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

Oh please. The poor OP is expressing some perfectly legitimate frustration that she is faced with catering for a very wide and mutually exclusive set of food …..necessaries. You accuse her of being a mass murderer.

I bet your parties are fun 💨

Given most of those restrictions can cause serious health issues, YABU. It’s hardly their fault!

id be asking everyone to bring different dishes to make it easier.

Thank you for sharing this information - it is both interesting and appreciated. I did not mean to belittle the difficulties your son has with his health. It sounds really challenging.

Let them starve….

We are vegan, as are the in laws, we are hosting Xmas dinner this year, my dad is coming too, he’s not vegan but he is perfectly happy to try his first vegan Xmas dinner and spend the day with us all. It’s the first time he’ll have met my partner’s parents.

Whilst being able to eat a whole ice cream sounds a bit unlikely, it's actually quite possible that a person with non IgE mediated allergies can tolerate their allergen in certain forms and quantities - they're not necessarily making it up at all.
My DS has a mixture of IgE and non IgE allergies, all very real, diagnosed by a paediatric immunologist and gastroenterologist when he was little and they've all required him to be hospitalised at some point during his life. His IgE mediated allergies are the typical kill you if you've not got your EpiPen type of thing and he is extremely sensitive to some of his allergens so even minute quantities will trigger a reaction. His non IgE mediated reactions are mainly gut related and have improved to some degree over the years so he can for instance now tolerate some amounts of cooked egg in baking but couldn't eat an actual whole egg. His reactions are also dose dependent in that large quantities or repeated small indiscretions are both problems. So he could eat say one cupcake once a week, but eating several at once would make him very unwell and eating one every day would too. Non IgE reactions are also typically delayed, so if they do occur after a dietary discretion not necessarily obvious to an observer.
To avoid confusion we always just tell restaurants, people who are hosting us etc that DS is allergic to his long list of forbidden foods and don't specify which are IgE and which non IgE mediated.He tends to avoid all his allergens outside of home even if there's non IgE stuff he could probably eat. Aside from the fact that he has many years experience of knowing what he can tolerate and what he can't and other people don't, there's just too much risk of someone getting confused between which foods he can have traces of and which he can't. Or of someone who knows he's allergic to egg seeing him eating a cupcake, deciding he is a liar and then giving him something with almond milk in (which would trigger anaphylaxis) because they've decided he's making his allergies up.
Yes, people do make up allergies and intolerances. I have no idea why as it is a complete PITA, but they do. But not everyone that is eating something you think doesn't make sense is lying.

I think people used to be a bit better at just eating the bits they could eat and not making a fuss. But, and this might just have been my childhood house, food was a bit simpler too. Meat, veg and potatoes, seperate sauce type of thing.
But I imagine a lot went home politely hungry though!

We regularly have to cater for no nuts, no dairy, coeliac, no beans and no meat in one sitting now. We go for more assemble your own food with rice. Noone seems to be unable to eat rice

That's awful for your family members. But interesting as this is exactly the thing I was wondering about in my post. All those people in the past who were frequently unwell but there was no understanding of the underlying problem then. Yet now we recognise as food intolerance or allergy.

Oh yeah, I’ve got a few friends who “can’t eat gluten”, and say they know how I feel having coeliac. They're twats

Don’t host - problem solved. Or just get people to bring a suitable dish, with labels if that helps, while you provide generic things, drinks etc. We do the latter and it’s great.

You’re right OP, Anaphylactic shock can really take the joy out of one’s dinner party. Far better let the bodies hit the floor and continue as before so everyone else gets to have some fun. You can clear away the dead and dying after dessert .

Oh yeah, I’ve got a few friends who “can’t eat gluten”, and say they know how I feel having coeliac.

Thats until they really want a slice of cake, or a pizza, or a kebab on a night out, or just can’t be arsed that day and then it all goes out the window and they eat what they like, while I look on like a Victorian street urchin looking through a toy shop window.

A genuine allergy or medical condition is serious and cannot be helped. It must be accommodated if you wish to host such guests.

But what gets on my tits is people who are just plain fussy/faddy but claim these are "allergies". For example my daughter's best friend who claims she is allergic to dairy but makes an exception for Magnum ice creams, WTF?!? I did (politely) ask her mum about this as I really didn't want to make her ill at my house. Her mum said "oh yes just a little bit of dairy in ice cream she is OK with". As far as I know Magnums are almost 100% dairy! I suspect the truth is that she just doesn't like cheese but FGS just say that!

Ditto faddy friend who claimed to be gluten intolerant. I arranged gluten free alternatives when a group of friends came over and she promptly hoovered up several slices of the normal pizza "because it's so much nicer".

It takes the piss out of people who have genuine allergies as it means others might take the information less seriously and put them at risk.

This.
There's so much easy stuff now for vegetarians and vegans, it's not a special or fussy diet just no meat.
So you could always ask what their favourite meat substitutes are and I guarantee there'll be something you can buy and stick in the oven.

For everyone else could you not just put everything in the middle of the table and let people help themselves?

That’s what my in-laws think though!

I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 41, and I was completely symptomless until 8 months before I was diagnosed and symptoms weren’t really bad until I stopped eating gluten completely and then ingested some. I’ve accidentally had it 4 times in 4 years since I was diagnosed due to cross contamination, and christ, all hell broke lose, my consultant said that’s just what happens when you stop gluten for a long and then have some. It’s got worse everytime so now, I am extra vigilant.

Because I had no symptoms before, the family refuse to acknowledge it. They have taken it to mean I just don’t want to eat their food anymore and there is something wrong with them.

2 or the times I’ve been glutened have all been incidents where they spiked my food on purpose as they didn’t believe me.

I must be lucky in that I don't know anyone who falls in these categories. I do have vegan friends though but they offer to bring stuff and I welcome that. I'm happy to put out some veg but I am not buying specific ingredients that will just be wasted afterwards. And for people who will get ill, then it's up to them and their responsibility to ensure the food is suitable.
My dh incidentally falls into a category not listed but we never put that on other people. He manages it by eating before at home, having less or only what is suitable for him. We would never expect anyone to go through that faff and effort to cater for one person.

Also people moaning about the vegan - it's really not that hard to cater for a vegan! You can still do a roast just use olive oil for the veg and buy something vegan like a nut roast or a pie to go with it. The Clive's pies range (you can buy at Waitrose) is vegan and they taste nice in my experience (I'm not a vegan).

Yeah im coeliac just to piss my family and friends off. It’s really fun!

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.

This is what ChatGPT is for. Put all the requirements in, your preferences, and ask for lists of suggestions. Problem solved.

The only one there that's a choice is vegan.

The easy solution here is a mexican spread with one vegan filling (e.g. something with black beans) and one meat dish (e.g. pulled pork or beef). Serve with various sides (cheese, salsa, guacamole etc), rice, gluten free tacos/tortilla chips etc, as well as normal tortilla chips, tacos etc. If necessary, do a simple tomato pasta or supermarket pizzas for the kids.

So hosts are damned if they make something nice, and damned if they don't!
It's the guests. You get round it by plating up not help yourself.

Precisely - she is moaning about having to accommodate lots of faddy eaters. But allergies and coeliac is NOT faddy eating. These people have no choice but to avoid these foods.

Frankly in OP’s position I’d do a pot luck, where people can each bring a dish or two that they CAN eat and share (labelled for the allergies) and she provides the basics (veg, roast turkey, some wine/soft drinks) and people can pick at that according to their eating issues and fall back on the dish they’ve brought. They can take home any left overs…

DS can't eat any raw fruit or salad veg. You could try sneaking it into him but when he starts asking where his epi-pen is you might regret it.