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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31020 thread views

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.

Just to be clear, are you suggesting - with very little to support it - that food allergies are either fake or psychosomatic?

I inferred that OP was claiming that many food restrictions are not allergies. Veganism, vegetarianism, kosher, and halal are certainly psychosomatic.

And also, virtue signalling on behalf of people with actual food allergies is of course psychosomatic.

Discourse on dietary restrictions is I suspect something like 95% holier-than-thou-ism, 5% "if I eat shellfish I get itchy".

"Most people claiming to have a food allergy do not actually have a food allergy" != "food allergies do not exist".

I know that those are not the same thing, but it sounded like he was saying food allergies do not exist.

Yes, I believe that most claimed allergies are fake. Just based on personal experience, I know one person that claims an allergy to mushrooms which I guarantee is just an aversion to their taste/texture, I know another two that claim allergies to “artificial food coloring” which is surely just some form of chemophobia and I know another with vaguely defined “gluten sensitivity”. Tellingly none of them have strongly definite externally observable reactions to the allergen.

Let's not forget the MSG sensitivity craze. As near as I can tell, that's completely fake, but quite a few people believe(d) that they had it.

The real issue with MSG is that it's saltier than it tastes. That is, it has more sodium.

A lot of sauces used a huge amount of MSG and masked the sodium flavour with sugar to get a rich semi sweet flavour.

The resulting sauces had a huge amount of sugar and sodium. Some people were getting salt poisoning.

I mean, it's mono sodium glutamate. That's like, one sodium.

(But seriously, I fail to see how MSG is saltier than salt, or has more sodium. Given glutamate is fairly complex / heavy vs Chlorine, I would assume that it has less Na than NaCl by weight. (But I haven't checked the math))

You would be right.

Has anyone even actually used MSG? I have, and I can tell you that a very small amount (compared to salt) goes a long way. I would put money on needing less MSG, compared to pure NaCl, by Na content or by weight, in order to bring out flavours in a dish.

Yes. Not like the things peanuts where you get hives and can die. But gluten and a lot of the others yes.

I am a diagnosed Coeliac (they shoved a metal thing down my throat to acquire a piece of my colon to diagnose it). If I eat sufficient quantities of gluten (where sufficient is measured in milligrams), I get severe stomach issues and general major fatigue for ~1 week. So I feel quite confident stating it is a real allergy, even if it would probably take years/decades to kill me if I ate gluten every day.

On a broader note, "not eating gluten" did become something of a health fad a few years back, and interest in gluten-free products skyrocketed. I strongly doubt all, or even most of the people who went with the fad are Coeliacs. But potentially some are. I'm also unsure how to feel about it: In many respects I benefited from a large expansion of goods availability (more than 2 shapes of pasta? LUXURY!), even if a decent amount of it is 'vegan-superfood-seeds-organic' sludge that doesn't interest me. But I also fear that at some point the fad will go in the other direction, and I will be required to forcefully explain that it's a real disease every time I go to a restaurant and politely ask them to inform me if there's anything on the menu I can eat. Or worse, the waiter will nod, ignore my information request (did you know people love to put flour in all sorts of random things? It's true!) and I'll get sick.

But back to these people who do not eat gluten, or other products, without any kind of diagnosis. Medicine is hard. Getting something minor officially diagnosed would require a lot of effort and free time / money to badger doctors into giving you tests. So maybe every time you eat paprika you get a little bit gassy. Or if you eat certain nuts the back of your throat itches a bit. Maybe you think parmesan tastes like vomit. Each of these is an uncomfortable physical sensation if you eat the related foodstuff, but probably not enough that you'd ask a doctor about it. You'll still have a decently strong preference to not eat that food. And I'd argue that it's a legitimate preference, regardless of if you think it tastes bad or it makes your throat itch.

But where we as a society draw the line regarding feeding obligations? Currently it seems he consensus is that if you think something tastes bad, that's mostly your problem, at least when it comes to feeding more than a few people. And if something makes you seriously ill, to the point where you do have a diagnosis for a food allergy, then it's up to the people managing the event to accommodate you (or rescind the invitation? But I think that would be seen as impolite). Some people seem to draw the line a bit differently. Vegetarianism strikes me as a preference, but you're usually expected to accommodate it anyway, and pretty much all restaurants/large events seem to have vegetarian options. Possibly due to some moral authority, potentially just because it's popular.

There might very well be a liberal/conservative divide here, where cons are more likely to "shut up and suffer" for the sake of not being a bother and the sense of community from eating the food as everyone else, while libs are more individualistic and will make a fuss, I have no data either way. But dismissing someone's food preferences as fake strikes me as absurd, regardless of 'slight itch' or 'bad taste', it's unpleasant physical sensations either way.

I think vegetarian options are so common because it’s anticipated to accommodate a variety of dietary restrictions, including religious meat taboos, more than out of strong concern for vegetarians themselves.

(did you know people love to put flour in all sorts of random things? It's true!)

Same with milk once you start paying attention to it.

There's the hygiene hypothesis which imo explains why there's more actual allergies nowadays, but I concur with sliders1234 that there are fakers.. that was my impression too.

I believe that at least 30% of people who won't eat gluten claiming they're allergic or sensitive to it probably aren't.

We oughta look at some papers on this is the kind of thing that some doctors may have possibly looked at.

I think it's more like, playing loose with the truth as part of a signaling. Think: self-diagnosed mental illness and self-diagnosed food allergy.

food allergies are a real thing. The evidence would seem to suggest they have gotten worse over the years

Quite a few people claim allergy to things they just don't like, to make absolutely sure restaurants don't put that shit on their meal.

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