CSotD: Sensitive topics
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So let's take a simple Bizarro gag too seriously, shall we?
It seems that, when it comes to food allergies, there are three categories of people:
Group One: Those who have genuine, serious food allergies which they must take seriously.
Group Two: Faddists and hypochondriacs who believe they have food allergies but don't.
Group Three: Fakers who use the term to avoid having to eat things they'd prefer not to.
The lines between them can be a little squishy, since there are (Groups One and Two) people who have sensitivities to certain foods but aren't actually allergic to them and there are (Groups Two and Three) people who only sort-of believe they have allergies but, consciously or not, like the attention the claim brings.
And it's important to acknowledge that there have been deaths in Group One, as well as people whose lives have been made miserable by genuine allergies. We don't pick on those folks.
But that's why it's important to figure out who's where among the three groups, which is what a new report from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says:
Although there is widespread perception among the public and medical professionals that food allergy prevalence is on the rise, no study in the U.S. has been conducted with sufficient sample size and in various populations to determine the true prevalence of food allergies, and most studies likely overestimate the proportion of the population with this condition … In addition, the public and health care providers frequently misinterpret a food allergy and its symptoms, cannot differentiate a food allergy from other immune and gastrointestinal diseases — such as lactose intolerance and gluten sensitivity — and don’t know which management and prevention approaches are effective and best to use.
The group wants to put an end to the patchwork of conflicting and inadequate information, which seems not only reasonable but one of those "Why isn't this already happening?" sorts of things.
And I'm cynical enough to suspect that the reason this isn't already happening has a lot to to with turf wars and institutional arrogance, rather than simply with bureaucracies and lack of coordination. (I'm also cynical enough to suspect that whoever gets appointed our next Surgeon General will not be up to speed on this sort of thing.)
The problem of outright fakers was addressed a little over a year ago in an article from the Boston Globe, in which the impact of fake allergy claims on restaurant procedures was detailed:
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.”
That, of course, is how it happens in real restaurants with real cooks.
How things are handled down ta' the local corporate chain where "cooking" is basically a matter of "assembly" is probably different, which is why that report also calls for better training in public facilities like restaurants and airlines.
Meanwhile, Dan Piraro's gag reminds me of a kid at Camp Lord O' The Flies back in the mid-60s who announced that his mother said he was allergic to carbohydrates.
The counselors assured him that it was impossible to be allergic to all carbohydrates and that, in the absence of a medical note in his files, he was going to consume a little C6H12O6 during the summer, which he did, and, whatever intolerance or sensitivity or allergy his mother had told him he had, it didn't surface over the eight weeks he was cut off from her.
The conclusion was that he was probably allergic to his mother.
(There were several other indicators over the course of the summer.)
Meanwhile, back in the Kremlin
A couple of editorial cartoons that made me chuckle, sigh, or both:
Michael de Adder on the parallel revelations of Russian cheating in the Olympics and perhaps also in our elections.
"Perhaps" being short for "perhaps what many people said was happening in the course of the campaign was actually happening."
The possibility of either accusation being true would be equally surprising.
And I have no commentary on Bill Day's cartoon except that it made me giggle.
Which, considering I started out by taking Dan Piraro too seriously, evens things up.
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