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Answerman - Are There Any Vegetarians In Japan?

Unless you're hyperallergic, a person can overcome allergies, at least for a good deal of their lives, by taking in small amounts of that food and eating more and more of it until the adverse reactions become unnoticeable or at least bearable. (Not all humans can do this, but my sister overcame her allergies to eggs and peanuts in this way. As our culture's cuisine uses eggs and peanuts in a LOT of dishes, this was necessary for her to function.) Humans are born unable to take in cow milk, for instance, but can do so because they drink enough of it that human digestive systems create ways of dealing with the lactose in there. The people who are lactose intolerant were never able to complete this process. Their digestive systems wouldn't allow them to.

Hence, I would guess in Japan, either people with fish allergies are rare due to them dying out, or they are gradually eased into the allergy. Then again, Japanese culture also shuns people who, for whatever reason, are unable to fit in with the rest of society.

Allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitization or hypo-sensitization, is a medical treatment for some types of allergies. It is useful for environmental allergies, allergies to insect bites, and asthma. Its benefit for food allergies is unclear and thus not recommended. Immunotherapy involves exposing people to larger and larger amounts of allergen in an attempt to change the immune system's response.

I have this same allergy and go to Japan often.

It's frequently obvious whether the food is fish/seafood free. That said, I downloaded an app, Lingolook Japan, that displays on screen in Japnese and says out loud in Japanese 'I am allergic to seafood.' It also says, 'I'll have whatever you recommend.' I've had some great meals (and fascinated waiters/chefs) by playing those two statements next to each other and then eating what they bring. They always understand it fully.

That said, Japanese food is amazing and delicious, even when avoiding all seafood. Okonomyaki and steaks are two of my favorites.

You should read dormcat's post from page 2 where he responded to pretty much the same comment. He is Asian btw, and lives in Asia too!, just so that's clear in case it wasn't before heh. Personally I say eat what ya want or don't want. Provided it's legal, so no eating people. Yet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/2w2vdl/how_feasible_is_it_to_avoid_eating_fish_while_in/

@NeverConvex

It is likely that someone with a hyperallergic response to fish would not survive childhood in Japan. Fish based food is so pervasive that the condition would not be identified in time.

If we really want to up the efficiency of protein production, utilizing only a fraction of land area, and having minimal methane emissions and overall environmental impact, then we should switch from traditional meat production to insect farming. Admittedly, that might probably take a few generations to pick up steam.

Or that extreme condition simply would never even have developed as they were being exposed to those things early and often and building up a natural tolerance

A vegan diet being good enough in adult life is one thing, but it's rather less certain that there's no harm to a vegan diet on children in the earliest stages of development. Also people trying to make their carnivorous pets eat vegan. It is worth noting that people who take it that far would be at the fringe, and certainly shouldn't be taken to represent vegans and vegetarians as a whole.

That surprises me. If there is one thing Paris has, it's a variety of food! I don't know when your friend went, but according to this article, as of April 2016 there were approximately 290 vegetarian restaurants in Paris. Paris has a big kosher-keeping community, too, and many have pareve (neutral) foods--the dairy restaurants would have no meat or fowl (bird meat) at all, but would have dairy, eggs & sometimes fish in their dishes. The fish would be very easy to avoid, and cheese/milk would probably be, too (and the cheese would probably be much less likely to use animal based rennet than at the average restaurant, if that's a concern). I've heard of bakeries and chocolate shops that don't use dairy, as well.
If there are no other options, there's always that Soylent stuff--supposedly, it's vegan, kosher, and contains all the nutrition an adult needs so that s/he doesn't have to actually eat anything else. Like a baby formula for adults!

That doesn't really answer the question. The situation I have in mind is what you're distinguishing as 'hyperallergic;' in my case, for example, a small bite of fish induces severe anaphylactic shock (as I've unfortunately tested - throat takes on a bright red color and swells up to 3-4 times its normal size so that breathing becomes increasingly hampered), which would be fatal if the individual isn't rushed to a hospital. I'm curious how that would be handled by/for a native Japanese person.

It's worth noting that some allergies are also non-responsive to exposure therapy. For my non-food allergies I underwent bi-weekly serum injections under an allergist's care for a year or two with zero change in my symptoms, for example, until the allergist decided there wasn't much point in continuing. While it's nice when exposure therapies work, in their current state they're not an allergy panacea; they also seem to be specifically discouraged by the medical community for treating food allergies:

wiki wrote:

Allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitization or hypo-sensitization, is a medical treatment for some types of allergies. It is useful for environmental allergies, allergies to insect bites, and asthma. Its benefit for food allergies is unclear and thus not recommended. Immunotherapy involves exposing people to larger and larger amounts of allergen in an attempt to change the immune system's response.

I also don't think that's an accurate description of lactose intolerance. Almost all humans are born producing lactase, the primary enzyme needed to break down lactose, the offending sugar in milk (including cow's milk). Lactose intolerance primarily occurs when a human for some reason or other stops producing lactase (though there are unusual cases of premature babies born not yet able to produce lactase; maybe this is what you had in mind?). Comparing lactose intolerance to a food allergy is a bit odd, too; the former is an issue with digesting a particular sugar and remains largely localized to the digestive tract (although I suppose if you insisted on eating truly tremendous quantities of it the problem could become severe), while the latter involves a potentially widespread and life-threatening immune system response to the presence of milk. The etiology and severity of the two pathologies are quite distinct.