My friend Katy has recently cut dairy products out of her diet, but it's not because she has "trendy food intolerance". These are her thoughts and feelings.
It's lunchtime again, and here I am on campus trying to decide what to eat - again. The University boasts numerous eating establishments, but even so the choice usually boils down to a filled baguette or chips. It's for this reason, despite the 'canteen' tray rail and the polystyrene cups, I end up in 'The Downs', the slightly healthier (but still serving chips) caf? on Sussex campus.
Mmm, what lovely treats are in store for me today? Well, the pasta is out, so is the korma, the selection of flans and all of the desserts.
You may be wondering what all the fuss is about and why I don't shut up now and order some chips. Well as it happens I don't eat dairy products. I'm not a vegan, I don't have radical ethics and I won't breakout in blotches, or have a seizure. It's just, for reasons that will be explained, I don't do dairy.
To be fair I could just gobble down a portion of chips, a jacket spud with beans or a salad but I like food, and good food at that. I like to eat a healthy and varied diet and I want a choice of more than 2-3 dishes, one of which is always chips.
So I wander over to the soups to see today's line-up: vegetable, carrot and coriander, courgette and cream of chicken. Nearly every day I come in here and nearly every day I ask if any of the soups are 'dairy free', and every time I get the same grumpy response, "Huh, I'll just go and check for you," says the canteen worker, as she trundles off to ask the chef. I don't really understand why they don't label the soups with those handy little 'V's or green ticks. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in the university's population of 10,000 who avoids dairy products.
She returns. Apparently the only soup without dairy is the vegetable. The cream of chicken was blatantly out of the question from the start and the courgette did have a distinctively 'milky' look to it. As for the carrot and coriander that was definitely dairy-free last week I remember, because I asked.
For as long as I can remember I've suffered from a constant runny nose, regular colds, sore throats and catarrh. As a child I had eczema and at the age of 15 I came down with glandular fever, which knocked me out for a good two weeks and continued to tire me for several years after that. My immune system has taken quite a battering, and since starting university the constant drinking and lack of sleep hasn't helped.
So when I decided to spend the summer in Brighton, I wasn't very surprised when severe hay fever took hold, making me sneezy, runny, itchy and generally pretty miserable.
Having suffered a similar fate for many of her young years, my grandmother decided enough was enough, and sent me off to a top allergy specialist residing on Harley Street, London. As I was used to being fobbed off by NHS doctors who'd tell me I had been suffering an unlucky number of colds, on one occasion tonsillitis, and having being prescribed nasal spray after nasal spray (which just make you sneeze even more) I was quite looking forward to my 'private health' experience.