Is it Food Allergy or a Food Preference?

Filed in archive Food Allergies , Living with Allergies on September 24, 2007

I thoroughly enjoyed reading India Knight's article on The Sunday Times, "That's no food allergy, just bad manners".


In the beginning, I thought she was one of those who didn't believe the gravity of food allergies. To the contrary, she knows how serious food allergies can be, but calls the bluff on some people who use food allergies as an alibi for their food preferences.

But I do loathe the way in which people - usually women on a diet - turn something commonplace and understandable, such as not eating bread because it makes them fat, into a look-at-me-I'm-special, cod medical issue. If such people simply said, "I try not to eat bread because it turns me into the Michelin man", everyone would be perfectly understanding. But that would be admitting to vanity, which won't do: far better to pretend we actually have a condition.

And don't you hate people who do that? It's people like these who makes the issue of food allergies trivial, and one of the reasons why some restaurants do not take the needs of true food allergics seriously.