I manage a dinner theater, so I not only manage the flow of the evening but I often deal with dinner complications. I have purposefully never worked as a server in a restaurant, because I can confess that I'm an extremely clumsy person who should never be responsible for carrying an entire tray of food.
Now that I've been working in the theater for almost a year and half, I have noticed a strange phenomenon that I never would have noticed before. An exorbitant number of people are claiming "food allergies." I confess that I don't know a lot about food allergies. I'm a very lucky person that I don't have to deal with that. My boyfriend has a tree nut allergy, which is a very common allergy and it's not too difficult to avoid. I'm conscious of nuts in desserts as I carefully choose each season's dessert options. I am sure that I always have at least one, if not two, of the three desserts without nuts.
More often lately, I have heard the gluten allergy. If I may be so bold, it feels to me as though it's almost a fad type of allergy...if there is such a thing. I'm sure there are those that are legitimately allergic to gluten, but I'm also sure it could not be as many as claim to be. We seat about 95 guests in our theater every Friday and Saturday night. I would estimate that I have at least one person in every crowd, on average, claim to be gluten free. That's about 1 in every 100 people. That's an ENORMOUS number of people. Was it not only 10 years no one even knew what gluten was?
There was one woman in particular who really got me thinking about it more. When I was speaking with her on the phone in regards to her meal, she listed a countless number of foods that she was allergic to. Finally, I offered her only a grilled chicken breast and flat grilled vegetables. No olive oil or spices. It seemed to satisfy. As a manager, you must be careful with people with food allergies, because everyone in the world is attorney happy and the last thing you want is a law suit on your hands because someone went into anaphylactic shock.
When she arrived at the theater that weekend, all of the pieces of the puzzle fell together.
She was anorexic.
That's what triggered my analyzation of the situation. If a person is struggling with an eating disorder, others won't let you just not eat. They will force you. However, if you claim that you cannot eat something without becoming so ill that it could kill you, then no one will make you eat anything. Ever. It's a free ticket to not eat anything without anyone questioning you. Any dieter will tell you that the hardest thing about dieting is when you're around others, and they are pressuring you to enjoy just one piece of cake. No one will bother you if you say, "I will get very sick." It's such an easy excuse.
So I followed through with a little research. The Huffington Post just recently published an article citing that food allergies are the next eating disorder.
The anxiety about food could have originated from an honest place, but quickly led the person down the wrong path. For instance, if your parents teach you that if you eat peanuts you could die. Even just a trace could kill you. That may or may not be true. Often times, people simply have an intolerance. Intolerance means that it causes irritants, but it will not kill you. But if you're convinced that you could die from a trace, your fear of food gets a running start on your psyche. What if you're allergic to other things? And if you're a high anxiety personality, it could be a recipe for disaster.
A 2009 study reported in the LA Times states, "Only about 25% of people who think they have a food allergy will actually have one."
In much the same way that vegetarianism was abused by those with eating disorders, so are allergies. There are those who used vegetarianism as a great moral excuse to not eat entire food groups. Then it was taken a step further and vegans came along. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be a vegetarian; I'm saying it's a terrific moral cover-up for an individual with emotional and mental anxiety in regards to food and diet. Just in the same way, that we all know that food allergies are legitimate and real.
The woman who claimed all of those allergies was secretly dying under the guise of a medical excuse. She was so frail, and even the grilled chicken and vegetables didn't work for her. She left a comment for us that the food had no flavor. You see, we couldn't win. Her family couldn't win. Even when acceptable food was placed in front of her, she then turned the table and said it was tasteless. Of course it was. She said she was allergic to everything with flavor. And so she gets to pass through another meal without being forced to eat.
I write this to make others aware of this new phenomenon. Our country is making millions of dollars pushing "low fat," "gluten free," "low calorie," blah, blah, blah. It's nothing but marketing for the most part, but there's a hidden illness lurking in our health obsessed, and yet obese, society.
The secret killer is not always an allergy. It could be anorexia.
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