office in 2020, I had ended up in the urgent care one morning when I woke up to a severely swollen face. I calmly told my husband I will be right back and when I arrived it took two EpiPen’s to get my airway open again. It was so far after eating anything that we were not convinced it was caused by food since I had woken up like that. However, it was the first time I had really paid any attention to food other than gluten that my body could be reacting to negatively. My PCP’s anaphylactic blood test came back positive for milk protein (dairy), corn, shellfish and egg whites, which led to a skin test, elimination diet, food challenge and recently food sensitivity tests. All of that I will go over in my 10-year journey in another post.
In the past year I started having severely painful hives that would pop up in random places on my body and then go away. My food sensitivity test was not recommended by my allergy doctor, saying there is no evidence-based research showing any IgG test is accurate. I took it anyway out of curiosity. It honestly wasn’t going to hurt anything to find out what it was showing, other than the money it costs to get the test done since it’s not covered by insurance. Sure enough, the egg whites came back positive. I figured two of the three tests I had taken being positive for egg whites couldn’t be wrong so I immediately removed eggs from my diet in a big way. Guess what happened? The hives immediately went away. I had already removed so many items from my diet, this was the last thing to go.
As with anything removed from the diet, the removal of eggs may have been the hardest on me. Not gluten, not dairy, not shellfish…but eggs were a staple in our family meals. They are used in bread, pancakes, graham crackers, so many recipes call for them. I taught myself how to be even more vigilant about reading food labels and cooking at home even more than usual. Then something caught my attention one day when I was scrolling through social media. A new wine company was advertising “vegan friendly wines” and it dawned on me that I had better check that too. Surely, wine making wouldn’t include eggs or animal products, right? Wine, particularly from the United States that filters the sediment or uses the traditional process of fining, can use milk protein, egg whites, shellfish and fish bladders to get the sediment out of the wine before bottling it. There have been controlled studies done on this and rarely was there a reaction to those that had IgE related allergies to milk, egg and shellfish. However, it’s not ruled out. Research Study on Wine and Food Allergies
I have noticed a big difference when I do not drink it. My skin starts to improve and I have no hives at all. Within hours of drinking wine I sometimes experience random hives, skin blemishes and ugh my headaches the next day have gotten worse. Some of this can be chalked up to genetics, getting older and even a potential sensitivity to sulfites. I can literally hear my stomach working overtime trying to digest the wine and I always feel better when I do not drink at all. I know alcohol irritates the digestive tract so I try to drink it less often now days, but I still enjoy a glass or two with my husband. We have started to pay closer attention to the wines we buy and look for vegan friendly wines out of an abundance of caution. Either way, some medical advice that was given to me encourages women to stay below 7 glasses of wine a week for optimal health. One glass of wine to a woman’s body is the same as two glasses to a man’s body from what I have been told. I will not give up drinking wine with my husband and friends, but now that I am more educated on the fining agents that are used in many cases around the globe it has opened my eyes to which ones I choose to drink.
As for my celiac friends, I am loving the certified gluten free labels to give us an added level of reassurance wheat paste hasn’t seeped into our wine during the process, although rare, it’s just nice to start seeing that pop up on many wine bottles now days. When we drink wine, it’s never wine coolers or fruit flavored (with added flavoring or coloring) dessert wines.
The good news is we can vote with our wallets and buy gluten free, vegan friendly wines. At the end of the day the consumers do have power in this - we just have to harness it so wineries will be more inclined to stop using fish bladders, milk protein or egg whites in the fining process. Cheers to progress!
Xo,
Shauna