To think that all the dietary requirements these days is taking the joy out of hosting?

Since when has being vegan meant you’re risking your life if you inadvertently eat a meat product?

Well don't host then. As someone with a teen with deadly food allergies, I apologise for the inconvenience that such people cause you 🙄

Allergic reactions and food intolerance reactions take the joy out of most things - nothing like stomach cramps and the shits to make an event really rubbish.

That is a long list of requirements tbf.

Roast joint and something fir vegan
roast potatoes done in veg oil, parsnips in maple syrup
veggies
hits every dietary need in one convenient meal

this is hilarious! Well I do, I use it in a professional capacity. You don’t follow instructions blindly, but it’s brilliant at putting first drafts together. I think OP can read the suggested menu and understand if she’s about to kill someone

Pensioners have the lowest rate of allergies.

That's interesting. I'm a pensioner who used to have loads of allergies, but now have very few. I assume I've somehow become desensitised over the years. I had a dreadful reaction the first time I ate prawns, but I can eat them without fear now, although sometimes they give me itchy, tingly bumps in my mouth.

I've also had dreadful D&V whenever I've eaten mussels or oysters, and haven't dared trying them for years to test if they still make me ill.

Among my in-laws:

A is vegetarian
B is vegan
C is pescatarian
D won't eat fish, pasta, anything with a sauce, or any vegetables apart from potatoes
E won't touch pasta, rice, garlic, or anything creamy, cheesy or spicey
F is gluten intolerant and won't eat meat, but will eat poultry
G is gluten and dairy intolerant
H is allergic to nuts

and I'm allergic to a lot of seafood

Roast chicken/turkey is actually the easiest thing to feed everyone, with a nut roast for the meat avoiders and everyone else can just not have the bits they don't like.

If H went vegetarian, that would bugger things up a bit.

Probably better they bring their own than expect someone else to manage it all.

We're just not grubby enough now. If your immune system never gets any of the germs from the local mud to work on, because the kid in question plays inside all day, there is a higher chance of allergies because he immune system gets going on anything that might be a germ.

Caveat: this is based on something I read years ago, when I was busy ignoring all the advice about not feeding small DC peanuts (it seemed completely illogical to me, people in Indonesia and West Africa are not noted for high rates of peanut allergy and they eat them from infancy).

I'm allergic to all nuts and peanuts. Just different severities. Some will kill me, others will just make me feel like I'm dying. So, not all of them induce anaphylaxis, but I still don't want to eat them!

I don't avoid all 'may contain traces of' labels though, or I'd starve.

@Cloudysky81 , if you were likely to go into anaphylactic shock if you ate poppy seeds or sesame seeds, would you want to risk trying any seed?

There are some very unpleasant replies on here OP. Catering day in day out for on allergy is hard but becomes the norm. Catering occasionally for multiple allergies and dietary requirements is going to be more difficult because a) you are not used to it and b) there are multiple things to take into consideration. And yes that will make things hard and yes instead of relaxing a bit you will be on edge that you have got something wrong because you are not a trained caterer and you are in your own kitchen where the risk of cross contamination is high. Far from making you an ungracious host I think it speaks volumes that you are trying very hard to accommodate people.
Yes its difficult when you have someone with a serious life threatening allergy but the amount of vitriol and sarcasm thrown at the OP is totally unnecessary

Allergic to all fruit seems unlikely. Unless they’re awaiting allergy testing to determine which fruit.

Also allergic to all nuts and seeds is unlikely. Unless again they’re awaiting testing.

Unless the OP has a particularly atopic group of friends or is inviting a very large group of people over for all of those allergies to be present in a typical selection of dinner party guests seems unlikely.

I hear you OP. I am used to our close family's seafood and peanut allergies, lactose intolerance and vegetarianism, but add in extended family and friends long lists of dislikes and preferences and suddenly menu planning becomes a headache.

@msbevvy , sorry, friends' DD had a peanut allergy but was told to avoid all nuts too. I'm well aware that peanuts are legumes, thanks.

Friends' DD fortunately is no longer allergic to peanuts, but it meant a few years of them being frustrated by 'may contain nuts' labels on food.

But groundnuts (peanuts) are a legume, not a nut.

Ds has a lanolin reaction - I was told to smother nipple cream on with him (now suspect tongue tie) - the cream was full of lanolin. However I react to wool jumpers - get rash - so perhaps it was always on the cards.

This is what I thought.

It sound like she goes to great length to not just accommodate the allergies as you'd expect but the likes and preferences. It's probably because she is taking it very seriously and is going to great lengths to accommodated everyone that she is finding it stressful.

I do think previous PP advice of find a menu and stick to it - obviously checking no pre-made stuff has changed recipes in meantime - is probably only way to avoid stress every time.

@MereDintofPandiculation , back a few decades ago, friends' dd had a nut-allergy, and they'd been told that a likely cause was groundnut oil in nipple cream. No idea if it was true, but the friends are intelligent (as in Cantab maths/science degrees)

You're very welcome. Non IgE allergies are poorly understood generally. My DS has a fairly unusual condition which I won't go into as it's sufficiently rare to possibly be identifiable,and I think even the paediatric consultants at our local hospital thought I was a madwoman who was making it all up as they couldn't explain what was happening. It took being admitted to a children's hospital hundreds of miles from home and some quite unpleasant investigations to get to the bottom of it. I'm possibly a bit over sensitive about people not believing him due to those childhood experiences!

I know I have read somewhere the theory that some nut allergies may have been caused by parents not giving nuts to children early on and there was advice that some form of nut product be introduced to a baby's diet much earlier.

Some time after the80s, medical advice was issued to avoid peanuts - I don't know whether this originated in peanut allergies or was simply and anti-choking thing. Then peanut allergies soared. And the advice was changed, to introduce them earlier.

There has been a global increase in allergies. In the UK , for example, in the 20 years to 2012 there was a 615% increase in the rate of hospital admissions for anaphylaxis. Pensioners have the lowest rate of allergies. I don't think anaphylaxis would have gone unnoticed, and allergies aren't noted for resolving themselves as you get older, rather the opposite, so I don't by the hypothesis of one poster, that there's always been this level of allergies, we just didn't recognise them.

@Unforgettablefire For everyone else could you not just put everything in the middle of the table and let people help themselves? no, because of cross-contamination and CFs.

They may have Crohn's. A family member has it and although they can eat some fruits they blanket "no fruits" when out to avoid mix ups. It's the seeds they can't have.
I understand - easier to say and to understand.

Some people are clueless about food. I used to think that coeliac was 'wheat will make them very ill , so oats, rye etc would be fine' FFS.
The gluten free diet - All you need to know about the diet that will make you well again - Coeliac UK

Seriously? You do know that ChatGPT hallucinates? (ie includes plausible sounding random falsehoods) Why would you use it for something that may have fatal consequences?

Not always. My sister went vegan for a while because she was dairy intolerant and she knew that she could have the vegan food.

I eat some vegan food and use vegan milk. Too much Voss milk affects my breathing. Hardly a "choice"