When I seemed to react to the Nestle's Chocolate Syrup, I just assumed that the problem was one of the other ingredients. After all, there are plenty of possibilities, including citric acid, artificial flavor, preservatives, xanthan gum, caramel color, and several dyes. None of those are ideal ingredients for someone who has MC, especially when so many are included in a single product. So reclassifying Nestle's Chocolate Syrup as a no-no for me was a no-brainer.
Then someone recommended the Enjoy Life Double Chocolate Chip Cookies. And of course when I tried them they weren't half-bad. First thing I knew, I was eating a few every day after they initially seemed to be OK. But the problem with us sugarholics is that if a few are good, then twice as many are twice as good.
And so naturally, after a week or 3 I was eating a half-dozen a day. 
I began to notice mast cell symptoms such as watery eyes, occasional hives, and throat congestion. I blamed in on tree pollen and started taking an antihistamine. But that didn't solve the problem and the symptoms became increasingly worse. My upper eyelids eventually started itching and my eyes were always bloodshot-looking. And I even began to develop osteoarthritis aches and pains (back aches. stiff neck, finger joint pains, etc.). I stopped eating a banana each day, thinking that it was causing a histamine overdose problem. But that didn't help either, so I decided to stop eating the chocolate chip cookies also.
Bingo! After a couple of days my symptoms began to fade away. After a few days I resumed eating a frozen banana each day with almond or cashew butter, and the mast cell symptoms have not returned. I have a hunch that pollen levels probably were part of the problem, but without the daily dose of chocolate I seem to be able to tolerate the pollen just fine (as long as I continue to take an antihistamine). I'll probably discontinue taking an antihistamine next week to see if I it's even necessary.
The interesting thing is that the problem/reaction didn't develop overnight — it took about 3 weeks before it became significant enough that I even noticed, and then another week before it became somewhat obvious. It took about 6 weeks before it got to the point where my eyes were irritated (burning), watery, and bloodshot-looking, and another week to get to the point where my upper eyelids were itching (right on top, as if they had a rash there). 8 weeks had passed when it finally dawned on me that the problem had to be more than just pollen, and since the only thing that I was doing differently was eating the chocolate chip cookies, I stopped eating the cookies (and the bananas, since they are also a source of histamine), and after a few days my symptoms were rapidly fading away.
But I can't be sure that chocolate is the problem (yet), because those Enjoy Life cookies contain other ingredients that might be considered suspect. For example, the flour mix contains rice, buckwheat, and millet. A few years ago, random spot tests of GF flours found on grocery store shelves showed that a significant percentage of millet flour was cross-contaminated with gluten. Now I realize that the package says "Gluten-Free", but that's just the manufacturer's certification that no gluten is added during the manufacturing process. It's highly unlikely that every batch of product is actually tested to verify that every package is GF. Most such products are randomly tested, to make sure that they fall within the 20 ppm limit for GF certification. It's always possible that a few packages out of compliance might escape detection due to the fact that it's practically impossible to test every package. And some of us are sensitive to buckwheat.
But there are other suspect ingredients. For example, there's that notorious "Natural Flavors" again.
And xanthan gum (though admittedly xanthan gum has never seemed to bother me previously). But the bottom line is that I can't actually indict chocolate without further testing.If I'm going to get to the bottom of this I may have to subject myself to an extended trial with chocolate chips (alone). That doesn't really appeal to me, but I reckon it might be worthwhile, in the interest of science.
Does anyone have any thoughts or insight on this?
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