Sympathy for Food Alergies

I try to eat within a certain ethos.  In short, this means that I eat very little meat (compared to contemporary standards).  For the sake of simplicity, I will sometimes claim to be vegetarian when speaking to waiters or party hosts.  I shouldn't do this, but likewise I shouldn't go into 10 to 20 minute long explanations of why I just turned down their offered pigs-in-a-blanket, chili and chips, or hot wings.

However, once I claim to be vegetarian, I don't ask them to substitute a chicken patty in a burger.  This creates an impression that chicken is vegetarian.  If you think I'm being alarmist, consider this:  A waiter once told vegan friend of mine, "Chicken is vegetarian.  My roommate is vegetarian and he eats chicken."  Never mind the fact that the waiter argued with her about what she wanted to eat.  He honestly believed that chicken was vegetarian.

With that in mind, consider food allergies.  People with food allergies have to deal with being called "difficult" or "picky."  They have to read every label.  The smart ones do it twice, even if a friend or spouse already did it or the waiter assured them that it would be safe.  They have to do this because the penalty for being wrong isn't just getting a C+ on their next Biology exam.

Consider your last cold.  How did you feel?  Tired?  Off-balance in some way that you couldn't quite describe?  Was it difficult to eat or sleep?  Were you feeling anxious about the growing backlog of work waiting for you?

Now consider having that happen every time you ate some wheat.  No big deal, right?  Just avoid bread and pasta and you'll never get another cold.  Awesome!  Score one for logic and science!

But wait...  Wheat is in beer.  And nearly every box of cereal.  And a lot of candy.  And many drugs, like maybe that painkiller your doctor prescribed.  Heck, if you're really allergic to gluten (which is in wheat) and not wheat itself, you can't have some kinds of chocolate, any milk shakes (malt has gluten), or even old fashioned oatmeal.

So the next time that you want someone to just not put milk in your coffee, don't say, "I'm lactose intolerant" and then eat milk chocolate.  Don't say that you have celiac disease and then scrape the crust off a pie.  Be considerate to people who will die if you feed them peanuts or be be trapped in the bathroom for the next 3 hours if you give them barley.

We are lucky.  We have an amazingly complex, sturdy, and adaptive bodies.  We have a surprisingly diverse set of foods available.  But just because one of us can eat something, it doesn't mean that everyone can.  Be grateful for what you can do and be respectful of what other's can or wish to do.