to not pander to my mum's food 'allergies'?

[sadpanda]

Before I get flamed about the seriousness of food allergies, I know they are serious and under normal circumstances I would be very careful. The issue here is that mum's only genuine allergy is to reality. She's 'allergic' to any food she is suspicious of, ie anything new or foreign. How the hell am I going to survive 2 weeks of a woman who won't eat rice because she's 'allergic' but will eat rice pudding because 'that's different'?

I've met such a person; says eating certain foods aggravates her IBS. However providing several meals that cater to; lactose intolerance, gluten free, and vegetarian is challenging for a cook that doesn't follow those guidelines.
could you ask her to provide you with a menu/meal plan for the time she is visiting so that you can shop and be prepared?

of course no one should lie about allergies but I have a lot of sympathy for the picky eaters.

My sister is incredibly picky (not sure she has ever eaten a vegetable besides potatoes) and I eat absolutely everything. We had the same upbringing. This was part of her from the day she was weaned imo. (and she is fitter/looks better than me which is incredibly unfair!)

I can see how stressful it is for her when she has to eat in someone else's house. It isn't something i would wish on anyone and I think it is not choice but deep-seated and very stressful.

I think those of us who can pretty much eat anything, really don't get how stressful it is for the ones who genuinely can't do that.

I try very hard to provide food for guests that they can eat without stress.

That said, having your mother to stay for 2 weeks is inherently stressful so YANBU in feeling murderous, overwhelmed, etc. But just give her the pap she wants to eat!

picky eating is partly genetic, people have totally different taste buds.

I do think the bigger difference between picky eaters and allergy sufferers is in most cases I've met, the person with an allergy gets that feeding them is difficult, that they assume its normal to want to eat the foods they can't have, whereas people I have met who have chosen to restrict their diet (even if that choice is made due to mental health issues around food), tend to be of the opinion that wanting to eat those food is the weird, not them for restricting, and as they find feeding themselves easy, don't truely acknowledge that their pickiness causes other people problems.

From this thread you can see people saying they gave people who claimed not to eat certain foods those foods without telling them what it was/what was in it and they ate it fine, and for a picky/fussy person, that's fine. But when people do that for genuine allergy sufferers, it's a major problem.

It actually causes problems for my mum because she's a combination of both, she does have some genuine allergies (although thankfully not life threatening), but so many of her "I can't have XYZ" is just "I don't want XYZ" and people are beginning to realise and stop catering for her fussiness, but when they can't tell the difference with her genuine problems, that's when she gets ill as they've sneaked somehting she genuinely can't have in to a sauce.

I can't stand actual picky eaters, particularly because my sister has serious actual allergies and often gets touted as being 'picky'.

My Gran claims she is allergic to milk yet I saw her happily chomp through three slices of pavlova last weekend topped with whipped double cream. She also eats ice cream

My mother was a bit of a nightmare.

Vegetarian.
Eggs 'don't agree with her.'
Soft cheeses ditto.
Not 100% strict veggie but 'hates smell of fish.'
Onion/garlic/cauliflower/cabbage 'disagrees.'
No acid fruit. Only grapes and pears. Told me off for making trifle with strawberries - after having eaten it all.
Won't eat nuts as scared that they will cause dental trouble.
Avoids spices
Favourite quotation. 'Cinammon can be fatal.'

After having a well known con 'allergy' test, my inlaws make a big song and dance about never being able to eat anything with gluten in it (along with 100 other foods).
They however never seem to have any problems going out and eating fish & chips, cake and a '99' icecream.

'Cinammon can be fatal.'

there is a stupid game common amongst teens right now, daring each other to eat whole spoonfuls of spice.

Spices are NOT food, and several of them are dangerous if a whole spoonful is eaten, nutmeg is the most dangerous, but it wouldn't surprise me if cinnamon was dangerous too. Quite a few spices are.

when I say nutmeg is dangerous, I mean it will kill you if you eat a whole one.

As i get older i have difficulty digesting more food items. Perhaps this will happen to you too when you get to your mother's age. I find the jibes/jokes re your mother's food preferences disturbing.

Picky eaters fall into 2 categories. Those who tell you before hand, make suggestions and don't bang on about it all meal and those who announce a new thing just after you've served up for maximum impact then eat said item the next day. The former are fine to cook for, the latter less so.

sadpanda
Best of luck!

(Milk is a tricky one outside of a true allergy. I get horrific heartburn and cramps if I drink a glass of milk but I am fine with cheese. I assume its lactose intolerance. I could eat a yorkshire pudding because the amount of lactose in one is low but a latte or a bowl of cereal and milk would be an issue. So they may not be making it up.)

Food intolerances can be just as uncomfortable as allergic reactions, and it is true as a PP above suggested that older people are more likely to find that certain foods disagree with them.

I was for many years unable to eat aubergines - they gave me violent stomach pains. I knew it wasn't an allergic reaction (since I have a number of serious food allergies so I know what an allergic reaction feels like) but it didn't make the discomfort any less real.

I do, like many posters, get fed up with people who claim allergy based on quack tests, but I think that some consideration for people with non-allergic dietary limitations is called for (even if the limitation is just "getting old" - we'll all do that one day).

OTheHugeManatee

My DD2 won't eat lasagne because it's got flat pasta in it, she loves spaghetti bolognese and macaroni cheese. Even her head teacher said she weird .

I think with my mother it was difficult because she'd claim that a pinch of cinammon in, say, hot cross buns were fatal.

It's hard when you're a good varied cook but a guest will only agree to eat the blandest food, although they've not got diagnosed allergies or digestive disorders. Bread. Boiled pasta. Hard cheese. Potatoes. Two varieties of fruit. Three kinds of vegetables. Cake and biscuits.

It was also hard because my mother was extra nervous of food when away from home, because of underlying anxiety issues. So I would cook her food that I had seen her eat in her own home. But it would be rejected on the grounds that it would upset her.

I also found it difficult that - having tried hard to comply with her limited diet - she would invariably claim to have been made ill by my cooking, and analyse each dish deciding which was the rogue ingredient.

To be honest, it was a relief when she stopped visiting. Really her 'issues' were so extreme that it was better that she stayed at home. Though for years I did my best to try and look after her.

My parents are like this. We've found a restaurant near us where they can get something they'll eat, and we can get something that we can tolerate. There are some things (not many, our diets don't have a lot of similarities) that we cook that they will eat. After they leave, we eat stuff that they don't like.

That said, I wouldn't want them to visit for two weeks. I'd get really sick of catering to their limited diet for that long. You have my sympathies on that one.

And at least they accept that we eat very differently than they do, and they're able to be civil about it. It would be a whole different ballgame if this were not the case.

My grandma does not do any kind of food that is not potatoes, veg or meat. Never has, never will. If you take her out she "pushes out the boat" and has scampi (with potatoes and peas) "for a change" EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Sometimes people are very set in their ways. She may well be like this. I would just make a batch of cottage pie or similar and serve that up any night the rest of us were having something I knew she wouldn't eat.

She once tried to be different and served overcooked pasta but what to put with it was so far out of her comfort zone all who attended that nights meal ate pasta with potatoes and veg!

if I had a guest for two weeks with food issues (of whatever sort) I would try and think of a few meals I could cook that they could eat, ask them to cook a couple, and the rest of the time suggest they cook their own food seperately. If it was just for one meal I would expect the host to cook something suitable for the guest.

If she's already bringing her own bread and spread she's halfway there to providing for herself which then makes all this a non-issue surely?

I am quite fussy and have dairy-intolerance and it pisses me right off how bloody personally my family take it and they go on and on and on taking the mick.

If you've already got a load of pizzas in is it really that much hassle for you to just do her pizza every night and stop with the judgey pants?

charis
Indeed you are right, cinnamon, in large doses is toxic and can cause liver damage, and nutmeg can kill you you learn something new everyday. No more cinnamon pastries for me!

Sorry I didn't have time to read all the replies so my apologies if I repeat others' advice. Could you ask her to bring her own food and in that way she is sure to only eat 'acceptable' food. Other than that have a shopping trip together so she can choose her food. I can imagine it will be a bit of an inconvenience but surely you want her to have as a pleasant a visit as possible and, if she is happy, then hopefully everyone else can relax and be happier too.

Picky eaters fall into 2 categories. Those who tell you before hand, make suggestions and don't bang on about it all meal and those who announce a new thing just after you've served up for maximum impact then eat said item the next day. The former are fine to cook for, the latter less so.

Strange I'm afraid i did this recently at a friend's dinner party. i am usually the very last person to be picky or awkward about food but i was trying SO hard to stick to my low carb diet and feeling a bit desperate about my weight.

She'd served two starters, a Thai pomelo salad for the vegetarians and a Thai Beef salad for everyone else. We'd been asked to specify which beforehand and I thought I'd be fine with the beef and salad but when she served it up it was with all mixed in with noodles. Normally i would eat noodles without a fuss but i was trying SO hard to stick to the plan so i asked her if she would mind giving me some pomelo salad instead. She wad fine with that but it too was high carb as it was full of very sugary dressing so I dared only eat half of it to be polite, as nice as it was. i felt terribly guilty but sometimes you just have to stick to your guns or you never make any headway.

Not that I am actually making any headway, but still ….