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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.
I have to go off on this. The trend (and it very much is a trend) to have a personal, unique set of food “sensitivities” is very annoying to me, and makes hosting guests near impossible
I recently invited an acquaintance and his wife over for a homecooked dinner and was informed he had a gluten “sensitivity”. Not celiac or a deathly allergy mind you, just a vaguely termed sensitivity. It occurred to me how selfish this is, in a way. Because if more than one person has such non-overlapping sensitivities you pretty rapidly reach a point where the intersection of acceptable foods is empty. If one person is gluten free, another vegan, another paleo, another won’t eat seed oils, what exactly are you supposed to cook?
Any meal can only really support one such person before a home cook has to just throw up their hands and say that there won’t be a meal and everyone should just eat on their own. So by making such a claim you are claiming that one spot for yourself and more or less destroying the meal should anyone else dare to do the same
It especially annoys me because these claimed sensitivities usually just cause the person to “feel lethargic” or some such vague nonsense. Can you not suck it up for the sake of a social gathering once in a while? There was a maybe 6 year period where I was vegetarian, but I would eat meat if at someone’s house for Thanksgiving or some such, it just would have been rude to stick to my diet
The consensus among researchers is that non-celiac gluten sensitivity its a distinct, but closely related disease to celiac. Part of the reason there has been debate is because we didn't have any biomarkers for it, at least until 2020:
https://gut.bmj.com/content/69/11/1966
I would try and be more sympathetic to your friend. While 'feeling lethargic' is vague, the only celiac symptom I had was 'a weird rash', which I had for more than ten years before actually realising what the cause was. For a lot of diagnosed celiacs, symptoms can be as vague as lethargy, anxiety, mild depression, poor sleep, bloating etc. That doesn't mean that they are malingering, it just means that autoimmune diseases manifest in a large number of different ways.
Yeah, I have two family members who are diagnosed celiac (my father very very nearly almost died before they correctly diagnosed it; it wasn't on the radar back then). My blood work came back negative many years ago, but apparently, it can still develop later. My wife and I realized that I was always particularly bloaty/farty for a day or so after having gluten (she seemed farty, too; has never been tested), so we just stopped. Haven't gotten new blood work. I remember when my family was dealing with the doctors, they said that even if you don't have noticeable symptoms, it can still cause damage to the intestines and increase the risk of intestinal cancer.
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