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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Are food allergies another aspect of the culture war? I was reading Reddit and a person was feeding 100 people and someone mentioned to make sure you have all the allergies/food restrictions covered. Being honest I’ve never met anyone with a food restriction I can think of except a lot of brown friends who won’t eat sausage but also have no problem with alcohol.

Ancient religions had a lot of restrictions, now Im borrowing this from elsewhere that the rise of food restrictions is just the same thing as ancients banning certain foods as holy acts. I’ve long argued that the culture wars are less of a culture war and more of a religious war and dietary restrictions are just a modern form of Jews and Muslims banning pork/shellfish etc and Catholics not eating meat on fridays. All religions seem to have focuses on eating and sexual rituals.

I know mental illness has far higher rates amongst lefties. My guess is dietary restrictions and food allergies are much higher in lefties and if your not in that religion it’s something you never think of.

It goes back to the Moral foundations theory and the red / blue split.

Red tribe expresses purity through sexual restrictions. Blue tribe expresses purity through dietary restrictions.

So if you're holding an event with a very blue tribe group like climate change policy you are going to have to deal with a massive matrix of dietary restrictions.

Conservatives doing exotic eating plans is definitely a thing these days, but they generally view it as a pure health issue and don't feel that anyone else should have to accommodate them. So they tend to pack their own lunches if it's an issue.

In my experience the easiest way to deal with the various dietary restrictions is to just offer vegan food. It's not foodproof but it's usually suitable for most.

That reminds me of when my old school friend and her hubby were getting caught up in the Trump doomerism back in 2017. But there's a simple solution I told them - Make America Great Again. Then there's nothing to worry about! Naturally they were very grateful.

I have no idea how this comparison is even supposed to work.

It’s that most of the meat eaters find veganism completely toxic the way a trump derangement syndrome person would find becoming pro trump completely toxic.

I don't think the analogy is perfect, but I'll try. In both cases, it goes something like this.

Problem: I am annoyed by people making unreasonable demands.

Solution: Simply satisfy their unreasonable demands, then they won't have any more demands, and you won't be annoyed anymore!

I think the comparison is that vegan food is not a solution that is very suitable or easy to do for most people (also it has to be vegan without bread and pasta a lot of the time). In the same vein that solving the Trump problem by deporting all the illegals and building a 30 foot beautiful wall with gargoyles on it isn't palatable for trump doomers.