My bowels, like water
the poetry of online food and intolerance
I discovered that a rather delicious meal I ate contained milk. It was unpleasant because I am lactose intolerant. When I experience the symptoms thereof, for some reason my mind has created this little poem (it might be a haiku):
My bowels, like water
They move me
To tears.
It’s usually not quite that bad, but it is a horrible, painful experience, and even after all these years (I first learned lactose intolerance existed over 25 years ago, when ate a large bowl of pudding I had made and suffered incredibly, with no clue as the cause). Despite the number of times this has happened it still caught me off guard, and it took inordinately long to figure out what was wrong and why I was experiencing the problems I was. Not that knowing gives any solutions after one has ingested milk products — at that point it just explains the suffering.
On the plus side I’m not normally not caught off guard, because I carefully read ingredients. The problem that occurred this time around is that the online grocery shopping doesn’t include an ingredients list, or a way to view it, and I didn’t expect this particular food item to contain milk or milk products.
It’s definitely an oversight that needs to be addressed for online shopping, and in Ontario, is probably a violation of AODA. (Accessibility for Ontarions with Disabilities Act). Now that I realize this, I will be reporting the store from which I purchased online and point out their responsibilities, and hopefully they will fix the issue of not having ingredients on the online shopping.