ONCE UPON A TIME there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out which ones had autoimmune issues for real and not just for show. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.

One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.

It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

“Well, we’ll soon find that out,” thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the kitchen and put some soybean oil in the salad dressing; then she took twenty strips of bacon and laid them on top, and then twenty hard-boiled eggs on top of the bacon.

This salad was all the princess had to eat that night. In the morning she was asked how she had digested.

“Oh, very badly!” said she. “I have had a histamine reaction all night. Heaven only knows what was in the salad dressing, but my eyes puffed up, so that I scarcely look like a human being. It’s horrible!”

Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had reacted to the soy right through the twenty strips of bacon and the twenty hard-boiled eggs.

Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that.

So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the soy was outlawed from the kingdom forever.

There, that is a true story.

With apologies to Hans Christian Anderson.