Ariana Grande announced earlier this week that she was unable to make two tour dates, in Tampa and Orlando on Tuesday and Wednesday, due to an illness. I thought it might be allergies or a cold, something that would affect her voice. It turns out she had an allergy to tomatoes that just developed suddenly! She posted the news in an Instagram story and then issued an update explaining that doctors discovered she was allergic to tomatoes. She is still scheduled to perform in Miami tonight, Friday, and tomorrow night. Here’s her apology about missing concerts:
Then she posted this video of her dog on some stairs (it doesn’t do much except move his head and there’s just ambient sound) along with the news that she has a tomato allergy. I’m posting the text separately so everyone can read it.
update: we discovered ….. that ….. i had an unfortunate allergic reaction to tomatoes and my throat pretty much closed. still feels like i’m swallowing a cactus but slowly making progress! thank u all for your love and understanding. can’t wait to get back to performing and to make it up to Tampa and Orlando in November.
p.s. there is NOTHING MORE UNFAIR THAN AN ITALIAN WOMAN DEVELOPING AN ALLERGY TO TOMATOES IN HER MID TWENTIES…….
[From Instagram]
That’s crazy! I’ve heard of people developing allergies to things they previously weren’t allergic to and that scares me so much. I always keep an Epipen in my purse for this reason. One of my son’s babysitters had a sudden allergy and didn’t know what was causing it. We were living in Germany at the time and they put her in a special food clinic for an entire week to gradually introduce food to find the source of her allergy. She was an American student and that’s the kind of amazing care they gave her, which is unheard of for anyone but the richest people in the states. (I regularly hear about average German people going to clinics for treatments which are fully covered.) It turned out she was allergic to barley. Anyway I think about that sometimes when I consider the despicable state of healthcare in the US. If Ariana was just an average 25 year-old, she may not have gotten answers for a while. I’m glad she’s ok and recovering and I am so sorry to those of you who have life threatening allergies like this!
I developed a tomato allergy when I was pregnant with my first child (who was born with severe peanut & treenut allergies). It sucks.
In addition to her throat closing off, there’s a pretty good chance that they put her on prednisone, which can make your face moon out and look pretty freaky.
I developed a tomato allergy in my late 20s, not related to pregnancy. It’s nuts. One day, they were some of my favorite things to eat, and the next I was going to the hospital. Poor Ari. Hope she feels better.
That would devastate me, tomato based sauces and soups are my absolute favorite
I didn’t develop allergies until I was 19, and then man, they were off the charts! I was 4+ (scale is 1-4) on most environmental things (trees, grasses, dust etc), as well as dairy and melons…I was getting shots 3 xs a wk. at first, then scaled down to once a wk (where I could give them to myself for a number of years). By my 30s I just needed daily allergy pills. My personal record: 18 sneezes in a row! lol
Fast forward, and in my mid 40s, they just pretty much calmed down on their own! No need for daily pills anymore, and then in my 50s, they rarely come into play.
My sister went semi-vegetarian (no red meat) during her pregnancy with my older nephew, and all she ate was fish, eggs, nuts, and shrimp (she craved it). My poor older nephew was born with what we found (by age 18 mos.) to be severe eczema relating to eggs, shellfish, and peanuts (I finally prevailed on her to take him to a pediatric allergist after badgering her for a year). Her pediatrician (who was the famous “Baby Whisperer” Harvey Karp) just kept giving him a salve, and that poor kid just kept itching and scratching himself raw. After testing, my sister cut eggs out of his diet (he ate a scrambled egg every day-his fav) and in 3 wks, no more eczema! Now, at 20, he can eat *almost* everything, even after being *highly* allergic to shellfish and peanuts (where he had to have Epi pens at school, his backpack, home, cars, my place), he can eat small amts. w/out any reaction at all. So yeah, allergies CAN come and go over a lifetime.
This was me but with sweet scents. One day I was spraying aromatic mists and lighting candles everywhere, the next my throat was closing up if I even got near those things. It was a genuine surprise as I stupidly thought allergies came in childhood only.
I’m the reverse – never had any until college, and they’ve gotten progressively worse. Now in my 40s I’m finally getting shots – once a week for a year, then I think it goes to monthly?
Oh god. I didn’t think tomato allergies were common things! I love tomato and would be pretty devastated at not being able to eat it again.
I’m lucky enough that I only get a bad reaction from dust and pollen. Lily’s – which are so pretty – make me a little wheezy feeling, I assume because of the amount of exposed pollen. I’ve gotten hives from sun exposure too, but they’re more of an annoyance than anything.
My mother has some unidentified allergy. She’s seen specialists. She’ll break out in full body hives, and has had to be taken by ambulance to the ER once. But they can’t figure out what it is. We think it could be a cardboard allergy – because it seems to have happened when she’s shopped and carried boxes, or when she received freight at the store she works at. Whenever she goes to her favorite pizza place she’s just had to start telling them that her donair needs to go in a plastic or Styrofoam container and that it can’t touch cardboard.
There is a chemical mixture that is sprayed on pizza boxes, and some shipping boxes to make them resistant to water and grease. Same chemicals are on fast food paper wrappers, and inside paper coffee cups. It might be that.
Prednisone can also cause cataracts.
It is not uncommon to develop allergies. The way I see it is that we live in a highly damaging environments. Just among my closest people the kids are all fine and adults are slowly develoing all kinds of allergies. My husband for example likes to wind surf and it is in the past few years he developed an allergy to lake water.
I also developed a tomato allergy in adulthood!! Something I’ve eaten my whole life and then suddenly cannot anymore. It makes you feel quite vulnerable and scared that you could just be eating anything you normally eat and then just all of a sudden have your throat close up.
It really does make you feel vulnerable. Like I said upthread, I too developed a tomato allergy in adulthood. I also went from being able to occasionally enjoy milk, and now milk products make my throat itch and squeeze. It kinda makes me wonder what’s next in my old age lol.
My mom developed an allergy to avocados in her sixties.
I developed an allergy to avocados too, in my 20’s. Suddenly my throat would itch, my inner ears would itch, my lips would swell. I was on my way to a full blown reaction. Also bananas made me react this way as well.
It went away after about two years
Allergies are crazy
That sounds like oral allergy syndrome. It’s common in people with birch allergies as your body mistakes the food enzymes for the pollen and reacts as if it’s been threatened. For me it’s raw fresh carrots, for others I know it’s apples or grapes or avocados (could be a lot of fruits). Your stomach usually breaks it down or even cooking will break down the enzymes and it shouldn’t be life threatening- more of an annoyance with the itchy ears and tingly lips.
thats so crazy because the more raw/freshly cut the avocado and banana was – the more intense my reaction.
Avocado and banana in prepared foods or processed foods would not bother me
this stumped my entire friends and family for years!! thank you for solving the mystery!!
i have that as well – bananas, avocados and plain almonds all make my mouth itch!!
I have a latex allergy, and I am sensitive to bananas, avocados and hazelnuts. Banana allergy has gotten better, but all three of those things have very similar chemical composition in the skins. Just a note for those who share those allergies to avoid hazelnuts, processed in chocolate is usually OK it’s when they’re whole.
I developed a severe allergy to avocado in my late 30’s as well as an allergy to soy at the same time just out of the blue! I have grown up with multiple allergies to many different foods (mostly fruits and vegetables – I have a severe tree allergy) and environmental (this is NOT a good time of year for me), and penicillin. It’s scary especially when it comes along out of the blue. My youngest has several anaphylactic allergies (peanuts, tree nuts and sesame) which is terrifying.
Adult onset tomato allergy in my late thirties. Discovered it while enjoying v8 juice on a plane. Scary stuff.
I, recently, developed an allergy on bee bites, I spent my early childhood at my grandmother place in a village, so I was bitten the hell out of my kid’s body by any type of insects – I was curious kid, always “studied” everything I could reach. And nothing never happened to me after bites.
But this year bee bit me, and my leg swelled twice in size, I couldn’t walk, spent 5 days at home, doctor said that it was allergic reaction and right now I need to be careful with insects any type. It’s especially disturbing, because mosquitoes like me really badly.
So yeah, our bodies change, and you may develop an allergy on anything at any moment of your life. Nice 🙂
I’m allergic to bee stings and mosquito bites. The bee stings are extra scary because the doc said each sting will be progressively worse. I should carry an Epipen but I don’t. I have learned the hard way not to wear bright colors outside when running or hiking or gardening. I once got stung horribly when grilling while wearing a fuschia t-shirt.
A tomato allergy would be devastating to me as I’d say it’s probably my favorite food. I just crave tomato-based stuff all the time and will eat a pan of roasted tomatoes all in one sitting.
Where I live aren’t a lot of bees, so I’m not afraid of hiking and bright clothing, they don’t fly too close to people. I feel you, mosquitoes are the worst, I remember some years ago I went with my friends for camping to the river, and I was only one who was bitten literally everywhere, they bit me even in a daytime, and in a night I was bitten through my clothes.
Take care of yourself, I think it’s better to keep medicine with you, to prevent situation of hospitalisation, you know :/
Bees rarely sting – you probably got attacked by a wasp.
Wasps love meat and can be very aggressive. I have friends who love to make bacon while camping and there are frequently wasps hovering over their grill.
My sister lives in Germany, she married a German man. The benefits she gets are UNREAL. I miss her like crazy but I absolutely encourage her to stay put and have her babies in Germany! It’s so enlightened when it comes to health care. It makes America look barbaric (which… we are).
The first time she was really really sick, and got care and didn’t have to even see a bill or worry about any of that, she wept with relief. I would too! When you’re sick in Germany the focus of everyone you interact with at the Dr is to get you WELL. That’s all. Not worrying about insurance, what’s covered, what’s not. You get treated like a human.
Anyway. Tomato allergy would be a real bummer. That’s no fun!
It’s not just Germany, it’s like this in a lot of countries. The health system is not for profit but is for the well-being of the population. Not just those who can afford it.
The US healthcare system is disgraceful and I feel very sorry for US citizens, I don’t know how it could be looked upon as normal
That stinks for her. I hate raw tomatoes, but couldn’t imagine no tomato sauce!
I grow tomatoes and fresh tomatoes and fried green tomatoes are a favorite.
I don’t want to live in a world without tomatoes but I am allergic to almost
every tree in this state. It sucks.
We took our youngest to the allergy clinic a few years ago and they did that poke test on her back.
Mildly allergic to some things but the one that blew-up huge was gill fish.
She can have shellfish but not fish with gills like Halibut, Tuna or Salmon. Weird, right?
I don’t think any of our allergies are life-threatening except the older daughter developed an allergy to cats when she was around 8 and the result was severe asthma. We went to the ER a couple of times before we knew what was causing it.
Some people wear too much scent. It can send me into a sneezing, coughing, phlegm fit.
Allergies are no joke.
I love to give this woman-child grief, but allergies can be quit scary and our bodies unpredictable. I don’t have allergies, but after losing my parents, and returning home a couple of weeks following dad’s funeral, my entire body began to be covered with some rash. We could actually see huge, red and bumpy marks appear everywhere. I became dizzy, my throat started swelling…I couldn’t breathe. Here’s the thing though, I hadn’t eaten anything. And I was drinking water. At the hospital, the docs said stress was the catalyst. I was so upset I gave myself an allergic reaction. Wtf? It’s happened several times since then with hives (not my throat). So strange. I try to stay calm lol.
I’ve done the same thing! I ended up with a crazy rash all over my face, neck, and chest and we couldn’t figure out what it was until one of the doctors finally asked if I’d been under abnormal amounts of stress lately – which I had. I was so stressed out I gave myself HIVES. I couldn’t believe it. The mind/body connection is indisputable for me now and I try not to let myself get to that point anymore.
I used to work at KPMG, an accounting firm. That job was so terrible miserable stressful, I broke out in hives on my neck and face constantly at work.
I quit that job and haven’t broken out in hives since.
Stress related illness is real, and it is no joke. Migraines and autoimmune issues can totally be triggered by stress. (Ask me how I know!)
For starters, if you’re stressed, you’re probably not sleeping well or enough. That in itself leads to a whole lot of bad physiological stuff. We also tend to not eat well and to blow off self-care at those times – when we need it most. It’s a vicious circle.
There are a lot of articles on the importance of sleep out there. Here’s one from Outside Online:
https://www.outsideonline.com/2292806/your-body-no-sleep
My daughter has tickets for next Wednesday in Chicago, hope it’s still on.
I think Arianna will be fine by then
Her boyfriend got them tickets as a Valentine’s gift, she’s really looking forward to it.
I saw her in San Antonio two weeks ago. She was amazing! I didn’t expect her to have such a beautiful voice!
The way she writes in social media drives me insane.
Sucks about the allergy. Creepy stuff, how an everyday product for you can become dangerous.
My daughter isn’t allergic to tomatoes, but after she developed severe eczema on the back of her legs, I read that tomatoes can be an eczema trigger, so we cut them out and her eczema went away. We’ve done some re-tests with introducing them (and even just ketchup) and it has come back.
It sucks. I blend roasted red peppers with spices + olive oil and some vinegar for “mock” tomato sauce so that we can make pizza, have pasta and meatballs with sauce, etc.
I have a pretty severe psoriasis and I read the same thing but it did nothing for me 🙁
I didn’t write in my original post, but we had to cut out apples as well, when she ate them it was making her old eczema spots itchy. So right now she is apple and tomato free.
I got really severe psoriasis in my 20s to 30s (small patches on my body, but *so* bad on my scalp I had to have injections into the plaques!). I don’t know *what* caused them, but it was a misery. As suddenly as it came, it disappeared! 20 yrs ago they knew less about it than now; thinking is it is part of an autoimmune misfire, but it didn’t react as eczema (ie: food related).
Awww! That does suck.
At least you created a sauce. That’s fairly inventive. 🙂
Maybe pizza and pasta with white/Alfredo sauce?
Those are good too but not the same.
your mock tomato sauce sounds delicious!
Thank you!
my mom has severe back problems and she had horrible flare up of pain and it was from eating tomatoes. my parents have a huge garden and when the tomatoes were ripe she was eating them like breakfast lunch and dinner and it was b/c they are highly inflammatory and she overdid it.
I have eczema that gets triggered by tomatoes too. It was never really bad before, but really worsened about two years ago and threw in oranges, pineapple, kiwi and grapefruit to boot. I thought is was Vitamin C related but I can have lemons and limes. And, it occurs on my face, which is a real pain. Chocolate also triggers the eczema, but thankfully only on my arms and legs so I can cover it up when I need a real choco binge. Although…. toblerone doesn’t make me react. I miss salsa and Hawaiian pizza the most. I hope it goes away someday, as you don’t realize how much tomato is in stuff until you can’t have it. I work in a remote camp where they prepare the food for us, and SO MUCH tomato.
Sounds like a histamine sensitivity. All of the foods you listed are high histamine (nightshades, chocolate, pineapple, etc)
I freaked out once when a friend of mine had a huge reaction out of a tiny bite at a pinapple. I was so naive to the point of thinking vegetables and fruits would never give anyone allergy.
I can’t let raw pineapple or mango touch my lips or they break out in tiny blisters, so,
I take tiny bites (privately) like a big-mouth frog.
It isn’t pretty.
Lots of people are allergic to strawberries.
My mom, my sister and I are all allergic to pineapples, kiwis and strawberries. For me they make my mouth tingle and make my face feel very flushed (in essence, feels like all the blood in my body is rushing to my mouth and cheeks lol). For us this all started when my sis and I were teens and for my sister her reaction has gotten progressively worse. She’s also now deathly allergic to bee stings.
My college boyfriend progressively developed a pretty serious allergy to shellfish. We were long distance and when we saw each other he’d eat shellfish (he was a picky eater when not around me). The first time he ate shellfish I noticed he had a rash all along his neck and chest. A year later he had mussels and was a bit sick in the night. 9 months after that he had mussels again and within 2 hours was sick all night on the toilet. I always encouraged him to get looked at – he was British after all so he had access to the NHS – but it wasn’t until we split the next year and he went to Asia that he got tested. He ended up being deathly allergic to shellfish and needed an epipen to travel with. Scary stuff!
We used to live in Alaska.
It’s like that game, “Would you rather….”
Would you rather be allergic to shellfish or gill fish?
Halibut or King crab legs?
Nope! Can’t choose!
I will say that once something makes you sick, you lose a taste for it, so, there’s that.
I once barfed a chef salad with blue cheese dressing and didn’t eat that dressing again for 20 years but it didn’t almost kill me.
That’s a game changer.
haha thats the truth! I got sick off of chicken teriyaki when i was 15 years old and havent touched it since.
I have a minor reaction to raw pineapple – it’s fine if cooked, but raw is tough.
I am SUPER allergic to poison ivy, and found out the hard way that cashews are related to it and have the same oils – not as much, but enough to make it very unpleasant to eat one! Also mangoes are related to that too.
I developed an allergy to beef and wine in my 20s, so yeah, I feel her pain!
My sister developed a tomato intolerance in her forties. They are in the same family as white potatoes, peppers and chillies. Intolerance isn’t as bad as an allergy, in that it can’t kill you, but it is still horrible. When sis spent a few days unknowingly eating food with trace amounts of pepper in, she was pretty much crippled and unable to work for 3 weeks.
The german health system is crap. Your friend must have had a private insurance. I have been trying to get my food allergies diagnosed for 6 forking years now and no doctor cares. I live in a pretty big town but nobody in this city even knows how to test this properly. Your friend was really lucky and this is absolutely not representative of german medicine.
Tomatoes are nightshades that contain alkaloids, which are “common” triggers for allergy and autoimmune disease. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if she has other allergies or even an AI ailment to have such a strong reaction (and throat inflammation to that extent is fairly serious and portends a more intense future response). Sensitivity can have a fairly sudden onset after enough exposure. Bodies are weird.
My dad developed an allergy to dairy and wheat (a full blown throat-close-up allergy, not celiac) at the age of 58. Now I’m terrified the same thing will happen to me because all the best foods are made with wheat and dairy!
anyone react strongly to mosquito bites?
I have had strong reactions my whole life that seem abnormal compared to most other people. When I get bit by mosquitos, I get HUGE welts and the itch is crazy – like BEYOND crazy. If I get too many mosquitos bites at once, I also tend to get flu-like symptoms the following day – I just dont feel so good. I also bruise around mosquito bites sometimes. I know they itch and swell for pretty much everyone but I always feel like my symptoms are just a tad more intense than when I hear friends/family describe their mosquito bites.
Yeah, I have the same problem. I’m very allergic to their saliva. It’s one of the reasons I could never move back to the South – the older I get, the more severe the reaction. They’ll be really inflamed for the first two days and then die down into more reasonable size, but I’m absolutely miserable right after it happens. Hydrocortisone and diphenhydramine are my best friends, y’all.
I used to get unusually large, itchy welts from mosquito bites, but no flu-like symptoms. Now when they bite I just get the normal sized itchy bumps. Not sure why.
My allergies are hit or miss
I missed 3 years of grade school due to constantly getting pneumonia and asthma
Plus I would get throat and ear stuff
I had allergy shots for about 6 years and I pretty much don’t get sick except colds and flus now.
I’m allergic to pretty much everything, cats (we have two) chocolate, tomatoes, strawberries, ricotta cheese, oragano, milk
Walnuts make the roof of my mouth blister. Salsa makes the corners of my lips crack and bleed, and makes me have asthma.
It’s a crapshoot on if I’ll have an asthma attack so I eat everything anyway and just have my inhaler handy.
Chocolate can really get me good sometimes though.
And omg when I was pregnant I couldn’t touch chocolate, I’d have horrible attacks. I was very sad because I majorly craved it
I had immunotherapy treatment which was amazing at activating my immune system to fight cancer. It can really work well. A possible side effect (of these and many other medications) can be organ/tissue damage, development of other conditions. I have a condition now which sucks shit in a can- eosinophilic colitis- but could be way worse, of course. It makes me allergic to a lot of food substances- gluten, wheat, dairy, soy, sulfates, lupin, fish, crustaceans, peanuts, casein, egg, sesame, mustard, shellfish. I’m ok with some tree nuts and have discovered almond milk which is not so bad. 😉 I developed these allergies at age 43, am now 44. If this is happening to anyone else, there’s an organization called APFED, the American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders, which has tons of information that has been extremely helpful to me; their website is https://apfed.org.
Sorry for the novel above. Hope Ari is ok! 🖖🏽
It was explained to me once, and I am paraphrasing a great deal here, that “a person’s allergies reset every 30 years.” It might not have been 30; could have been 7 or 9. Can anyone with any knowledge in that elaborate or correct me?
My sister developed a peanut allergy randomly in her early thirties. I haven’t found any food allergies yet (God willing), but I did develop seasonal allergies in my late twenties. And the good folks at the plasma bank who stick me tell me that any day I could suddenly develop an allergy to iodine or latex. What a strange world we live in.
That’s true about latex. Quite recently I developed an allergy to latex (gloves). Never had a problem before.
Also, my aunt who was from New Zealand always had lots of kiwis around. Loved them then, but several years ago I developed an allergy to them. I can barely stand to even look at them now lol.