Hello, DailyKOS. I come to you from my kitchen, where I’ve dragged myself having had to come home from work early. Why, you ask?
Hot dogs.
Let’s back up.
Food allergies have been on the rise for decades. There are multiple reasons for this, and probably the biggest one is “we can catch them now.” Celiac disease was discovered during one of the world wars, when children in a Dutch pediatric sanitarium—translation: the place they sent kids when they were deathly ill, nobody knew what was wrong with them, and they were going to die—were cut off from outside supplies during the winter and had to start eating tulip bulbs because there was no bread. When relief finally arrived, they expected to find many dead children—the kids were already known to be on death’s door. To the relief workers’ surprise, the kids were very hungry—but otherwise healthy, for the first time since being weaned. People have always had food allergies. It’s just that instead of “oh, clams turn my stomach” nowadays it’s “I’m allergic to shellfish.”
There are many other reasons, including not being exposed to enough foods in childhood, capitalism valuing higher and quicker yield over digestibility, unintended side effects of GMOs (for example: making a rice crop less susceptible to a disease by increasing a certain protein, only for the increase to start pissing off some people’s immune systems), pesticides, higher rates of neonatal survival (once upon a time, kids with weak immune systems died within the first year), and also “we don’t know.” Lots of reasons. Medication is one—I’m on some psych meds that greatly improve my quality of life but also mean I can’t have alcohol. (This is mostly no great loss for me, because I don’t drink, but it does mean I have to watch how much cooking wine I use.)
I was talking about hot dogs. We’ll get back to that.
In addition to food allergies and intolerances, we’ve got the preferences. Folks who went vegan or vegetarian for ethical reasons, autistic folks who would literally rather die than eat certain textures, that kind of thing. In some cases, your body literally stops recognizing things you no longer eat as food and it stops being a preference.
And finally, we get to the religious prohibitions. Jains, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists may be vegetarian. Muslims and Jews may not eat pork or shellfish, and Jews may not eat meat and dairy together. Muslims and Baptists may not consume alcohol. I say “may” because every religious individual is different and will observe their religious mandates differently, but the point is there are many that exist.
And this is where we come back to those hot dogs.
I’m Jewish, and my dietary observation is that I do not eat pork or shellfish. I actually didn’t eat shellfish even before I converted, but I grew up with pork being one of my main food groups. Everyone around me was shocked when I switched to turkey and Swiss sandwiches and beef kielbasa. It was a struggle, but I did it—and now I can’t go back even if I wanted to. Just like the vegetarian who says cooking meat smells horrible and they can’t eat it, I often can’t abide the smell of pork, and I can’t eat it at all. Very Bad Things happen. My body has decided pork is not food, and that’s that.
So tonight at work they held a “yay, we have a ton of new people!” celebration, with chips and hot dogs. I did my due diligence—asked a supervisor, who assured me the package said they were beef. Asked the person who provided the hot dogs, who agreed.
Neither had paid attention to the fact there were two packages. One was 100% beef. The other was 100% pork.
Guess which one I got.
I knew one bite in that something was wrong. The flavor was bland, the texture squishy. I stopped eating and went to check the package myself.
One bite.
In twenty minutes I had a migraine. In an hour I sprinted the length of the warehouse to get to the bathroom and only just made it. When I was finally able to leave the stall I was sweating and dizzy. I clocked out and came home.
We talk a lot on this site about not getting distracted, about focusing on stuff that matters. But sometimes, the little stuff is important, too. I lost seven hours of pay tonight to a single sentence, and trusting my supervisor.
So as you look for ways to fight the rising tide of intolerance and hate, consider this: if your workplace is having a shindig of some kind, announce it beforehand and put up a sheet where people can indicate anonymously if they have a food or ingredient they can’t eat. Then see what you can do to accommodate their needs without making a big production of it. Mark Top Eight allergen-containing items accordingly (it’s hard to full-stop avoid wheat and corn but you can help someone select foods that are safe for them). Never assume “eh, if it was a problem they would have said already.” Welcome EVERYONE to the table—not just the folks who can eat a typical Midwestern diet.
It’s a small thing. But trust me—when done right, it’s a very big thing. It’s seeing me and saying I deserve food, and in America food is love. It’s health, it’s safety, it’s “we are not the same but various, and that is lovely."
My guts, and many others’, will thank you kindly.