It's a wonderful thing when your teenagers finally accept you are not going to get any cooler. pic.twitter.com/jl9HAzqPlp
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 25, 2015
When we go to our favorite Chinese restaurant, I usually order their Singapore style rice stick with no shrimp. Sometimes the waiter points out that the eggrolls my husband just ordered contain shrimp, and I’ll assure him that I’m not allergic — I just don’t like the taste of shrimp (so I don’t eat the eggrolls). But I never realized how complicated providing “allergy free” dishes from a restaurant kitchen could be until I read Neil Swidey’s Boston Globe article, “Why food allergy fakers need to stop“:
BEFORE WE GET INTO IT, let me make one thing clear. This intervention is not aimed at those with life-threatening food allergies or similarly grave medical conditions. I would never question people whose faces will balloon if they ingest trace amounts of shellfish. Or people who risk going into anaphylactic shock with a whiff of peanut dust. Or people whose ingestion of a smidge of gluten will send their bodies on an autoimmune witch hunt that over time will eat away at the lining of their small intestines and potentially lead to everything from infertility to cancer. Those problems are very real, and everyone who is afflicted with one or more of them has my sympathy.
I’m talking about the rest of you. Those of you who don’t eat garlic because you detest its smell or avoid cauliflower because it makes you fart or have gone gluten-free because you heard it worked wonders for Jennifer Aniston or Lady Gaga or Dave, your toned instructor from spin class.
When you settle into your seat at a restaurant, don’t be shy about telling your server your food preferences. By all means, ask if your dish can be prepared garlic-free or cauliflower-free or gluten-free. You’re paying good money, so you should get the meal that you want, not one that leaves you riding home in a foul mood and a plume of fetid air. The days of the imperious no-substitutions chef, telling you to take it or leave it, now seem as dated as a rerun of that Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” episode from 20 years ago.
But for the love of Julia Child and the sake of every other soul in the restaurant, particularly the underpaid line cooks sweating their way through another Saturday night shift, please, please stop describing your food preferences as an allergy. That is a very specific medical term, and invoking it triggers an elaborate, time-consuming protocol in any self-respecting kitchen. It shouldn’t be tossed around as liberally as the sea salt on the house-made (gluten-free) breadsticks…
This isn’t just my opinion. The physician-researcher who put gluten on the map in America and the parent-activist who led the crusade that transformed how seriously this country takes food allergies both admitted to me that they can’t believe how much things have gotten out of hand.
When Dr. Alessio Fasano came to the United States from his native Italy in the 1990s, the prevailing view in medicine was that celiac disease — the autoimmune disorder triggered by eating the gluten protein composite in wheat, barley, and rye — effectively didn’t exist here. It was a problem only for European kids. Through a meticulous years-long study, Fasano demonstrated that, in fact, 1 percent of Americans have the disease, cutting across all ages and races.
Yet Fasano, who founded the Center for Celiac Research now at Massachusetts General Hospital, never could have predicted the market-fueled tsunami of me-too-ism that his findings would release. “We were so good,” he says, “that we lost control.”…
… In 2009, Massachusetts led the nation as the first state to require restaurants to undergo allergy training, followed by Rhode Island.
A year later, Paul Antico, a former Fidelity portfolio manager from Cohasset, started AllergyEats, a Yelp-type website, and now also an app, where customers rate restaurants based on how seriously they take allergies. As the father of five, three with food allergies, Antico wanted to give families the freedom to eat out without paralyzing fear. The site now has tens of thousands of user reviews of restaurants from around the country.
Allergy advocacy culminated with the 2013 law signed by President Obama — whose older daughter has a peanut allergy — pushing schools to stockpile anaphylaxis-combating auto-injecting epinephrine EpiPens…
Every time the cooks see the word “allergy,” they have to assume the customer’s condition is life-threatening. The big danger is cross contamination, where an allergen is inadvertently transferred from one dish to another, often through a shared cutting board or utensil, or through the oil in the fryer or even food dust in the air.
That means with every allergy, the action must stop in this kitchen jammed with cooks and dishwashers. The cooks consult a printed breakdown of ingredients in each dish to make sure the allergen isn’t hiding out in a component. They either grab new cutting boards, knives, and tongs or put theirs through the sanitizing dishwasher. And when the plate is done, they use disposable wipes to hold it by the edge.
Imagine doing that repeatedly across a breathless night, disrupting the choreography of the kitchen each time. I asked numerous chefs how many tables have a diner asking for these special accommodations on a typical night, and I heard estimates ranging from 10 percent to a jaw-dropping 60 percent.
Now imagine that a diner whose “serious dairy allergy” required you to take all those time-consuming steps decides to finish her meal by ordering ice cream, telling her server that it’s OK if she “cheats a little.” This, Leviton says, happens all the time.
He has no problem if a customer says, “I’m not eating gluten” or “I’m avoiding dairy.” The kitchen will make sure those ingredients aren’t in the dish. But they won’t be wasting time taking unnecessary steps. “We’re jumping through a different level of hoop,” he says…
What’s the big deal if gluten-tolerant people go gluten-free, especially since they’ll be eating fewer Pop-Tarts?
The problem is the more these bandwagon-jumpers demand special attention, the more likely that restaurants and wider society will come to see all gluten-free people as phonies.
And by the time the fad-followers move on to another fad diet, they have cheapened the label for all those people who can’t move on…
Harron shows me around the open kitchen of the first Burtons Grill, in Hingham. Pan handles, cutting boards, and tongs are color-coded, like a Boston subway map. Red for meat dishes, yellow for poultry, blue for seafood, and a purple cutting board for gluten-free meals. Final dishes prepared free of gluten or a particular allergen are served on a square plate rather than a round one. If they’re takeout meals, a big “allergy” sticker is affixed to the container.
Harron, who is 61, was diagnosed 45 years ago with celiac, though back then it was known as “sprue” and an almost entirely overlooked condition.
He’s not particularly concerned about diners mislabeling their preferences as allergies, since his business is built to accommodate these requests. Still, he can understand why other restaurant owners have begun pushing back in frustration. “In this area, you’ve got to be either all in, or out,” Harron says. “There’s little margin of error.”…
… AllergyEats founder Paul Antico says the allergy community has to get less defensive. If restaurants can do a better job of distinguishing real from exaggerated, they’ll be more likely to continue making accommodations for the people who really need them.
And maybe if more people with preferences begin to appreciate the trouble they’re causing with their use of the A-word, they’ll correct their ways. That begins with awareness…
Lots more details, including video, at the link.
Never forget. pic.twitter.com/nJqYjtVhOW
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) November 25, 2015
SiubhanDuinne
I love Sasha’s glasses.
Baud
Who does this?
schrodinger's cat
How can anyone not like shrimp? Unless they are allergic, then its a different story.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: I love any type of seafood but unfortunately shrimp causes me to swell and gives me hives. Of course there is benadryl for that but at some point you gotta say, what if it doesn’t work. My last meal will be shrimp, scallops and lobster though.
dr. bloor
Is it possible that neither of these people had ever before met any media type looking to make his or her bones, or any of their fellow Entitled-Americans?
beltane
If I had a life-threatening food allergy, I would not do a lot of eating out.
Starfish
I am really really allergic to shrimp and have ended up in the emergency room three times in my life due to shrimp related incidents. These incidents all occurred before we had Epi-Pens.
JPL
It’s not unusual when you are allergic to a food product to undergo a withdrawal period. One of my son’s was allergic to milk and when it was removed from his diet, I caught him chugging in front of the fridge in the middle of the night. Milk o holic…
Satby
@Baud: Lots of self centered assholes. Who have no idea how much trouble they cause, or don’t care if they do know. Because they’re special snowflakes. The Venn overlap with anti-vaxers is pretty high.
SiubhanDuinne
As for the point of the post, I made it very clear, I think, in the downstairs thread that my aversion to peanuts and peanut butter is, in fact, just that: an aversion, not an allergy. I may well start hurling if you wave an open jar of peanut butter under my nose, but I will not go into anaphylactic shock. And a few years ago I had a bad reaction to MSG, so I also avoid it when possible. But Neil Swidey is exactly right: Let me keep my food preferences to myself. I don’t want to add to the “boy who cried dietary wolf” phenomenon.
/Some of my best friends are vegans.
Baud
@Satby:
Some people just need to be slapped silly.
JPL
@Starfish: That is scary.
ruemara
Good luck with that. No offense but the people who elevate their preferences & fad eating rituals to the level of life threatening allergy, they cannot be reasoned with nor contained. They are special, delicate, PRECIOUS hothouse flowers, who must be catered to before they stomp all over you with their delicate feet.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t like desserts with peanuts/peanut butter in it but am not allergic.
raven
Any of ya’ll eat white dirt?
beltane
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s interesting. I like peanuts, natural peanut butter, and spicy sauces made with peanuts such as satay, but I find peanuts in combination with sugar to be absolutely vile.
Starfish
@JPL: I grew up near New Orleans. Only one of the three incidents was related to buying hamburgers and fries from a po’ boy joint. Food cooked in a deep fryer that also cooks allergens may lead to allergic reactions.
@SiubhanDuinne Hurling before you can consume enough to reach anaphylactic shock can also be indicative of allergies. My peanut allergies work like your aversion.
Anne Laurie
@schrodinger’s cat:
Well, I don’t like the taste or smell of fish, full disclosure. I eat tuna salad (which tastes like mayonnaise or whatever else it’s dressed with), and scallops, which don’t taste like much of anything, fortunately for those of us who live in seafood-restaurant-intensive areas.
My dad, who loved anything seafood-related as much as the average cat (sometimes to the detriment of his health, since working on the NYC waterfront gave him so much access that he developed gout) could not understand how such a thing could happen in his very own family. So I’ve tried, under duress and/or bribes, just about every form of seafood known, including octopus & elvers, and really, I just don’t like the flavor!
When fellow diners express incredulity, I tell them I’m the descendent of generations of sea-dependent Celts & Vikings who spent their sad lives thinking, “When I get to heaven, there will be no herrings there, nor lobsters, nor cod, nor even dulse.”
And besides: More lobster for them! while I tuck into the side dishes (or scallops).
different-church-lady
Had an SO in the 90’s who had celiac. Dining out was always a dicey proposition. I got good at baking gluten free bread. The idea that twenty years later people would volunteer themselves into all that bullshit would have dropped our jaws.
SiubhanDuinne
@Starfish:
Well, when I say I am not allergic, I mean I don’t break out in hives or go into shock or have all my breathing passages close up on me or anything. I just hate the taste and smell of peanutty things, to the extent that exposure to the aroma triggers my gag/vomit reflex. But if I were a prisoner and my only source of food came from peanuts, I expect I would not die.
JPL
@efgoldman: Are you having fun with the grandchild…..
Warren Terra
I know someone who genuinely has celiac, and who is therefore very grateful that all these trend-following dipshits avoiding gluten for no good reason have vastly increased the availability and variety of gluten-free options in restaurants and supermarkets. But even so he is heartily sick of their nonsense.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Starfish: My wife is in the “finds fish and seafood repulsive” group, and she is all over this “communal deep-fryer” thing too. Potatoes (and onion rings) in their own, please.
catclub
I thought it was amusing that the previous post is for a peanut butter recipe.
different-church-lady
@catclub: Amusing? Don’t you understand the potential for cross contamination, what with that post processed in the same facility as this one?
FlyingToaster
I live with this nonsense a lot. The “real allergy” kids (hell, I’m one) versus the “fake allergy” nitwits.
One of my daughter’s best friends (and her friend’s mom) have celiac. We are always insanely careful to make sure that she has safe things to eat — her mom was surprised the first time we had a playdate and I whipped out a half-dozen packs of safe snacks. I had to warn the girl off of one of the chip bags at the restaurant next to the Children’s Museum; the baked chips shared an oven with crackers, so NOT SAFE, kiddo. Get the fried chips instead.
Another parent at school goes around trumpeting “gluten-free”; when I said, no, I don’t have celiac, and my dairy allergy is very specific and won’t affect what we’re eating out, she said (no joke), “What’s celiac?” I wanted to brain her.
Ming Tsai was a local and well known supporter of allergy training for restaurants. Blue Ginger had an allergy notice up before anywhere else.
Oh, my dairy allergy. I can have most baked, or cultured items containing milk (medium to hard cheeses, yoghurt). Pizza and lasagna are fine. Cream, uncooked butter, no-bake cheesecake, ice cream, ice milk, whipped cream, etc. will cause me to break out in hives. The last incident was in Vancouver; I hit an outdoor coffee window at the library for a hot chai. I never took off the lid, so I didn’t know it was a chai latte they gave me, and woke up the next morning with my husband saying, “my god what happened?!?”. The downstairs-at-the-hotel outpost of the same company told me to ask for a “black chai” in future.
A friend came up with ice cream recipes that start with a custard (basically he’s making ice cream out of pudding); I can finally risk having dessert at his house.
beltane
I recently saw an ad for gluten-free hair dye. Maybe there are people out there who think they can dye their hair internally by chugging down a bottle of pigments and other chemicals just as long as no gluten is involved.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: Here in New England, they probably bonded over a table of people exclaiming “How can you not like seafood, why else would you live here?”
@Warren Terra:
Absolutely — that’s why it’s so important, to people with genuine allergies, that restaurant workers don’t start thinking, “Oh, another jagoff who’s gonna order the beer-fried onion rings for a follow-up, right after we’ve decontaminated the kitchen to accommodate his ‘gluten allergy’… “
AliceBlue
Scallops won’t kill Mr. AliceBlue, but he’ll throw up 8-10 times in the next 4-6 hours after he eats them. Several years ago we were out of town, ate at a seafood restaurant, and I was driving to the emergency room in the middle of the night in a strange city. Not fun. The kicker? “Maybe there were scallops on that platter. I forgot I was allergic to them.”
Satby
@beltane: you’ll find a lot of “gluten free” on oils too. The saturation point of a fad, when stuff that never contained something in the first place is marketed as being “free” of it.
beltane
@FlyingToaster: Do you have a dairy allergy or lactose intolerance? Many lactose intolerant people can digest fermented and cooked dairy products just fine as the lactose is converted to other sugars during the fermentation process. A true dairy allergy involves the protein in milk products which is unaltered by cooking or fermentation.
Scapegoat
Twelve years ago, I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. (Yes, it doth suck.)
While the optional wheat-free-fashionistas are undoubtedly wreaking havoc in restaurants, those of us with this serious disorder have in many ways actually benefitted. I mean, who really gives a shit about modifying one’s menu for +/- 4% of the population with this auto-immune disorder. Virtually nobody.
Today, thanks to hipster wheat free faddists, I can eat virtually anywhere and grocery store shelves are now groaning with food options that actually don’t taste like cardboard anymore… and there’s even a few decent beers now instead of the one (undrinkable) gluten free Kosher beer from a decade ago.
So, here’s to love-hating the poseurs.
beltane
@Satby: Yup. It’s entirely possible that the Next Big Thing will be the touting of seitan as a vegan alternative to GMO animal protein.
Tenar Darell
@SiubhanDuinne: pretty@schrodinger’s cat: With me, peanuts in my chocolate don’t squick me out, but I can’t stand peanut butter in my chocolate. (All y’all besides SD & SC may have all my Reese’s, I will not eat ’em). Never tempted to claim I was allergic just to avoid it though. But then, I have enough allergies, that pretending to have more would get pretty old pretty quick.
Satby
@beltane: I have a friend who is seriously allergic to soy, which is in everything these days. And she basically doesn’t eat out, even a pan sprayed with generic cooking spray is dangerously loaded with soy lecithin.
Starfish
@FlyingToaster: I am in camp “NO ONE IS ALLERGIC TO WHEAT” because I live in a place with a lot of gluten-free idiots. I have met people with celiacs but not here. What bothers me about the nitwits is that people bend over backwards in their attempts to accommodate them, and they ignore the people with actual allergies. For example, “oh since we knew that there are gluten-free people in this class, we had a gluten-free cake made” with almond flour. More people are allergic to nuts than are allergic to wheat.
There is a dentist down the street from me that offers gluten-free dentistry.
Tenar Darell
@different-church-lady: ROTFL
Suzanne
The ones that annoys me the most are the people, usually women, who claim allergies or seriously restricted diets to basically cover for their eating disorders. I know I should be sympathetic, but I’m not. If you’re going to starve yourself until you fit in a size zero, go for it, but spare me the lies about your allergies or your diet that only lets you eat pistachios and dust. Or your cleanse.
beltane
@Satby: Exactly. I would not entrust my life to any restaurant’s supply chain. There are too many points where things could go wrong.
Mike J
@raven:
I grew up in the south, but in a city.
Starfish
@beltane: There are multiple proteins in dairy (two or three) that people can be allergic to. At least one of them gets denatured by the cooking process, and one does not. The first test to see if you are overcoming a dairy allergy is to eat a piece of muffin that has been cooked in the oven for 30 minutes. If you can do that, then you do a test with shorter bake times in high heat ovens like a pizza cooked in a professional oven that gets hotter than your home oven. The last test may be pancakes and things that cook for even less time.
Starfish
@efgoldman: Boulder Dental Arts
beltane
@efgoldman: I think I’ve seen something like this in Vermont.
normal liberal
@beltane:
A lot of beauty products have various wheat components, which can cause contact dermatological issues for people with celiac. Such as my niece, who following her diagnosis was quite annoyed to discover that her favorite shampoo had wheat something or other.
Given the horrible stuff in hair color, for most people gluten is the least of their worries.
schrodinger's cat
@beltane: Same here. I especially hate Reese’s cups and peanut butter cookies. Do. Not. Want.
I make my own roasted spicy peanuts with cayenne! Great snack.
Scapegoat
@different-church-lady: FTW!
FlyingToaster
@beltane: It’s an allergy, alas. Lactose intolerance involves (often severe) intestinal discomfort which can also send one to the emergency room. My husband, one nephew, and my best friend are all lactose intolerant; very different symptoms.
My doctor (at age 15) put me through the final battery of tests to figure out what was going on. I’d been through the scratch tests at ages 4 and 9, which both showed positive for everything. It seems that something got misprogrammed as a baby when I was given cows milk instead of formula; it interacted with a genetic condition to cause an allergy. From the age of 9 months on, I was on soy or goat’s milk; every time I was given milk (like by my idiot kindergarten teacher), I broke out in hives. We determined what my tolerances were; it’s been no problem to avoid what will set it off — just getting my favorite taqueria to put the sour cream on the side.
The modern term is epigenetics; it’s the reason WarriorGirl didn’t inherit the allergy, and probably why it skipped a generation from my maternal grandfather to me. The allergy doesn’t develop if you don’t expose the organism to the allergen when it’s susceptible. WarriorGirl had a pediatric allergist as her PCP until she was 18 months old so that we had a custom diet for her. She has the eczema, but no asthma and no dietary allergies at all.
The Finns think they’ve identified the gene; there’s a “barrier malformation”, causing a number of auto-immune disorders. Hereditary atopic dermatitis (that’s the eczema) is the common factor. A host of other things, dietary allergies to milk, eggs, soy, and wheat, respiratory problems, what-have-you can turn up depending upon childhood exposure.
p.a.
@Anne Laurie: Go to 1:53. ‘Trigger’ warning: SugarCubes.
LauraPDX
I am apparently allergic to something in red wine. Not the tannins because I can drink coffee and tea, and eat chocolate without any problem. Not the sulfites either – I can drink white wine without a problem. And, an allergic reactions is totally random. I don’t drink red wine any more, but in the past could have a glass one evening without a problem, and then next evening with a different variety I was off to the emergency room. I once had a bad reaction after eating jarred pasta sauce that included red wine. The worst reactions have come after eating something at a buffet or potluck where red wine was added during cooking.
I also can’t tolerate lettuce, of all foods. And that’s the key word, according to my doctor – it’s an intolerance, not an allergy. I’m not going to die from eating it, but I will feel pretty awful. My parents used to try and make me eat salads when I was young but I was a master at hiding lettuce under my plate, in my skirt, etc. Salads look delicious and I know they’re healthy, but I always order the soup.
beltane
@Starfish: As is typical for people of my ethnicity, I became lactose intolerant in my thirties and will suffer some very nasty digestive issues after consuming even small quantities of uncooked milk. Family members have referred to this condition as being “allergic” to milk and I always take pains to educate them on this point. 65% of the world’s adults are lactose intolerant while true dairy allergies are relatively rare.
FourTen
Lord, save us, your unworthy children, from columnists with nothing to say. Amen.
divF
@beltane:
Somewhat OT, but my pet peeve in this department is the term “HD Radio”.
Helen
I will eat anything. Certainly I will try anything. Once.
Except for organ meat.
When I was in college I went to a friends house for dinner. For the entire afternoon she kept saying things like “I am so sorry – my Dad is from Yugoslavia, they eat that stuff all the time.” I had no idea what she was talking about. Well; dinner was tongue. Normally I would have eaten it because I was raised to be respectful. When someone invites you to dinner you eat what is served.
She made me a hamburger. I ate it and watched them eat tongue.
Also, too. I’ve tried liver. No. The end.
p.a.
@Warren Terra: I remember a Lewis Black rant on the Daily Show when carbs (specifically for the rant, bread) became evil: “Imagine that. We’ve been eating the wrong thing SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME.”
Satby
@beltane: and to be fair, the kitchen would grind to a halt while they figured out how to accommodate her very life threatening allergy. She does have an epi-pen, but it’s easier for everyone if she eats at home.
opiejeanne
I hated tomatoes as a kid. We grow them every summer and I know why I hated them so much when I was little: I have a mild allergy to them that was worse when I was a child. They make the roof of my mouth itch like mad. These days it takes eating them daily for a couple of weeks to get that reaction, as if whatever it is that sets it off has to build up, which I’m not sure makes sense
My older daughter doesn’t tolerate gluten very well but does not have Celiac. She moved from Southern California to Seattle in 2001 and suddenly had massive problems with respiratory allergies. It took her doctor a couple of years to figure out what the problem was because when they ran tests it looked like she was allergic to every substance and food known to man. She eliminated gluten from her diet and within a month or so most of her respiratory issues went away. This was before gluten-free became a fad diet. When she eats it she breaks out in a rash on her face and neck and there are digestive issues as well. I’ve seen her react to flour that was airborne, getting a rash on her neck because someone was using flour in her kitchen and there was enough in the air that I could taste it. (I don’t know if they were throwing it or what, but it’s not usual to find a cloud of flour in the air in my house.)
A couple of years later I was hunting through the various flours and grains available, looking for gluten-free oatmeal (oatmeal that has not been processed where glutinous grains are processed) and a woman with a girl about 10 years old noticed me and started questioning me on the health benefits of eating gluten-free. I don’t think I was very patient with her because by then it was already starting to be A Thing and she very much wanted it to be some sort of magic cure for something.
The package of bacon we bought this week says “gluten free” on the package. We laughed when we noticed it.
beltane
@Satby: Even if the kitchen staff were vigilant, with something like soy it’s impossible to trust suppliers with absolute certainly. Too risky.
Helen
@efgoldman: And you’re gonna post the pics, right? We all want to see efgoldmangrandaughter rolling pin pics.
Satby
A former friend used to loudly proclaim her allergy to coffee, which I love. I was surprised because she had been happily consuming brownies and chocolate cakes at my house for years. I always substitute brewed coffee for the water in chocolate baked goods.
Of course, she never had a reaction.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: That means they haven’t been processed or packed where gluten-containing products are.
beltane
My husband is a food faddist. He mostly eats separately from the rest of our family because I don’t cook the “right” food. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that he is the only overweight person in the household.
p.a.
I remember years ago a Brown student with severe peanut allergy died from eating restaurant chili. Their recipe used peanut butter as a thickener. No warnings.
glaukopis
Long history of food and other allergies. Senior year in high school had several episodes of anaphylactic shock but after I went away to college, never again (never did find out what caused it). Touching walnuts gave me blisters. Definite reaction to wheat these days, but doesn’t occur until a day or two later, and I love good bread, croissants, bagels, pie crusts, etc., so it’s too tempting to try periodically to see if I was somehow mistaken the last umpteen times. Very small amounts of wheat (e.g. the gluten in soy sauce) don’t seem to be a major problem though, and I’ve tested negative for celiac. Most gluten-free food, especially bread, tastes terrible and is less healthy, in my opinion. I cook most food from scratch myself because it’s just less hassle. In most restaurants there are usually plenty of decent non-gluten options, but the real problem is eating at someone else’s house, because there often won’t be alternatives.
The gluten-free fad does seem kind of silly sometimes (especially the gluten-free shampoo) but you can’t get the gluten-free label unless the factory does not process gluten-containing foods on the same equipment, so though it may seem silly to call, for example, coconut macaroons gluten-free, there’s actually some reasoning behind it.
p.a.
@LauraPDX: Some red wines use a grape mold/fungus as a ‘seasoning’. Believe it’s called the ‘noble rot’. Not sure if it’s specific to a particular grape/grapes or if it’s beneficial to all varieties. Don’t think it can be introduced, it occurs naturally.
beltane
One type of food I have learned to avoid for health reasons is anything served buffet style. While it’s always possible the kitchen staff will not follow safe food handling practices, it is a given that customers walking in off the street won’t.
lamh36
NOLA born and raised as ya’ll know, so seafood is in my blood. I don’t have any food allergies that I know of, except maybe with fresh pineapples, but I think it’s just the citric acid in the fruit that cause my tongue to tingle, but maybe not, since I can eat oranges and I have no trouble. Canned pineapples also don’t give me that weird reaction.
Anyway, my mom on the other hand is allergic to shellfish. She can eat trout and catfish and the like, but shrimp, crabs, crawfish, etc…she can’t handle and like someone said above, even just cooking the shellfish in the same grease as the fish, when she eats fish, she will have violent puking almost immediately after or at least an hour later. My youngest sister got this allergy from my mom, except, my sister’s allergy is to all seafood, but she also has allergy related eczema, egg allergies and she’s lactose intolerant. Funny enough, she’s also the most fit and smallest of all the sisters, we tease her and say it’s cause she full of allergins.
lamh36
Ok, so, open thread…cool.
Alright Marvel-stans, have ya’ll seen the new Capn America Civil War trailer. If not, here it is.
Capn America Civil War
First thoughts from the trailer, Falcon (Anthony Mackie) side by side with Cap…my thinking, once Chris Evan’s contract is up and if they decide to continue on the Capn America franchise with a new Capn America…then it just so happens, the current Capn American is none other than the Falcon himself! So Anthony Mackie, you’re up…maybe .
But the biggest thing to point out…OMG is that…Black Panther! Yes. And from the clip, his is more than just a “cameo” role, seems a real true extended action sequence. You see BP in profile, then with some leg moves and finally Cap running after and presumably trying to catch BP..Yes!
Finally the scene where Cap and Bucky are putting a hurt on Iron Man…wow!
So check out and let me know what you think!
opiejeanne
@p.a.: High sugar content in wines like late-harvest Rieslings is the result of “noble rot”. The grapes are pretty close to raisins when harvested.
redshirt
@p.a.:
Carbs did not become a main part of people’s diet until farming got started, so really only 15,000 years ago or so. We spent far, far longer as a species with limited carb intake.
pat
@LauraPDX:
resveritrol is in red wine. Might be the problem.
Stella B
@efgoldman: I’ve seen gluten-free ham and gluten-free jam, but my all-time favorite is gluten-free flourless chocolate cake. Um, yes, it is free of gluten since it is also free of flour.
redshirt
@lamh36:
Such a good trailer and I am pumped.
Better chances of Bucky become new Cap first than Falcon. Sebastian Stan is still signed for like 4 more movies.
I like how they set up the central tension: Cap wants to protect Bucky, and everyone else wants Bucky punished. Also, SPOILER!!!!!
It’s heavily suggested in The Winter Solider that Bucky killed Stark’s parents, so there’s a personal stake there for him.
redshirt
So, big question: Are food allergies more common now than in the past, or are people more likely to think they have a food allergy now than in the past?
beltane
@redshirt: The “gathering” part of hunting and gathering was almost exclusively centered around carbohydrates. Just because domesticated crops were not involved does not mean that non-protein sources of nutrition were of minor importance.
Mike in NC
On Friday night I’m looking forward to a trip to the nearest Legal Seafood location to gorge myself on real fried clams, which cannot be found outside of New England. Frozen clam strips sold in supermarkets? [Bleep] that [bleep]!
opiejeanne
@redshirt: I think we hear more about it because of media and the way the media has tended in recent years to sensationalize all sorts of things.
I also think that kids with asthma, if they lived on a farm, either lived miserable lives until they could escape to the city, or they died young.
opiejeanne
@Mike in NC: Do you mean they aren’t fried the way you like them outside that area?
redshirt
@opiejeanne: I’ve read articles which suggest that kids raised around animals have lower rates of asthma.
Starfish
@beltane: Children can have dairy allergies that they outgrow. The reason that I know about how they test to see if the dairy allergy has been outgrown is that a small person in my house failed the first baked dairy challenge not many months ago.
redshirt
@beltane:
Sure, berries, nuts, a few grains here and there, but it was spotty and certainly not in the quantities delivered with seasonal crops and bread.
beltane
@redshirt: I would check the demographics of it. Is this a global phenomenon? Is it more prevalent in certain income levels? I have seen articles showing a correlation between slef-reported allergies and income level, but maybe this has to do with the nature of self-reporting. The incidence of food allergies should be relatively stable through the population, but the wannabees may be more likely to be found among the more affluent.
p.a.
@redshirt: there’s the idea that young children are kept in far too sterile environs now. No more sitting in the yard making (and eating) mudpies. That gross stuff, the thinking goes, built up the immune system and paradoxically gave it something to attack instead of turning it against the kids’ own organs. Of course, with the advent of chemical lawncare we’re prolly better off keeping toddlers off the lawns.
FlyingToaster
@redshirt: I think that children get diagnosed and therefore survive their food allergies.
Infant and early childhood mortality used to be horrific; not all of it can be attributed to poor hygiene. Kids with celiac or type 1 diabetes or asthma would more than likely die before age 5.
redshirt
@FlyingToaster: That’s what I’m getting at. There’s 4 possibilities here:
1. This has always been a problem, just recently recognized.
2. This is a new problem that is far more prevalent now than in the past.
3. Reporting of it is far more common in the past, so a bit of 1 and 2 with an additional…
4. People are hypochondriacs.
It strikes me as similar to the issues surrounding autism.
beltane
@redshirt: It really varied by location and climate. Recent dental studies of paleolithic remains show that the human diet was far more varied and plant based than previously thought. Often, it was animal protein availability that was “spotty”. In parts of the Middle East, the population subsisted on the naturally occurring precursors of our modern crops thousands of years before they were intentionally cultivated. Our species’ genetics adapted rapidly to changing conditions. The lactase persistance gene in Northern Europeans, for example, only became prevalent very recently, perhaps in response a climate event that caused widespread and prolonged crop failure.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
As I’m sure people are sick of me pointing out, a lot of the people who feel better on a gluten-free diet are actually sensitive to FODMAPs and probably aren’t allergic to anything at all.
I will sometimes ask to have high-FODMAPs ingredients not included in my order if it looks like something that can be easily eliminated, but if asked, I always say that I’m NOT allergic, it just gives me tummy troubles.
opiejeanne
@redshirt: My son would probably not have asthma at all except that my mother and mother-in-law insisted on giving him orange juice, after we asked them not to. My doctor suggested not giving it to him before age 2 or 3 because I have asthma, and there was literature in 1970 that suggested that some foods could encourage an inherited problem. His asthma used to be the worst when he had a cold, the doctor said it was the child’s own antibodies triggering the attacks. He is in his 40s now and no longer has symptoms of asthma but maybe it’s part of where he’s living right now, too. My asthma was bad in Riverside, so was his. He moved to Orange County and it went away, and so did mine when we moved to the same area.
He was always around animals. We had a cat all of his life, a dog when he was little, a rabbit, fish, parakeets, etc.
My own asthma was triggered by dust when we had Santa Anas, as an adult, but as a kid I had terrible hay fever. I had cats and chickens and ducks and several other animals growing up and they didn’t seem to be a trigger, but dust and leaf mold were. When I was a baby the doctor told my mother that orange juice was healthy for young babies. My mother wasn’t allergic to anything that I remember, but Dad had terrible hay fever as a kid.
Anyway, we managed to convince them not to do the same with the two younger kids and they didn’t have asthma or the terrible allergies.
At one point when I lived in Riverside I realized that all of the adults in the neighborhood was on Sudafed for six weeks every spring, right when the citrus was in bloom.
redshirt
@beltane:
Would be interesting to correlate allergen rates across countries. Are there similar rates in India as compared to the US, for example?
Mike in NC
@opiejeanne: Real fried clams include the succulent bellies which are missing from the crewy frozen strips popularized by Howard Johnson’s back in the 1960s.
opiejeanne
@redshirt: Oh, you mean the self-diagnosed autistic people that I’ve known for years, and they now tell everyone that they’re “on the spectrum”? Maybe they are, but they haven’t been formally diagnosed.
redshirt
@beltane:
This makes total sense. Folks living in the fertile crescent and the proto-urban areas of China and India were eating more carbs than folks in England or sub Saharan Africa.
Still, I bet the percentage of carbs to protein is waaaaay higher today than it ever was in the distant past, except for a few isolated examples. Just guessing, but I’d bet the remaining hunter-gatherers have no where near the same caloric mix of protein and carbs than anyone living in an agricultural society.
p.a.
@Mike in NC: I didn’t know that. Aren’t fried clams steamers? Thought they were common elsewhere. I usually give other areas of the country props on their seafood cooking vis New England. Maryland & NOLA aren’t scared of seasoning like NE seems to be. Never been to SF or the Pacific NW for their styles. New England seafood (excepting Portuguese Italian and Caribbean influence) is: fry and douse with crappy tartar sauce, or steam and dip in butter. BORING. (Granted, can’t complain about lobster w/ drawn butter.)
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Howard Johnson’s used to have the best fried clams.
beltane
@redshirt: Celiac disease supposedly appears in higher rates in certain populations, but as someone mentioned above, it is an auto-immune condition which is closely related to other auto-immune conditions. It may not be the particular allergens that are of interest, but the flawed auto-immune response. For all we know, children in the developed world are not spending enough time outside being exposed to sunlight, etc.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
As FlyingToaster alludes to, you’ll need to include deaths from asthma/allergies in your statistics and not just look at the number of diagnoses. I suspect that there are kids in less-developed countries who die because their allergies don’t get recognized or properly diagnoses, so if you have fewer diagnoses but a higher childhood death rate, one should wonder if at least some of those deaths are happening because of a lack of diagnosis.
p.a.
@debbie: FOOD FIGHT!
lamh36
@redshirt: Oooh…I never got into the comics, though I do follow the comic book storylines…that would be real interesting.
lamh36
Mahn…Dec/Jan is gonna be good while we wait for the return of How To Get Away With Murder
Dec 3rd…The Wiz live on NBC
Dec 17th…Luther
Christmas then New Years
Jan 1…Sherlock Christmas Special
Late Jan…X-Files 6 episode mini-series premieres!
Check out the new trailer for Luther here:
Luther Mini-series Trailer
Anne Laurie
@LauraPDX:
Huh. I thought it was only red wine had sulfites? (Hearsay, I don’t drink.)
I discovered that sulfites don’t agree with me, it’s not a true allergy but the digestive effects are unpleasant. I knew to avoid red wines, boxed eggs, most dried fruit and restaurant salad bars, but I didn’t understand why I got headaches from Wendy’s burgers until a friend who’d worked there told me their “never frozen” patties were shipped in big tubs of sulfite-preservative-laden grease.
ETA: Is it lettuce that upsets your system, or is it the (sulfite) preservatives that shippers spray on lettuce to keep it from wilting? (I guess the only way to be sure would be to try a homegrown salad, which probably isn’t worth the bother.)
redshirt
@lamh36: Yeah, in the comics Bucky becomes Captain America at some point, and later on so does Falcon.
As for the Black Panther, he looks AWESOME in the brief moments in the trailer. It looked like he was way faster than either Cap or Bucky and that intro shot of him is amazing.
This movie is way more Avengers than the last Avengers movie, and yet at least from the trailer still has a Winter Soldier vibe.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
Define “carbs.” Most hunter-gatherer groups subsist on plant foods (fruits and vegetables) with occasional protein. In Polynesia, taro is the common starch. In the Americas, it was the potato.
Usually, when people start talking about “carbs,” they really mean grains and don’t think about fruits and vegetables.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yeah, you’d definitely have to correlate that, which would be difficult to do I’d think.
Same with autism, I guess.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Is taro wild or planted?
Also, fruits and nuts have carbs but not to the extent of rice/grains.
FlyingToaster
@Mnemosyne (tablet): In South America it was the potato. North of the isthmus, it was corn.
J R in WV
@Satby:
That vodka that brew in Texas, I forget the name, they put GLUTEN FREE on the label big just like that! So stupid!!
Anne Laurie
@p.a.: If you read the Boston Globe article, that college kid was Patient Zero for restauranteurs taking food allergies seriously.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
All currently cultivated fruits, vegetables and grains were originally wild. Should we avoid apples and tomatoes because they’re planted?
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Yes of course. Sigh.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@FlyingToaster:
I’ve talked to Paleo evangelists before, so I know that when redshirt says “carbs,” he really means grains, so that’s why I avoided mentioning corn.
LauraPDX
@Anne Laurie: Some ER doctors thought it was sulfites as well but the white wine I drink (and have no reaction) clearly says “contain sulfites” on the bottle in nice bold letters. The noble rot aspect may be a tip in the right direction – will do some more reading. I do add red wine when I make pasta sauce, but not a lot and haven’t had any problems. It’s a mystery.
lamh36
@redshirt: Well, I’ve ranked the movies in this current MCU before and Winter Soldier is hands down my #1. So if Civil War in on track to be more like Winter Soldier than Avengers, then I am set.
The BP costume really does look better than I expected. I saw on set photos of the BP costuming and some stunt work, and it was underwhelming…but I’ve learn to never underestimate how movie magic can turn still in art…and that seems to def be the case with the BP stills I saw.
seaboogie
@Scapegoat: I agree with you in that the “gluten-free” fashionistas have made it much easier for the celiac crowd, and have reflected on this when at Whole Foods and seeing an entire end-cap display of gluten free products.
The other up-side of this is that people are reading labels on prepared foods more thoroughly, and thinking about what they put in their bodies, so we are perhaps more judicious about whatever crapola Con-Agra, ADM et al are manufacturing for our consumption.
Mike J
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Wow! Really? And next you’ll enlighten me about the potato as well?
Jeez.
FlyingToaster
@redshirt: There’s a bunch of missed conditions that have catastrophic outcomes. Most NGOs work on nutrition, vaccination, hygiene, and protection against parasites (and good for them), but general healthcare is a real problem throughout most of the developing world. Nutrition won’t solve a failing pancreas, asthma, or a dietary intolerance for the major protein source. Hygiene can’t overcome anaphylaxis.
I consider myself lucky. The medical professionals have been able (eventually) to figure out what was going on, what the cause is, and how (since it is hereditary) to ameliorate the worst of the effects. I wish I could make that happen for every family and every kid.
Mike in NC
@p.a.: Yes, whole fried clams can also be served as steamers, which you can get in places like NY and NJ. Spent many good times at the old Clam Broth House in Hoboken back in the day.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
FWIW, at least according to Wikipedia, taro is probably the oldest cultivated plant, so it’s clearly evil.
J R in WV
Clams. I loved clams all my life, and them the first time we visited Maine, Mrs J got fried fish and I got clams. 3 or 4 hours later I was so, so sick.
I haven’t tried them since, in case it was a sudden allergy, but really, I don’t want any, ever. So sick. I was almost hallucinating I was so sick – I nearly saw little clams between my toes, laughing at me for being sick. Weird. TMI? sorry.
But I used to love them… go figure?
FlyingToaster
@Mike J: Bizarre. All the yahoos I grew up with called me a Commie, and I don’t think that I ever use any of those words in a normal conversation.
And I even have an eyeball t-shirt…
seaboogie
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Growing up in the midwest, I understood that corn was a vegetable – because it was treated as such, – and not a grain, which it is. Can still make a meal out of corn on the cob, tho’ instead of going the boiled and served with butter and salt route, I prefer grilled with smear of hot sauce and a squeeze of lime juice.
redshirt
@lamh36: The costume looks fantastic, though we only saw it briefly. I hope they follow the plot of line of vibranium (Cap’s shield) – Age of Ultron (Ultron takes all the vibranium from a thief who stole it from Wakanda) – Civil War (BP on the scene to deal with the events of AoU) – to the Black Panther movie. Seems logical that they will and that’s why he’s in this movie, but I’ve also read….
SPOILER/Speculation
That Black Panther was included in the movie before Marvel got the rights to Spider Man back, and so with Spider Man also in this movie BP’s role is reduced. That’s right – Spider Man is going to be in this too. And Ant Man. And Vision. And maybe the Hulk.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
LOL. I’ve long read Corner Stone’s attacks against you and had no idea where he was coming from except him being an asshole troll, but now I kind of get it.
I asked you a question about current hunter-gatherers use of taro and now you’ve jumped to a couple levels of accusation. Why’s that?
Anne Laurie
@redshirt:
Epigenetics is a real thing. My wild-arse guess would be it’s a combination of things. First, as Flying Toaster points out, the critically allergic individuals no longer die young… and the people whose overstressed immune systems would’ve caused them to succumb to “stress test” diseases also don’t die of “unavoidable” illnesses like measles or strep throat.
Second, for most of civilized history, the vast majority of the population lived on just a very few highly localized ingredients… when the Bible talks about living “by bread alone” that’s because so many people did (and do) eat bread, period — local ground flour, local yeasts, a little local-sourced oil. Or pease porridge: high-carb vegetable, hot cold or fermented. Even a few generations ago, my western Irish ancestors had potatoes, local dairy products, herring, dulse, and for a rare treat salt bacon; even soda bread was a treat. Not a lot of immune challenges, and while city folks worried about adulterants, it would be chalk in the flour or milk watered with sewage, not chemicals sprayed on vegetables or bacteria transmitted by factory chickens thousands of miles away.
Third, there’s certainly been medical prescriptions about foods that should be eaten or avoided going back as far as we can read the records, at least — the word “allergy” wasn’t used, but I vaguely remember Greeks knew that some families shouldn’t eat fava beans, and classical Romans were supposedly poisoned when their enemies fed them ‘forbidden’ foods. I suspect that in a world where the common problem was just getting enough calories to sustain life, individual issues that would now be labelled “allergies” were just considered so minor as not to be worth writing about for public circulation. Some children were sickly, and mostly they died young. Some people, pampered children of wealthy parents, survived but never “prospered”. King Tut’s mummy, or the court records of the Habsburg dynasty, could probably be mined for food allergies, if some desperate PhD candidate needed a topic…
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Absolutely can still get them at the venerable Oyster Bar, downstairs in Grand Central Terminal in NYC.
mtiffany
I’d love for a waiter or waitress to demand someone produce their EpiPen if they’re invoking a food allergy when ordering.
Seriously, if you really have a food allergy that is so serious it could kill you, why would you go out to eat without an EpiPen? Why take the chance?
Show us your EpiPen when you’re ordering gluten free? Great. Coming right up. Otherwise, kindly STFU your trend-chasing asshole.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
Actually, you asked “is taro wild or planted?” with no indication of why you were asking the question. I’m really not sure how I was supposed to figure out what you really meant was “do modern hunter-gatherers find taro in the wild?” I mean, assuming that’s what you meant and you’re not going to tell me I got it wrong again.
This Scientific American article does a really good job explaining why it’s silly to talk about what “a” hunter-gatherer’s diet since it varies so wildly by what’s available in specific areas. Groups living in tropical areas with a lot of edible plants eat more plant matter; groups living in areas with fewer available plants eat more meat simply because they don’t have plant foods available to them. The Inuit diet is almost entirely meat because they live in the Arctic where there aren’t many plants, not because they have a better diet.
Anne Laurie
@LauraPDX: Fair enough. Reason I asked, I have a friend who discovered sulfites triggered her migraines, so she’d given up red wine and hotel salad bars, but was trying to figure out her other ‘triggers’. I pointed out dried fruits & carton eggs — she’d been in the habit of taking healthful trail mix for snacks during business trips, and now she knows to check the labels (good news, these days labels have to say CONTAINS SULFITES) and avoid that protein-packed power breakfast omlette at the hotel!
redshirt
@Anne Laurie:
True, due to modern medicine. But 100 years and for all of history before that, they probably died, and thus did not as reliably pass on those genes as people not afflicted with this allergy. And thus, over time, it phased out, till modern medicine brought it back.
Absolutely true. The commerce in food could not be great before refrigeration or ice transfers. Dried foods, sure. Spices, yeah, but produce? Meat? Dairy? Nope, not unless dried and preserved. So you probably ate whatever grew or was killed or fished within a 50 mile or so circle with maybe an occasional outside ingredient, unless you were caveman rich and then maybe you had pepper and salt.
Absolutely. Lack of records and huge numbers of children dying before age 5 could rule out any study based on the difference in child mortality from today compared to back in olden times. The conditions are not similar.
seaboogie
@Anne Laurie:
Here is a link to the Nenet people of Siberia who rely on reindeer for everything that sustains them:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/photo-stories/3198-the-nenets-of-siberia
Their herds (and their way of life) are being threatened by climate change, and resource extraction.
NotMax
So, got home from the grocery shopping trip to discover that the spray bottle of cleaner with bleach which had bought had split slightly along a seam and soaked a couple of shopping bags thoroughly.
Everything now smells like bleach.
TheMightyTrowel
@FlyingToaster: Sorry. archaeologist insert. Corn was not consumed by hunter gatherers in the Americas. Maize as a grain was always a cultivar. Wild maize is tiny and mostly inedible. We think it was domesticated for its sap (to make alcohol) and the tasty kernals were a happy accident.
Otherwise carry on – most of what people are saying about domestication in this thread is spot on. We actually have very poor understanding of pre-modern Hunter-gatherer diets because (a) the idea of Man The Hunter overshadowed gathering which was presumed to be lady business and not very interesting for a long time, (b) modern H-G groups are still impacted by the agricultural world and we cannot read their behaviour as directly analogous for ancient behaviours in a totally pre-agricultural world, (c) this shit happened AGES ago and a lot of the data is hard to understand.
That said, yeah, we think that plant products played a HUGE role in pre-agricultural diets in most parts of the world. grains of course would have been smaller in quantity and seasonal, but roots, nuts, legumes etc. weren’t just early domesticates because they look good in a salad bowl. The big increase with domestication was sugar consumption – we see almost no evidence of dental caries, for example, until after domestication. That sugar would have come from fruit, honey, grains, and potentially also milk/dairy.
Anyone ever talks to you with great sincerity about the Palaeo diet, laugh in their face then steal their wallet, they’re a sucker. High fat/protein may work for some people (and I know it does for some people here – that’s GREAT! I’m glad they figured out their own bodies), but there’s nothing natural, early human or better about that sort of diet for the whole human population.
Also, too, trivia: among the earliest (and only) European domesticates (as opposed to Near eastern, south asian, east asian): opium poppies. yup.
seaboogie
Quick note – I just posted a briefer reply to Anne Laurie. I thought that the first one disappeared, but it is in moderation (too many links, I assume), and if it does show up, I don’t think that I got all the link-fu set up just right, so please disregard, and read the briefer one-link post if you are interested.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet): You’re stating I’m a Paleo diet fanatic who thinks cultivated agriculture is evil.
It seems a tad extreme.
sempronia
Some NYT commenter said that his local anti-vaxxers were the hippie type who’d ask if their kids’ whooping cough was due to too much gluten in the diet. heh heh…
redshirt
@efgoldman: Sleep well then eat well then sleep well again.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@TheMightyTrowel:
Honestly, the whole Paleo/Primal thing drives me up the frickin’ wall because one of my coworkers is obsessed with it. Avoiding grains works really well for her because she’s severely allergic to grasses (including oatmeal), so cutting them out of her diet really helped with her asthma and other respiratory issues. But frankly she’s more than a little nuts about it.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
I honestly have no idea what the distinction is that you’re trying to draw between “wild” and “cultivated.”
DemJayhawks
@mtiffany: You wanna look up my dad’s colon to check the lining if he orders something gluten-free?
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Ah. So you’re taking out your frustration about your co-worker on me as an internet surrogate.
FlyingToaster
@TheMightyTrowel:
Thank you. I did not know that. I knew that most of the plains natives (where I grew up) lived on buffalo and whatever fruit they found &/or dried; the Osage and Kaw nations were buffalo hunters plus sometimes corn/beans/squash growers.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
There is of course an enormous difference, one you fail to see, I guess?
Wild versions of our current crops were measly things, barely producing edible parts. It was only through the wonders of agriculture that these initial starting sources were turned into the crops that fed the world – rice, wheat, beer.
And produced them in mass quantities, enough to create urban civilization and thus our modern world.
Agriculture’s a pretty big deal.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@TheMightyTrowel:
Also, to change the dietary topic in a slightly different direction, we watched an episode of “Secrets of the Dead” on PBS last night where they found the bones of a young girl in a trash heap they were excavating at the Jamestown (VA) settlement and then took FOREVER to tell us that the skeleton and the marks on the bones were evidence of cannibalism. It was interesting to see them go through all of the steps to prove it but, geez, people, get to the headline already!
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@redshirt:
Yes, and? Most modern hunter/gatherer groups also do at least small amounts of agriculture — again, see the Scientific American article I linked to above.
opiejeanne
@mtiffany: My daughter’s allergy to gluten isn’t life threatening and would not respond to an epipen, but it does make her life a living hell.
opiejeanne
@efgoldman: Aha. Ok. That makes sense.
I don’t think they cut up geoducks in restaurants in the PNW because the size of the things is sort of the point; I don’t care for clams so I don’t know how they are served, but I don’t think they are fried.
NorthLeft12
I have a BIL who has been peddling this for years regarding onions. My wife [it’s her brother BTW] will make separate stuffings, and other dishes without onions just for him. His wife finally called him out on it, challenging him to go to a clinic and get tested for allergies. Naturally, he refused and she told him not to call it an allergy, but to say that he preferred not to eat onions. She has been repeating this story over the last few months to all family and friends.
I have a lot more respect for her now.
Of course my wife will continue to make separate dishes for him [onion free], but won’t do it under the threat of resulting in some kind of medical emergency if she somehow taints his dish with onions.
evodevo
@redshirt: Definitely. Half your children dying before age 5 from – name disease here – would pretty much obscure any causes of death from allergies. People nowadays have NO idea what life was like before antibiotics and vaccines. Unfortunately, they may be finding this out in the not-too-distant future.
cmorenc
I am completely unable to tolerate onions, except when they’ve been thoroughly cooked and homogenized into a dish where other flavors are predominant. I am simply a thousand times more sensitive to the chemical irritant in them than are most people – they make food taste as if it’s been doused with ammonia laced with an irritant as strong as the heat in habanero peppers, only of course a different kind of strong taste (bitter? sour?). The taste of raw or undercooked onion will make me involuntarily wretch and barf. It’s much more than simply a preference for “no onion” – it’s a strong, intensely unpleasant physical intolerance to me.
GoBlue72
@ruemara: So basically, white people.
glaukopis
Actual study
Conclusions: Coeliac disease is increasing in frequency, with significant geographical differences. Although few cases have been described to date in the Orient and Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a significant prevalence of HLA DQ2 and wheat consumption is of the same order as that in Western Europe. CD may therefore become more common in the future in these countries.
Steeplejack
@lamh36:
When is the Person of Interest wrap-up?!