Food intolerance of faddy eating? ...India Knight in the Sunday Times

[Upwind]

It winds me up more and more these days that having friends over for dinner involves getting the list of the things they can't or won't eat and then working out how to cater for them. Particularly, this is a problem with my DH's friends' WAGs who all have either a wheat, dairy or red meat "intolerance".

So I enjoyed India Knight's column today That?s no food allergy, just bad manners

On the other hand I don't mind at all catering for friends who seem to have a genuine problem or religious/moral stance - one of my best friends is a coeliac, one halal, another is a vegetarian for moral reasons.

I once cooked a dinner for a woman who gave me a list of almost 20 different things that she 'couldn't' eat or drink. And these were not allergies (which can be serious and ife threatening), these were simply prefernces.

One of the things that she 'couldn't' have was Australian wine.

Over out somewhat spartan dinner I asked how she had worked out the fact that she was ' intolerant' (her word) to Australian wine, 'Well I drank it once and it gave me a terrible headahe the next day'

The stupid bloody woman had a hang over and had convinced herself that it was because she was 'intollerant' to Australian wine.

My neice is always offered a choice of what she wants for dinner (usually different to whatever unhealthy rubbish my dsis is eating).

I wonder does that encourage faddy eating?

I agree with this sentance:

'particularly when people with real and serious conditions such as diabetes or Crohn?s disease never make a fuss and just quietly leave what they can?t eat without you even noticing.'

That has certainly been my experience.

All very well for India Knight to say but if for years you've had rather appaling symptoms to swathes of food groups, would you honestly invite an entire night of shaking, painful cramps and hours of sitting on the loo, just so that your hostess could serve what she wanted. I would take my own food and enjoy the company instead. Nothing like a sweeping statement to make every trendy 'intolerant' person feel really crap - no pun intended!

ROFL at the Australian wine

I have a friend like that, who is convinced he has to be very careful with red meat as his digestive system is very sensitive to it.

My theory is that if you drink a couple of pints of beer along with a couple of bottles of red wine every time you eat red meat, your digestive system would be very sensitive to it. If you try eating it without swilling it down with all that booze, you might find your body tolerates it perfectly well.

belgo, mine also.

For many years dh chould eat any food that had alchol in it, he would check, but not make a big song and dance about it.

He is now diabetic, and just waits for 5 mins before we eat to inject. if the food is later than expected, it is no big deal.

£senough....in the aticle she recognises the 'reality' of real intolerances.

What she objects to is daft people, like the woman I was 'entertaining', who dress up their dietarty prefernces as 'intolerenreces' when then are, in fact, nothing of the kind.

I don't have a problem with someone saying, please don't cook me cheese, it makes me want to throw. neither do I mind real allergies, religious, ethical issues. What I don't like is picky people (like the 20 items on the list lady) pretending thatit is more than just a prefernce

I thought it was a really good article. She makes it very clear that she's not talking about people with real dietary issues.

3senough - part of the problem is that with so many people claiming to have food intolerances irritated people like me can't possibly tell the genuine cases from the hypochondriacs (sp?)

There is every chance that one or two of my DH's friends' WAGs have genuine intolerances. But I refuse to accept that every single one of them do.

Does anyone else notice that it seems to be usually a female complaint? I don't know any men who claim to suffer from intolerances.

Australian wine woman couldn't eat, cheese, cream, eggs, butter, seafood or chocolate. Or wheat, or pasta. Or australian wine!

It was the latter that cracked me up.

So I served her New Zealand wine. Oddly enough, she was fine with that! WTF?

she wasn't allergic, or really intolerant,(her converstation made this clear) she was stick thin and wanted to stay that way and fussy.

And dressed it up as a medical issue. Which was a PITA for me and a bigger PITA for people who have real issues

Perhaps designer clothes and expensive highlights combined with a lot of make up induces food intolerances? As well as being female, all the "intolerant" people I know dress fashionably, wear a lot of make up and are very slim. Almost all of them have expensively highlighted hair.

Well they are extremely irritating because they do undermine people with genuine food intolerances.

Food intolerance = what people used to call 'x disagrees with me'. But 'intolerance' apparently sounds more impressive or medical or something.

Or even 'I don't like......'

Now granted there is 'I don't like X very much'....in which case they should be polite and eat it.

There is also 'I don't like X , and if I try to eat it, I will be sick'

I'll cater to the latter, but get annoyed with the former.

I don't really like pickled herrings that much, but will eat them to be polite. I cannot stand sea urchin, and if I ate that, I would vomit.

That reminds me, martianbishop, a few years ago in Italy hosts served some kind of sea food soup that had whole tiny octopuses in it. It was very hard forcing it down without retching, but there was no way I would have claimed some kind of 'intolerance'

My dd has real dairy intolerance - a little bit of milk/butter/cheese gives her violent tummy ache, more than a little makes her physically sick. But I don't make a big song and dance about it - she eats whatever is suitable, and I keep things in bag for her in case of emergency.

I was once working in a hotel where a couple of days before arriving, a guest emailed a list of things she was 'intolerant' to and couldn't possibly eat: it ran to 4 pages of A4 and included every food group. I was sorely tempted to email and suggest that next time she try self-catering.

I also though it was a good article. One of my DSs is a coeliac, and it makes my blood boil when people say they are "intolerant" to wheat. They do not seem to understand the difference between their ridiculous self-diagnosed faddiness and a real medical condition. If a coeliac eats gluten, the lining of their stomach is destroyed; it causes aneamia, osteoporosis and in children can stunt their growth. Intolerant means nothing.

Roshka - I also had to eat a deep fried baby octopus out of politeness. I tried to get away with just eating one tentacle, but oh no the host noticed, and I ended up having to eat the whole octopus!

Dh taunted me for ages about an octopus swimming around in my stomach

We have had a number of people in our restaurant with 'intolerances' over the years and because my dh does all the food prep and cooking himself he will cater for anything. But what really winds him up is when he does do something special and then they change their mind about their so called intolerance and order off the menu anyway. For example their is a regular customer who is dairy intolerant so dh will make sure there is no butter or cream in his food only for this guy to finish his meal with a bowl of ice-cream!! WTF!
Another annoyance is selective vegetarianism. People will phone to book a table and state they are 'vegetarians' but they eat chicken and fish! What's that all about?

Rich coming form a woman who trumpets so loudly and proudly about feeding her kid the shit that is formula.

She's full of shit herself.
Can never understand how she hooked up with her husband who is such a measured and intelligent man.

I hardly think formula feeding is a crime. And India Knight was very supportive of MN during the Gina Ford attack.

I hate people who claim to be vegetarians when they are not. As a veggie, it really pisses me off. Particularly as it gives restaurants and caterers the idea that fish is 'vegetarian'. If you just don't like red meat, say so! Or invent your own bloody term for it. Don't masquerade as something you are not.

Ooh edam I know what you mean! I was at a picnic the other week with someone who asked if she could have some parma ham and someone else pointed out that she's always claimed to be vegetarian. She said that she eats ham sometimes but that she's still veggie

I also have another friend who has intolerance to dairy. Except when it's cheese, cream or icecream. I don't know why she just doesn't say she doesn't like milk. I suppose there's less glamour attached to that

Did anyone else notice that on the webpage there are two ads for online food intolerance testing companies?

Those companies make me very cross. Making money out of selling crap and scaring people unecessarily. I was responsible for some research into the biggest and best known company in the field once. We sent them two samples from each tester, labelled with different names. Each sample got different results, even though it was from the same person! AND they missed some who had a properly diagnosed, real food allergy, and claimed someone who did not have any food allergies did.

Also, what concerns me is that young children are picking up these terms. For example, a couple of my dd's friends have told me that they are 'allergic' to certain food - including sausages, orange juice, olives - when what they mean is that they don't like them or have never tried them. And their 'allergies' vary from time to time.

(I have of course checked with their parents!)

btw, I don't think fussy eaters are necessarily 'created' or 'encouraged' by being given a choice. Some children just 'are'