Italian Woman With Dairy Allergy Dies Days After Eating “Vegan” Tiramisu

An Italian woman with a severe dairy allergy died days after eating a tiramisu that was advertised as “vegan”. According to the New York Post, Anna Bellisario, who was 20 at the time of her death last year, went out to dinner with her boyfriend at a vegan burger chain called Flower Burger in Milan, Italy. There, she ate a dish called “Tiramisun Mascherpa”. The fashion student checked the label of the dessert and even asked for more information before consuming it. However, after eating just a few spoonfuls, she went into anaphylactic shock and died 10 days later at Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital. 

The Post reported that after consuming the dish, the woman started coughing and had trouble breathing. She even attempted to make herself vomit and took asthma medication and cortisone she had with her, but she eventually lost consciousness after suffering from anaphylactic shock. She was in a coma for 10 days before she died on February 5, 2023. Tests later revealed that the dessert had contained mascarpone, a type of soft Italian cream cheese made with milk, which killed her. 

“The quantity of caseins found in the product in question indicates that mascarpone was present in the preparation as an ingredient and not as a simple contaminant,” Milan prosecutors said, as per The Sun.

Now, the pastry company that supplied the pre-made tiramisu to Flower Burger and 63 other restaurants are being investigated for manslaughter, the outlet reported. Moreover, after the incident, the Italian Ministry of Health ordered that the “vegan” tiramisu be recalled after it was suspected to contain milk.

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Traces of milk and milk protein were found in tiramisu products from the Tirimisun brand and traces of egg were found in the mayonnaise of the sandwich Bellisario ordered for her entree. Tirimisun might have “mixed up” production lines for their vegan pastries with their desserts containing milk, the Post reported. 

Judge Fiammetta Modica called the incident “a worrying picture of unscrupulousness”. 

Notably, dairy allergy refers to a condition wherein you become allergic to dairy products. This means, that when you consume dairy products, your body sees these foods are threatening to the body and proceeds to ‘attack’ these foreign radicals.

Some suffering from a dairy allergy may experience various symptoms upon eating dairy products. Some of the most common symptoms are nausea, coughing, itching around the mouth, vomiting, diarrhoea, hives, headaches, etc.