Geez

[conuly]

Link hopping and I managed to find an advice column on allergies.

The comments were, of course, full of "I hate those lying liars who lie about having allergies when really they just don't like this food. They're the sole reason people don't take allergies seriously."

Many of those same commenters, elsewhere in the thread, then proceeded to say things like "When my neighbor/brother/friend talks about the twenty/ten/two foods he can't eat, I roll my eyes SO HARD" or "I can't stand people who let their kids be picky, just be a parent!"

Let me get this one straight. You don't want people to lie about their food preferences/aversions... but if they say straight out that they don't like a certain food, you roll your eyes and make fun of them? (Or their parenting.) Exactly what do you expect them to do?

Oh, that's right, you expect them to suck it up and not have any food preferences at all. You are part of the problem. They shouldn't lie, but they wouldn't if it was just as easy not to.

And, for that matter, these people aren't why other folks don't take food allergies seriously. If you are capable of understanding that just because one person lied about being allergic to broccoli that doesn't mean you can just throw out food safety rules for all time, guess what? Everybody else is capable of understanding it too. If the waitress at this one restaurant is cavalier about cross-contamination and willing to lie about it, that's not because somebody once lied to them about being allergic to tomatoes. It's because they don't think other people's dietary needs are worth taking seriously. If your coworkers go out of their way to sneak your allergens into your food to "catch" you not being allergic, then first of all they're toxic and homicidal, and secondly you can rest assured that they do this same thing to vegetarians, Jews, and people who just really don't like eggs.

So stop blaming the people who lie about allergies because, for once, they'd like to be able to eat dinner with the family without worrying about onion sneak attacks. Blame the guy who hears "no onions" and takes it as a personal challenge to slip as much onion into the meal as possible. Probably twirls his mustache as he does it, too. Mr. "No onions" really isn't doing it for attention, no more than you are when you enter anaphylaxis. Not that you can convince the food sneakers of the world. Those are the real enemy, and you can't take them down so long as you're busy hating and laughing at people who just don't like certain foods, no matter how long that list appears to be.

Comments

[kyrielle]

UGH. Yes. I ask if something has (laundry list of ingredients) and then add, "Only if it's an ingredient - it's a sensitivity, not an allergy. But if there's any chance of dairy cross-contamination, let me know, I'll take a lactase pill."

The good places? Tense up as I start the question and relax sharply at the end. ;)

[wpadmirer]

I have friends with very serious food allergies. I also have certain foods I don't like. I just don't eat them, even if they're served to me. But then, I'm not one to be bullied.

I will happily leave your casserole on my plate, untouched, and let you realize that I don't like your food. I have no shame.

[pipilj]

We had a rule in our household if it on the table you have to eat it. Fussy eater can be bit tyrannical I had a friend who we went on a holiday who refused to eat any of the local cuisine (it was a small coastal village) and loudly complained about the food not being to his taste. We started to feel embarrassed after some time.

[conuly]

So I'm gonna cut this off right here.

I'm autistic, and one thing many neurodiverse people have in common (and many people who are otherwise NT, for that matter) is trouble eating certain foods. Food aversions are difficult enough without the disabling effects of added social stigma.

Your friend should have had better manners, and also better sense. If you can't eat seafood, then you don't vacation in a coastal village. If you have serious food aversions then you should make sure you can be accommodated wherever you go, and anyway you shouldn't put other people off their own meals by complaining about it.

And you were well within your rights to say "Listen, since you don't want to enjoy the food, I'm going to dinner by myself. I'm tired of listening to you complain. I'll meet you afterwards and we can do that other, non-food thing."

But at the same time, shaming people for what they don't eat is not okay. And doing it to your kids is really, really not okay. I know people, multiple people, who would've starved rather than eat $FOOD as a child. No, they would not get hungry enough to eat it.

And everybody says "oh, well obviously I wouldn't do that if my kid had a real disability", but I submit that by the time you have decided whether or not your child's aversion is sufficiently real, you may have made it 10x worse by adding shame and stress to the entire experience of eating.

[fred_mouse]

I'm going to add to this, that the psychology of things is very important. Friend's mother was of the 'I cooked it, you eat it' mentality. Friend can (and will) throw up certain textures, and their kid has the same issue. Friend will eat no vegetables except potatoes, no fruit at all, and has a long term eating disorder. Friend's kid was brought up in a household with relatively relaxed rules, including finding alternatives where appropriate (e.g.. 'you can't handle the texture of cooked carrot? how about a raw one?'), a wide variety of food options, and an attitude that giving kids control of what they eat leads to healthy choices. Fruit and veggies were readily available. Friend's kid is now an adult who eats a balanced but somewhat bland and repetitive diet, readily eats almost all vegetables (and those that they don't are on the common complaints list, such as eggplant and capsicum), and eats a range of fruit. They are also capable of politely eating enough of an unappetising meal to be polite (think 'satay chicken' made with two minute noodles, diced chicken, and peanut butter).

Are these two neurodiverse? Almost certainly. Was a draconian rule the way to get a healthy, not picky eater? Not for these two.

[brokenallbroken]

Yes this. There are things I don't know if I like the taste or not because they smell too bad to get that close to my face (and my sense of smell is not all that good). That said, I spend Thanksgiving and Christmas politely gagging because I know sometimes right in front of me is the only place to put the olives.

And boy did I catch so much flack as a kid for it, which has made me very novelty-averse.


ETA: Oh, and you think "picky" eaters are tyrannical to live with? Try being one. Nobody who has dealt with navigating food aversions on top of regular preferences, which people are allowed to have, would choose it.

[conuly]

This thread is from MetaFilter last year, and I was pleasantly surprised because when some people tried using the "princess" word, they got a hell of a lot of pushback along the lines of "Holy shit, do you really think anybody wants to be the person who has to plan all their meals and can't ever go out to dinner because there's nothing they can eat?"

Though I see, skimming now, that there wasn't quite enough pushback against "I've met people from other countries, none of them were like that, therefore it's not a real disorder".

Some people did point out that, duh, people from other countries are no more likely to talk about the laundry list of foods they can't eat than people in the US, but nobody pointed out that there's a whole ton of psychological disorders which only present in one or two cultures, or present differently from one culture to another. Doesn't make them not "real".

(Also, it perennially irks me that when some third world kid eats nothing but beans and rice every day that's taken as proof that they're not picky. If an American kid does it, no matter what the reason, the explanation is that either they're picky or their parents are teaching them to be picky. You can point out the problem with this analogy until you're blue in the face, and the same people will still try to rely on it.)

[conuly]

(Also, another point - many times, a food aversion is an indication of a minor allergy or intolerance. Many people who think they just don't like fish, or milk, or whatever are actually allergic to those foods. But they've never eaten enough to have a serious reaction, because they don't like them.)

[fred_mouse]

^This. My youngest wouldn't eat eggs except in very specific contexts. First flu shot came up with rather large welt (>5cm across), suggesting significant but not life-threatening allergy.

[conuly]

Good you know what the issue is now.

[fred_mouse]

Absolutely. I was already aware of it as a possibility, because I believe that that is one of the food aversions that has known correlation to allergy (although I can't now find where I got that information from). I was a bit smug about having not ever required youngest to eat eggs.

[conuly]

BE AS SMUG AS YOU LIKE. God knows moments for smugness don't occur often enough in this child raising business.

[fred_mouse]

And the worse one 'oh, but you didn't have a reaction to it last time I fed it to you'. Which, no, I'm not going to tell you that I get messy and unpleasant gastric upsets when I visit you, because that would be tactless and tacky. Particularly because I was assuming that it was coincidence*, not deliberate and malicious poisoning.

* my body hates food in approximately the same way a toddler does. Which is to say, the thing I ate last week that was fine? Hah, guess again. But some things are never good.

[conuly]

If you did tell them, they wouldn't believe you anyway.

[fred_mouse]

They were quite shocked when I pointed out that yes, it was an issue, and manners isn't the same as no response. There might have been shouting involved, although I'm not sure. There was sure a lot of anger on my part.

[redbird]

Especially since, in practice, that means the person being pressured is expected to have no food aversions the judgmental person doesn't share, and often assumed to have those. Plenty of "why can't you eat it" people would draw the line at things I have eaten, and enjoyed. I've gotten some definite negative reactions to mentioning the (ROT-13 of culinary French)puriny gnegner(end ROT-13) I tried and enjoyed at a Montreal restaurant, for example. Meanwhile, an American who says "how can you eat raw fish?" may be considered unsophisticated, but is unlikely to be told they have to eat it, even if they're known to be okay with cooked fish.

Now I'm wondering how much overlap there is between "come on, you're not really allergic" judgmentalism and people who think "don't eat anything your great-grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food" is sensible dietary advice. My great-grandparents were born in the mid-19th century and spent their lives eating kosher in central and Eastern Europe. So they wouldn't have in Europe, and wouldn't have recognized (for example) kappa maki, but I don't know if their reaction would have been "no thanks, that's weird" or "what's it? Just vegetables? OK, that's kosher" and a willingness to try it.

[conuly]

Presumably somebody's great-grandparents would've eaten it, but honestly, our great-grandparents ate a lot of weird things.

[gatheringrivers]

My late gram would have tried anything that wasn't nailed down.

But, she grew up in the Great Depression (late 1920's?), so....it's understandable.

I horrify a lot of people by voluntarily preparing and eating organ meats. But, it's something my grandparents AND my late mom-in-law would have eaten too.

[conuly]

What gets me is a lot of "oh so cheap" organ meats... aren't. At least now nowadays.

[gatheringrivers]

I've usually had reasonable success finding it cheap-per-pound at local farm markets. Most people going to farm markets STILL want "the normal meats" - steaks, etc. - but if you want bones for broth, you've gotta be there right at opening time, otherwise they'll get bought by the restaurant people.

(Interestingly, same for meat fat - cheap per pound at farm markets, especially when there's a glut of it. Which reminds me, I learn soapmaking....)

I did get an ENTIRE beef kidney for free once - the butcher (actual butcher, not "dispensing counter" like in most stores) was all set to throw it out and were baffled that anyone would eat it. So, I got probably 4-ish pounds of tasty beef kidney for freeeeeeeee. :)

[conuly]

I do have success grabbing chicken skin off the grocery butcher.

[gatheringrivers]

Oooooo, I'll have to ask next time I go.... :)

[conuly]

They charge me 10 cents a pound, "because we have to put something on". And you fry it up and get oil and also crispy skins which are good with salt and it is so good and I don't know why.

[8hyenas]

I am one of the liars that pretend to have a food reaction.

I'm a vegetarian in Oklahoma. There are about six of us. Meat is in EVERYTHING, and people don't consider it meat. "Oh, those are just beans." WITH BACON GREASE.

I treat everyone who's food I eat to a detailed description of the gastric distress that would occur if I were to accidentally eat some chicken broth.

I'm pretty sure it's all bs. Like, 100% bs. But people are a lot better at remembering the chicken broth in their soup after I threaten them with projectile vom.

[conuly]

A psychological reaction is a real reaction. I'm sure lots of them would projectile vomit if they were informed they were eating cat or dog or cricket.

[siderea]

So, I've been mulling over a theory, that I might post about. And it's that Westerners don't believe in poisoning. That is, if you punch me in the nose, that's assault and battery, but if you put lead paint chips in my vegetable garden, or cigarette smoke in my apartment, or hexavalent chromium in my drinking water, or a roofie in my drink, or something I've identified as objectionable to me in my dinner... "whaddaya gonna do about it?"

How about press charges? How about we treat these assaults on people's bodies as assault, and reckless endangerment and attempted murder and murder and manslaughter?

ETA: And if juries and judges have so much trouble understanding that an involuntarily administered toxin is as much an assault as a punch, then maybe we need new laws on the books, specifically against poisoning.

[conuly]

Tangent, I just read an article today about a group in the Netherlands trying to sue tobacco makers for intentional poisoning. (But they didn't even get as far as trial.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Seriously, WTF is wrong with some people, that they can't grasp the simple fact that NO means NO? Teaching children that they've got no right to refuse what they don't want is rotten parenting.

Now, in all fairness, I have seen a number of children who lived on a very limited diet of unhealthy processed foods because "that's all they'll eat". I understand that some kids have major sensory issues around food, and getting them to eat at all can be a struggle, but that doesn't mean it's okay to let them eat nothing but Cheerios and mac'n'cheese. Nevertheless, that's a private parenting issue, to be worked on privately at home; not the business of everybody at the Thanksgiving table or whatever.

I think it's very important to make the distinction between allergies and all other reasons for not eating certain foods, because none of those other reasons are likely to kill somebody. Lots of people these days are avoiding gluten; a small but significant minority of them actually have celiac disease, and need to make it totally clear that no really, they can't have any gluten at all, ever.

It's a sad thing that some people can't trust their family or friends not to poison them, but... there it is.

[conuly]

Nevertheless, that's a private parenting issue, to be worked on privately at home; not the business of everybody at the Thanksgiving table or whatever.

Especially holidays, which are both stressful for kids but also ostensibly happy occasions. You can reduce the stress and increase the joy (and thankfulness) by dropping the food fight.

I think it's very important to make the distinction between allergies and all other reasons for not eating certain foods, because none of those other reasons are likely to kill somebody.

Agreed, but the fact that some people do lie does not justify J. Q. Random Jackass ignoring everybody who says they have an allergy. And since it doesn't justify it, we can't say it's the liar's fault if he puts poison on my pizza. It's all his fault. He's the jerk who didn't listen to me.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

There's such a lot to be said for potluck feasts - not least that they ensure everybody's got at least one dish that they like. In the SCA, we ask for ingredients lists with potluck dishes, which is a good custom for family gatherings too.

I was brought up to specifically not talk about food at the table. The rule was, try some of everything, 'take what you want but eat all you take', and finish firsts before asking for seconds ; our opinions about the meal were not regarded as appropriate conversation. Thus in later years I was surprised to learn that a lot of people have no 'conversation' at mealtimes but their opinions about the food, their own diets and the diets of others, and the health issues pertaining thereunto. It really is tiresome and unappetizing.

"the fact that some people do lie does not justify J. Q. Random Jackass ignoring everybody who says they have an allergy."

Very true. Whether or not you really have an allergy is none of his business. In a perfect world, you wouldn't have to give a reason why you didn't want onions, or wheat, or MSG or whatever, but since it's not a perfect world, if an ingredient is likely to put you in the hospital, it's best to announce that fact straight-up. Then if J.Q. Random Jackass poisons you, you (or your heirs) can sue the shit out of him.

[conuly]

Well, if cross-contamination is a risk then you do need to specify. I don't want to put anybody through the trouble of allergy protocol for a simple preference.