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Violet Wiker can’t tell you what’s for dinner. Ask her to weigh in on the menu, and her anxiety spikes so high she’ll change the conversation. Her husband cooks, navigating her red meat allergy and dairy restrictions.
She calls it picky eating, but it’s not a quirk—it’s a symptom. A tick bite in 2013 gave her alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to red meat, dairy, and some medications. Additionally, she’s been tightly controlling food her whole life, the result of childhood trauma when a motorcycle accident killed her parents.
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