Happy Tuesday!! This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) asks us to share ten character traits that we love. Instead, I thought I would do something a little different this week. Thinking about potential character traits to talk about in my hypothetical list made me realize that there is one trait in particular that I don’t think I’ve ever read about in fiction, but would absolutely love to: food allergies. As is probably abundantly clear from the title of my blog, I have a severe nut allergy. I’ve lived with this all my life, and would love to talk all about it in a separate post if that’s something you would all be interested in. Regardless, it’s very rare to find food allergies represented in literature, even though they are common and complex in real life.
Food allergies impact so many day to day activities, the majority of which someone without food allergies would likely not even expect. I think this is the kind of representation that would really benefit from being written from #ownvoices (writers who suffer from food allergies themselves) because allergies can be incredibly nuanced. I feel like it would be pretty easy to tell just from reading a character with food allergies whether or not the writer actually had experiences with them (or if someone close to them had allergies). They are tricky, tricky beasts.
Anyways, that’s my little rant for today. I would love, love, love to read a book where a main character has a food allergy!
Do you have any recommendations for me? I would so appreciate them!! Are there any character traits that you wish were more represented in fiction? Do you have a food allergy? (Misery loves company!) Would you be interested in hearing more about my nut allergy? Let me know in the comments section below!
Yours,
HOLLY
Nut Free Nerd 
The more I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever read any books including someone with food allergies. Or if I have, none of them immediately spring to mind! I’ve been very lucky so far in life in that I don’t have any food allergies, but my youngest niece was born with quite a severe food allergy that means she can’t have any dairy products. She’s still quite little, she’s only just turned 4, but she deserves to see more people like her in the books she reads, too. Great discussion!
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That is such a good point! I can’t think of any books I’ve read where food allergies play a prominent (or any) role. I just did a google search and came up with “Delicate Monsters” by Stephanie Khuen as a suggestion. The others I found seem to be picture books.
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Haha no I can’t think of any characters with food allergies!
(www.evelynreads.com)
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I know I’ve read a couple books with food allergies in them. I wish I could remember their titles! One of them was One of Us Is Lying, but it’s not really a focus. Nut allergies are tough. Both my sister and nephew have one, so I’ve been around them my whole life.
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This is a great point, Holly. I don’t think I have ever read a book where a character has had a food allergy or intolerance…
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Oh my God, I didn’t even realized this until now. I can’t remember a book I read that has characters with food allergy. Nice spin in this week’s topic Holly. ❤
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Oh wow yes, I fortunately don’t suffer from any severe food allergies, so I have no idea what that has to be like, but so many people do and it would be SO interesting and so great to read some ownvoices stories with characters dealing with these kind of allergies, I agree. I hope there are some books out there on that and hopefully, more will be written, too 🙂
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That’d be pretty interesting to read! I don’t have any food allergies myself, so I don’t know how bad could the allergy reaction be xD I don’t have any recs either, I’m sorry, maybe this is a sign perhaps you should write it 😛
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Hmm I can only remember Frank being lactose intolerant in Son of Poseidon? He’s a side character and his allergies aren’t mentioned much though…
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Oooh true, that’s a good point!
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