A tick bite can steal a person's favorite foods. Steak. Bacon. Even ice cream. Doctors call this alpha gal syndrome. A Lone Star tick bite causes it. This tick lives across the South and Midwest, including Texas and Missouri. The bite can turn a person's body against red meat, dairy, and even some pills.
Vashon Borich-Leach knows how much that loss hurts. She runs a small business. It is called Tuff Momma Salt Craft. She sells flavored salts at fairs in the Missouri Ozarks. Her sons, Ty and Jack, help her. This month, her booth sat on the square in Seymour, Missouri. The town holds an Apple Festival there. It has run for more than fifty years. It draws crowds from all over Webster County.
One of her salts tastes like smoked bacon. It is smoky and salty. But it has no meat in it. That makes it safe for people who cannot eat pork.
A man walked up to her table during the festival. He tried a sample. He has alpha gal syndrome. He had gone a long time without tasting bacon. The report says he broke down in tears right there. A flavor he thought he had lost was back, even if it just came from a shake of salt.
Alpha gal syndrome does not work like most food allergies. A person is not born with it. A tick bite starts it. Sometimes one bite is enough. The body starts treating a sugar in mammal meat as a threat. After that, eating beef, pork, lamb, or deer meat can cause hives or stomach pain. It can be worse for some people. Some patients cannot even take certain pills. Many pills use gelatin made from animals. Doctors in tick country say they see more cases every year. That includes Texas ranch land and the Missouri Ozarks. They say the ticks keep spreading.
Living with the condition makes grocery trips harder. Eating out gets harder too. A product that copies a lost flavor without using real meat can mean a lot to that one customer. It might mean nothing to everyone else walking past the booth.
Borich-Leach's business did not start with allergy customers in mind. It started with a bag of sea salt. A friend once brought her salt from France as a gift. She noticed it looked and tasted different. She looked into why. It was full of minerals. It had magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium. Most table salt loses those minerals when it gets processed.
That discovery sent her looking for her own supply. She began bringing in salt in bulk. She started mixing her own blends by hand. Today Tuff Momma Salt Craft sells 27 flavors. Some have fun names, like Morel Mushroom Salt, Ozark Campfire, and Fear the Reaper. She also sells wood craft items at the same festival booths.
The business has no store. Borich-Leach and her sons sell mostly on the road. They travel from festival to festival across the Ozarks. Customers can also buy the salts online at www.tuffmomma.com.
Nobody at the Seymour Apple Festival set out to solve a medical problem. A mom mixed flavors in her kitchen. She packed up a booth and drove to a small town square. For one customer this month, that was enough. It brought back a taste he had given up on.
