I love a good rant as much as any other cranky geek. Especially – as in this instance – when I agree with it so thoroughly.
An example: like a lot of old farts, I have gradually developed a lactose intolerance over the last couple of decades. It’s measurable, verifiable. It never keeps me from enjoying the couple of pounds of mozzarella and provolone I consume every week. And it shouldn’t. There ain’t especially any lactose in cheese!
But, living in a community which leads the world in fear of chemtrails and Karma, I can especially appreciate Rayner’s rant on full-time food nazis.
We are living in the age of the food excluders. And it really, really pisses me off. Every week new, thrilling and exotic ingredients become available in Britain and every week someone announces they are intolerant to it or allergic to it; that it brings them out in hives, gives them cystitis, interferes with their energy levels or makes them grouchy. When the truth is they were, all of them, neurotic, needy pricks in the first place and what they had for dinner last night had nothing to do with it….
Where has this trend come from? My suspicion is that today’s food excluders were yesterday’s picky eaters, the tiresome little brats who, as children, spat out everything put their way with a shout of ‘I don’t like it!’ Now they have grown up but their palates haven’t. In this ego-centred age, they have been given license to come up with a bunch of excuses, wrapped in the language of pseudo science, excused by pompous and spurious claims to the moral, religious or ethical high ground, when really all they are actually saying is: ‘I still don’t like it!’…
Of course any lactose-intolerant, peanut-allergic, kosher-keeping, food-combining, coeliac vegetarians who want to debate this with me are most welcome to do so (if they’ve got the energy). One thing is certain though: we’re not going to be doing it over dinner.
I can only hope the author, through his work to bend the world to his needs, has someone close to him die.
no doubt SOME of the people who claim food intolerances are needy, prissy hypochondriacs – just like those who take to their beds whenever they get the sniffles – but food allergies are quite real, whether this grumpy guy wants to ‘tolerate’ them or not.
>>There ain’t especially any lactose in cheese!
Well, some has it, some doesn’t. Cottage cheese has about 3.5% (compared to 4.9% in whole milk); Limberger cheese has 3.6%, and for the trailer-dwellers, Velveeta has 9.6%.
Lactose intolerance has always (sort of) been around, although much less prevalent than today. I don’t understand wtf is up with allergies like peanuts, though. For 35 years, I don’t think I ever met (or had even heard of) someone with an allergy to peanuts. Then, almost overnight, they were everywhere. And I don’t remember seeing any whiny kids who refused peanuts. Spinach maybe, or turnips, or liver. That’s not what modern-day foodophobes are allergic to, though. Peanuts. And suffers of this dreaded allergy now not only cannot have a Peanut Buster Parfait at the local DQ, they can’t have ANYTHING, because the sign on the door says that even the non-peanut items may have been prepared in contaminated kitchenware, or airborn peanut dust may have infested the vanilla ice cream.
Having gone through several anaphylactic shocks after being sworn to by waiters that “there is nothing else in this meal” all I can say is that if you have never been in a situation that you cannot breathe then you do not know what it is like.
But then again, the author might have had a social security solvency in mind… ignoring food allergies would go the long way in reducing the number of eligible people. But hey, why stop there, you should be annoyed by the use of seat belts, lead free paint, water purification, etc…
This guy’s a complete idiot. Food allergies are real. Many people have to go straight to the hospital if they eat any shellfish. I’ve had lactose intolerance most of my life. I sure as hell don’t imagine that I have to run to the bathroom if I ingest too much lactose. He sounds like a neurotic, needy prick to me.
#4, you are imagining things. I have seen a clear and convincing number of people with peanut allergies (usually put upon them by their career moms guilt trips) eat peanut products without the so called allergic reaction until they found out there were peanuts in it (and conversely people have allergic reactions to peanuts where none existed) that I know for certain that ~most~ peanut allergies are pure bull shit. (I like telling people I suspect of fake peanut allergies that they just ate a peanut to check, yup, your mind can make you swell up like that). I usually notice adult peanut allergies are part of a larger drama/attention seeking disorder cluster of personality traits. Maybe your mom having that career wasn’t as harmless as you thought it was?
Um lactose intolerance… Hmm, everyone I know gets the shits when they drink lots of milk. I don’t think there is a confirmed latte drinker alive who doesn’t suffer from extreme skid marks (girls if that grosses you out stay away from the coffee house people they all have skid-marks, I know lots of you have that as a deal killer).
In my generation both of these are notoriously common in all the adults that identify “latch key kids,” while all my friends from traditional families with older brothers are very tough and stout indeed. All the only children are wussies, without exception.
We are seeing these type of allergies increase because there are increasing numbers of disasterous social experimentation with single motherhood and only children.
It is getting so bad with the mainstreaming of metrosexuality I have seen LESBIANS complain about how weak and insufferable the under 30 set has become.
Jesus f’ing christ, you guys don’t even learn how to play a real f’ing guitar anymore, and you think garage band remixes are somehow artistic and orginal…
Welcome to the lamest generation ever.
If I eat a traditional Reuben, my tongue gets odd bumps and I have difficulty swallowing. Something in the combo of sauerkraut and real swiss cheese.
I know certain nuts cause a similar problem, and it turns out they are all related. (Not peanuts, thankfully.)
I’ve heard rumors that food additives often enhance the allergies to peanuts, particularly the excessive fascination for preservatives in the US. (Some idiot’s recommendation now requires all wineries in the US, and any wine entering the US, to have sulfites; to me, all wine now has a metallic aftertaste.) And since peanut allergies seem only to be a US complaint…
Personally I’m pretty sick of Mustard.
>>All the only children are wussies,
>>without exception.
Exception #1: I am an only child. While I may or may not be a wussie (I know MikeN likes to imagine that I’m gay) there isn’t a food on God’s green earth that I can’t eat with gusto and pride. Milk, cheese, peanuts, turnips, you name it. If it’s well-prepared, I tuck in my napkin and chow down.
>>Personally I’m pretty sick of Mustard.
Ah, go back to your b-ball game, College Girl.
[Comment deleted – Violation of Posting Guidelines. – ed.]
#9,
If you don’t know if you are a wuss or not, I am going to guess latter. A true bad ass knows that they are a bad ass (see chuck norris, Bill O’reily, and Steven Colbert). If you had had siblings you wouldn’t need the reassurance of your mom to make a determination like that.
Then there is the whole “Hey look at me!!, Look what I can do!” aspect of your post, left over from being the center of your moms attention, but now removed since you are an adult.
Also, I notice a bit of pride in your post, which would also indicate to me that at one time you were a picky eater, and you feel as though you have overcome it. Those of us from large families never experience that because if you were one of 5 kids it was always a challenge to get enough to eat, even if our parents were financially stable. Never mind the obesity epidemic that is ravaging the single mom/kids/latch key kids generation. Those of us from the large families just don’t seem to suffer from that ever in our lives.
Just an observation, nothing personal intended.
Give me a break… soft cheese has LOTS of lactose; only hard cheese is lactose free. So unless you want to make your pizza entirely from parmesan, you’re gonna need lactaid to eat it.
#6. One heck of a bedside manner there, Dr. Greg. food allergies and intolerances are real. I felt enormously better once I gave up my morning bowl of cereal, which was not a LOT of milk, since I did not drain the bowl.
I would agree that we are all overmedicated and overdiagnosed, but that does not mean that some things are actually real.
as with global-warming deniers, you not liking these things does not mean they don’t exist.
#12 Tee hee, Greggie, methinks the token Middle Child doth protest too much!
And just fyi, I’ve always been a gusto-filled eater. And no, “being the center of [my] moms attention” did not leave me with a legacy of either obesity or anorexia.
I’m sorry to hear that you grew up in an environment where your parents did not provide you with subsistence amounts of food at the dinner table. Perhaps you should get some counseling to resolve those issues?
#14,
Milk gives everyone the shits. There is nothing special about you that it gives you the shits. I quit drinking milk because it gave me the shits as well. I suspect most people who are capable of associating what they put in their mouth to what comes out of their ass are “lactose intolerant” by your definition.
Same thing with peanut allergies. I am an absolutest on almost nothing, so while I don’t doubt that there are actual people with actual peanut allergies, I bet they are extremely rare. I went my whole childhood with everyone eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we NEVER ONCE had an issue as school. In my child’s school we get notices once a month about some bull shit peanut allergy incident, and a reminder not to send peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Please explain that? Snopes can’t. I’d say that is bonafide evidence that the overwhelming majority of peanut allergies are bull shit.
Plus my own direct observation of my ability to put people in anaphylactic shock by merely mentioning peanuts around people who claim peanut allergies.
Also, in my own experience, I was declared to have an allergy to bee stings as a child because one time I reacted funny to a bee sting. However in bee stings since then, I have learned two things… Bee stings don’t hurt nearly as much as I remember, and I never had an allergy, I just reacted funny that one time.
Lactose??? What about spicy food? Why do people like that burning bowel movements?
>>Sure MusTurd, and go stick that pacifier
>>back in your ass.
Har! Hardy har har! MusTurd, MusTard, who cares about the writers’ strike? Your comedic acumen far surpasses any of those over-paid hacks!
Got any good poop or fart jokes, o Bristly-Headed One?
Some intolerances are totally real, others, well, I also do the old ‘you just ate a peanut’ trick to the stupid jerks who think they are allergic (and most start to exhibit the same symptoms as if they’d actually eaten a peanut and were allergic to it!
I have mild coeliac disease (gluten intolerance) but so long as I keep every 3rd day gluten free I’m right as rain. My father though, can’t even eat a steak thats been grilled on the same BBQ where sausages have been cooked thanks to the binders in the sausages being wheat derived.
I personally think most of these allergies are just the result of stupid over-protective fools stopping their kids doing kid stuff, like playing in dirt, licking their pets, and forcing them to live in a totally sterile world!
I like how common gluten free foods are now, even though people with actual gluten allergies are extremely rare.
Mustard, I do have a sense of humor. Please don’t take it personal. I’ll bet if we were all sitting in the same room we would be rather civil with each other. BTW, I’m neither black nor a woman. I adopted this name for the dip shit who is going back on the air tomorrow.
I truly believe the rise in allergies in general is due to our American obsession with cleanliness and sterilizing everything. We use antibiotic soap and cleaners, we get the sniffles we run to the doctor and demand antibiotics. We have lived in sterile environments for so long now we are loosing the natural ability to tolerate the outside. Its been proven children that aren’t allowed to have a pet cat or dog are likely to grow up with pet dander allergies. We have brought this condition on our selves!
#21 – Imes is back on the air? really? like – yer not kidding?
FUCKING SWEET CHICKEN BATMAN!!!
>>I adopted this name for the dip shit who
>>is going back on the air tomorrow.
Once he’s back on the air, will you change your name? Like Lauren the Ghoti did?
I find Imus rather boring. If I want “shock”, I’ll listen to Howard Stern. Even that gets old after a while.
I’ll be Mister Ketchup! 🙂
Does it really matter are these people really intolerant or alergic to whatever?
What matters is it is THEM who should watch what they eat if its true, not the government or anyone else.
I dont give a fuck about your peanut allergy (for example), YOU can’t eat it – YOU don’t it. Don’t tell me and others that we shouldn’t eat it just because YOU CAN’T (like banning peanuts at schools etc)
To GregA: Should we find someone who will drive their car at you at full speed, and then just before you are crushed by it, he’ll/she’ll turn away at the last second; saying “just kidding.” Isn’t that is a swell idea? I would love to see your reaction to that one, maybe more shitz! But maybe you aren’t allergic to cars, and even immune to them too? Maybe you smoked cigarettes, and later in life will experience the equivalent a limited form of anaphylaxis 24 hours a day? Wouldn’t that be a crack up?
I don’t have a peanut allergy (to my knowledge), but as a 2-3 year-old Mom fed me lots of PBJs. She says I always threw up those sammages. My Doc told Mom to keep feeding them to me… until they eventually decided that wasn’t a good idea any longer. I still avoid peanut flesh, even though I’m not allergic to it.
However, I am allergic to a nut that I haven’t been able to identify. A reason I can’t identify it is because the two times I’ve had anaphylactic reactions I couldn’t find/read the ingredients on the products I had eaten (this was 20+ years ago). Now if this situation was made up in my mind, and I couldn’t tell that I was allergic to what I had eaten because I hadn’t had a reaction like that before, then how could it be made up in my mind? The second time I encountered the nut, I thought I was eating food with almonds, but apparently not (this was in a foreign country, and I couldn’t translate the menu). My guess is the nut is a Macadamia, but I’m not doing any experiments (even though I have an EpiPen).
Some people may be intolerant of foods that they believe cause them allergic reactions. But I would give them the benefit of the doubt because, if I’m wrong, the results could generate lawsuits and perhaps manslaughter charges.
Better safe and informed, than sorry.
I know somebody that’s been allergic to nuts (all, not just peanuts) from 30 years ago.
I also know somebody who is/has been allergic to mushrooms,peas and ham (among other things), and she still eats them. She just takes benadryl before she eats. And sometimes the allergies go away, and something else takes it’s place.
#27,
More people died in 2007 from bridges falling on them out of the blue than died from food allergies.
Have you ever heard the term hyperbole?
#19 – Zybch & #22 – Solderjockey
What you say fits my lifelong observations, too.
I can eat, or not eat, anytime of day or night, and it makes no diff whether it’s filet mignon from Morton’s or a 99¢ double cheeseburger from Mick the D’s – it’s all food. And I have a powerful immune system; yet the most finicky, persnickety eaters I know, who insist on eating at the same times each day, who won’t eat anything not a part of their habitual menu – these are the ones laid low by the slightest cold, who are always having to see the doctor, who are simply sickly and of ‘delicate’ constitutions.
And they all, every one, think that THEY are the “healthy” ones, because they only eat certain foods and shun others, because they eat “regularly”, at the times they’re “supposed to”, etc, etc. I am the one they laugh about, how I “don’t care what I put in my body” and such silliness. It never occurs to them that I rarely come down with colds or the flu, despite going out in 40º weather in t-shirt and sandals – that I don’t have anything in my medicine cabinet except for aspirin and Visine, that I not only don’t have a regular doctor, I don’t even remember the last time I saw one… If I get dirty, I get dirty. I don’t use disinfectant soaps or take antibiotics.
I think the connection is pretty clear, as you say, exposure to everyday germs and such invigorates the body’s defenses, and this silly faddish avoidance and disinfection mania leaves you vulnerable.