To think if you have dietary requirements you should stick to them?

[robertabrown]

I recently hosted a dinner party for ten. So lots of cooking.

One guest let me know that they have dietary requirements, dairy and gluten free, and an allergy to another very common ingredient. Yikes I thought. So I spent a good chunk of time finding a recipe that she could eat. I sent it to her to check and she said great thanks yes I can eat that. She did offer to help cook, but I personally find having new people around the kitchen to be a faff. So I pre prepared the dish.

On the evening I served it to her and she appreciated that we had gone the extra mile and even bought in a separate starter and separate pudding for her. This was because her dietaries made it impossible to find dishes that we all wanted.

She then questioned me why she wasn’t having the roast lamb. I explained it was because we had used flour (gluten) in the making, and cooked it in a jus that contained the other ingredient she was allergic too. Following her eating this, she then tucked in to every single dish that contained the ingredients she said she couldn’t eat. She ate cake made with butter and milk and flour.

She said oh it’ll be fine, I might get a bit of tummy upset.

So I realised that I had bent over backwards to prepare a meal that she could eat, when she could eat what we were all eating anyway. This came at a financial cost, and a time one. Plus we only have one small oven so was hard to time the other dishes around hers.

Aibu to think that if you say you have a dietary requirement that you stick to it?

I’m not sure I’d be quite as cross unless the guest made out they were allergic enough to require an epipen. Then sat there and merrily ate the offending food.

She might have just not wanted to eat a quantity of gluten, so could tolerate a small amount of it in the meat for example but avoided it in the specially prepared sides and pudding.

I have a skin condition that flares when eating a million and one things so I try to keep my diet pretty plain. I can almost imagine falling into this territory if I were more sociable. I’d be eating my bland food and then if I didn’t have a flare, and something else looked delicious I could imagine saying I’d have a bit of that too. I wouldn’t be trying to be an arsehole, I’d be trying to join in with the food because my mood was elevated and if I paid for it later I’d probably accept that.

Id be SO angry at her. Id also send her a message letting her know how upset I was considering all the extra effort id been too.

The boundary for me is how honest people are.
I have a friend with an anphalyactic nut allergy. So that has to be strict. She does take a chance on "may contain nuts" for the sake of sanity.
She also has other intolerances that again for sanity she moderates consumption of. If cooking for her, it would be free from actively containing nuts, but checking her condidence level on her other trigger foods. Form and quantity matter.

I have a low tolerance to dairy and soya. Neat milk, and the effects would be unpleasantly clear within 30 mins, but cheese is tolerable. It's awkward to describe and get the balance between sudden illness and avoiding too much disruption to the host. When DS1 had allergies to several foods, a drizzle of butter had him in agony and blasting out of nappies for days. As he grew out of it and had food phased in, that nuance was far harder to explain than a clear no dairy/ eggs/ soya at all.

I wouldn't be stipulating dairy and soya free though. It would be worth checking that a sauce was not too creamy.

Is she doing low FODMAP for IBSI say that because she mentions the possibility of an upset tummy. If the common ingredient was onions or garlic I’d think it probably was.

Low FODMAP is more about not exceeding certain amounts of foods than avoiding them altogether. The thresholds very from person to person.

With that it really might be possible to have a little bit of most things as long as she didn’t have a large quantity of anything.

Some people are very strict with it, some aren’t. It can be very, very restrictive as there are lots and lots of foods to be monitored and some people kind of do it half heartedly because it’s so difficult to keep track of everything.

Still, she should have communicated with you a lot better about it.

Never cook for the annoyance again. This is why people with allergies don't get taken seriously.

I agree this particular situation sounds extremely annoying, but it does need to be remembered that just because someone says they are allergic or intolerant to a particular food but does on occasion eat it, it doesn't mean they are making stuff up.
People who have non IgE mediated allergies or intolerances that are not immune mediated can often tolerate small quantities of their "forbidden" foods, especially if it is cooked or heavily processed. Indeed they may be medically advised to eat what they can tolerate and try to build up exposure gradually.
One of my sons has multiple allergies, some IgE mediated some non IgE mediated, plus a rare gastrointestinal disorder that is triggered by certain foods, but in a dose dependent/cumulative kind of way. So his dietary restrictions are quite complicated. We tend just to tell people he is allergic to XY and Z and leave it at that, rather than trying to explain the minutiae to everyone.So as far as school are concerned all his allergens are completely forbidden, to minimise the risk of errors. The school catering system won't allow him to buy anything with any trace of any of his allergens present. We need that system to fail safe. However we can make our own risk assessments and in some circumstances he does eat food that contains some of his non IgE mediated allergens. That has led to people accusing him of making his allergies up, attention seeking behaviour etc. We aren't liars, he is allergic to all the things we say he is, but not all in the same way. It's a lot more complicated than most people appreciate, and I am prepared to make judgements that it would be totally unreasonable to expect others to be responsible for.
That said, if we went somewhere and the host had prepared something special for him then he would eat it and express gratitude even if everything else on the table was actually safe for him. If someone has made an effort it's really rude not to be appreciative of that.

She sounds awful, completely oblivious and on her own planet. Unacceptable behaviour.

I know a couple who ate vegan. Right up until there was steak on the BBQ. Oh they stuffed their faces with free steak.
They'd had a completely separate BBQ for their vegan stuff which they'd guarded even though there was plenty for anyone who wanted it. The host had bought all the food to ensure it was managed right for the gluten free bloke who is ultra strict.

Ugh. I had someone like this at my wedding. no meat, some fish ok, no seafood, no dairy, no refined sugar, no gluten… cost an absolute fortune getting the chef to make her a special menu. On the day, I saw her eating everything. And her Insta was rapidly full of her scarfing down lamb roasts with lots of comments saying “thank god you’ve given up the diet!”

I agree this particular situation sounds extremely annoying, but it does need to be remembered that just because someone says they are allergic or intolerant to a particular food but does on occasion eat it, it doesn't mean they are making stuff up.

Its irrelevant if shes making it up/doing a fad diet/whatever.

Its the total lack of awareness, selfishness and lack of consideration on her part.

Your friend was very annoying OP - I totally get that. HOWEVER, I'd be a bit if I was gluten free and everyone was having roast lamb and I was served something else. Roast lamb is a pretty special main course to be missing out on. I know you said that there was another ingredient that she was allergic to; what was it? You could have bought some GF flour or used cornflour (I'm guessing the flour was to thicken the gravy??)