http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/opinion/this-column-is-gluten-free.html
I was in Venice a few weeks ago and friends reported seeing a restaurant menu with the following important message emblazoned it: “We do NOT serve gluten-free food.”
It was easy to imagine an exasperated Italian proprietor, driven to frenzy by repeated requests from Americans for gluten-free pasta, finally deciding to cut short such exchanges with this blunt pre-emptive blow.
Rough translation: My way or the highway. If you don’t like my pasta the way la Mamma has always made it, try someplace else.
Some years ago I was told about the experience of a London caterer who had provided the food for a birthday party for Lord Carrington, who is now 96. The caterer asked if any of the aged crowd had special dietary requirements. There were none among the many octogenarian and nonagenarian guests. They were happy to eat anything.
More recently, another friend told me of her sister’s experience with a large house party in Scotland last summer. When the sister inquired about any special dietary needs, many requests came in, particularly from the younger crowd. Hardly anyone aged between 18 and 25 was up for eating anything. One young woman wrote: “I can’t eat shellfish but I do eat lobster.”
Right.
If people over 80 will eat anything, yet people under 25 are riddled with allergies, something unhealthy is going on — and it’s going on most conspicuously in the most aggressive, competitive, unequal, individualistic, anxiety-ridden and narcissistic societies, where enlightenment about food has been offset by the sort of compulsive anxiety about it that can give rise to imagined intolerances and allergies.
Overall, I’m with the Venetian restaurant owner making his stand for tradition, la Mamma and eating the food that’s put on your plate. Gluten has done O.K. by humanity for upward of 10 millennia. It’s bad for some people, but the epidemic of food intolerance has gone way over the top.
Who are we to argue with success?
I will often say I am allergic to broccoli, but I say it with a winsome smile so they know I’m kidding and could they please do their best to get all ... or at least most ... of the broccoli out of the vegetable medley. Or just give me more potatoes.
Time and time again, I find that with women especially, that whacky diet demands, i.e. being a vegetarian/vegan variant, or on Atkins, Pritikin, Weston A. Price Foundation, “Paleo”, Friutitarian, or whatever... that what is underlaying is a mental defect, or minimally control “issues”.
I saw one girl on a first (and last) date pick off every sesame seed off a hamburger bun. Another would simply not eat... and make me pick what she ordered. It’s a big deal.
Take a girl out, if she is unwilling to eat regular food, GET OUT NOW.
“I would never question people whose faces will balloon if they ingest trace amounts of shellfish. Or people who risk going into anaphylactic shock with a whiff of peanut dust. I’m talking about the rest of you.”
Oh, you mean the rest of us who have actual, real, documented, tested, food allergies that seriously sicken us even though they DON’T cause anaphylactic shock or our faces to ballon?
I guess if you were a doctor, you’d be of the school that unless you could see an actual part falling off, or red stuff squirting out under high pressure, then all is well?
I feel so sad for my daughter. I’m a Celiac and so are both of my kids. (medically tested, thankyouverymuch)
Her little girl (21 months old) just isn’t growing so she insisted on an allergy test. (There is more than the fact that she’s so tiny. There’s the eczema and the diarrhea and the choking and vomiting.)
Sure enough, she’s allergic to eggs and milk.
I bought her some camel’s milk. (Saw the research out of Israel and thought it would be worth a shot.)
We’re on day four and the kid’s skin is almost totally cleared up. No diarrhea at all and she’s not choking any more. Today is the first day in her young life that my granddaughter has had an appetite and she’s eating the house. Finally.
We’ll see how it works in the long run.
Food allergies are hell.
Chelsea Clinton had a gluten free wedding, IIRC.
I deal with this kind of crap every day. patients who are “allergic” to a particular medicine when it’s really a “preference,” like they prefer the high from Vicodin and don’t like Ultram so they’re “allergic.” Uh-huh.
Or - this is one of my favorites - “amoxicillin doesn’t work for me” meaning they demanded an antibiotic for their head cold once then got a secondary bacterial infection BECAUSE they took the amoxicillin (which wiped out all the sensitive beneficial bacteria in their face leaving the bad enteric bacteria behind) now the only thing that “works” for their 4 hours of intense sinus pain, sneezing, sore throat and sniffles is Cipro, or Omnicef - which I don’t prescribe, I just tell ‘em they have a head cold and will need to wait another week to ten days - taking COLD medicine - before I’ll even consider the possibility that what they have MIGHT be a bacterial infection, I don’t care what their history is.
Authoritarian? One of us needs to be the adult in the room.
ping
In my medical records it has that I am allergic to ibuprofen. I took it all the time when I was a teen, switching between that and Tylenol and I was taking massive doses as they became less effective until one day I just said no more. I always had bottles of them with me and all my teachers knew, hell some of them would bum some from me.
10 years or so later I did start taking again but never more than the the normal dose and it was rare to use anything.
Then one week I took some and my lips and eyes swelled up. I didn’t realize that was the cause until I took some more later that week. Different brand. The swelling happened even quicker and more areas.
Am I really allergic? Who knows but I have no desire to find out by taking more.
Today I take extra strength headache - aspirin/caffeine/acetaminophen - just for headaches. Can only take 2-4 a day and only 2-3 times a week. I also have issues with aspirin.
Sadly most pain killers don’t work or did work but no longer. And the ones I think might work my doctors wouldn’t prescribe. Gave me other crap that caused major problems but not something I know I wouldn’t have side effects from hell. Topamax(1 month 2011) and Cymbalta (about 6 months 2014) - side effects from hell that still linger after months and years after I last took them.
As for food or additives.
Aspartame gives me massive headaches. I was majorly ticked off when Wrigley changed my favorite gums to add it to gums that were not sugar free.
Found out the hard way and got very sick because I didn’t think to read the ingredients of a product I had been buying for years.
MSG - I can tolerate but if I get too much it does start affecting me.
Soy - is EVIL. I try to avoid.
Sulfites- my mom is allergic - I notice if I get too many I don’t feel so good.
Bananas- mental - used to eat them as a kid but even the smell of them make me sick - no clue why. When I was in the hospital 5 years ago I warned them to not even bring them near me and thankfully I saw it before they could bring it further in the room. When I say sick I mean it. Hate the produce section especially if they are really ripe.
All melons except for watermelon. The smell again.
Drinking plain white milk - mental from an incident in school. Must be sweetened or flavored. I can drink heavy cream with nothing added.
To be honest I don’t care if someone has a genuine food allergy or not, I really don’t want to hear about it anymore than I want to hear about how Viagra changed your life or about your gall bladder.
pfl