Student learns to deal with food allergies

Aaron Benson BEN01015@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

Imagine life without half of the foods tyou’re used to: No pizza, no Wheaties, no ice cream and no macaroni and cheese.

These foods are considered staples for many college students, but for Eric Dodgen, a freshman from Moses Lake, Wash., none of these are an option.

Dodgen suffers from food intolerances, which prevent him from eating anything that contains wheat, barley, rye or milk. Dodgen is also allergic to tomatoes. Even the smallest portion of any of these foods causes him to become sick, often quite seriously.

Every time he goes grocery shopping, Dodgen has to watch ingredient labels carefully.

Doctors performed a surgical test on Dodgen last Tuesday to determine whether or not he suffers from celiac disease, a stomach disorder in which a person cannot tolerate the gluten that is found in wheat, barley and rye.

Recent studies have suggested that as many as one in 133 people in the United States suffer from celiac disease, most of them undiagnosed, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Dodgen has been following a constricted diet for more than a month, and has noticed a marked improvement in his health.

“Since I stopped eating wheat, I haven’t felt the penetrating abdominal pain that I had been,” Dodgen said.

Celiac disease does not have a cure; one can only manage the symptoms. The only way to manage celiac disease, according to the NIH, is to follow a gluten-free diet for life.

“It’s kind of annoying, but it’s something that I can live with because food has become a low priority,” Dodgen said. “If it makes me sick, I’d rather not eat it.