You Might Also Like: At The Table: The Food Allergy Podcast

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (0:07)
Food is one of the most basic ways that we care for each other. I'm allergic to shellfish, cashew, pistachio, and pine nuts.

**Daniel** (0:14)
And tree nut allergy.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (0:15)
My allergy is eggplant.

**Daniel** (0:16)
Severe allergies to milk and eggs.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (0:18)
I'm much more direct about what is at stake.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:20)
Advocating is important. I'm glad I did it for my daughter.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (0:23)
That's care. That's love.
This is At The Table, The Food Allergy Podcast, a show about food, connection, and living with food allergies. Each episode, we pull up a chair to a different table, from date nights to tables abroad and discuss how to navigate each moment while still eating safely. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can eat, it's about still having your seat at the table.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:54)
This show is brought to you by Genentech and Novartis in partnership with Xolair, Omelizumab. Our hosts have been compensated for their participation, though our guests have not. The information shared in this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about any questions regarding your health or treatment, and stay tuned until the end of the episode for important safety information.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (1:18)
Welcome to the very first episode of At The Table. I am Jenna Ushkowitz, and you may know me from Glee and Waitress and Spring Awakening on Broadway, and I'm here with celebrity chef Tyler Florence. Hi, Tyler.

**Tyler Florence** (1:31)
Hi, Jenna. How are you?

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (1:32)
I'm good. How are you?

**Tyler Florence** (1:34)
Fantastic.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (1:35)
I'm so happy to be here with you.

**Tyler Florence** (1:37)
Thank you so much, and I think this is going to be a really great podcast.
It's so interesting as a chef, and I've been in restaurants for 40 years of my life now. For me, it's something that we deal with every single day, every shift, someone comes in with a food allergy, and we have a really clear understanding of protocol. I think we're really excited to share that. I'm also really interested in learning. I think this is going to be a fabulous opportunity just to share great stories with a lot of people that are out there, and I'm excited about doing that. I'm also excited about sharing my own story too. Then ultimately as a chef, I got to cook. So we're bringing some great recipes to the table.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (2:12)
Hooray.

**Shoshi Flagg** (2:12)
Yeah.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (2:14)
So this is very exciting. It feels like the right time to be talking about this, to be learning about everything, and I'm really interested in hearing about your story because on some of the calls that we had prior to doing this and getting to know each other, you had revealed something that you've never really talked about before.

**Tyler Florence** (2:33)
So I'm a chef. If you're not aware of me, I've been on television on Food Network for the last 30 years. I have three restaurants and this is where this gets really interesting because as a young child, I had severe food allergies.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (2:47)
How severe were they and how many incidences did you have where you ate something that you were allergic to?

**Tyler Florence** (2:55)
It happened all the time, hives, swelling of the throat, I had a hard time breathing. But it started when I was an infant and out of many things a child my age could be allergic to, I was allergic to 42 of them. Are you ready for this list?

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (3:11)
Yeah.

**Tyler Florence** (3:12)
So no corn, no soy bean, no eggs, no dairy whatsoever. And then no beef because that was a byproduct. No citrus, no food coloring, no chicken, no wheat, no nuts. And my mom said that we never went out to dinner into a restaurant. And if we did, we had to pack my own food.
And we had to really educate everybody in our family about what I could eat and what I couldn't eat. And she was telling me a story that we went to my dad's sister's house, my aunt, and she had packed a meal for me. And it was like potatoes and pork chops. And someone decided to feed me a spoonful of macaroni and cheese out of the blue and just immediately projectile vomited everywhere. And this gets exhausting and this gets scary. And that's why I'm so excited about this podcast.

**Jenna Ushkowitz** (4:00)
Yeah.

**Tyler Florence** (4:00)
And we can share stories with people and make people feel like, okay, it's not a scenario, but you're not alone.