Is it rude not to cater for allergies/special diets?

rlmadrid

It seems to me that its become the fashion to have allergies!

I didn't know one person with a allergy when I was a kid!!

Ps. I know some of you won't like this comment but its my opinion!

Yes!!! Thank you I'm glad someone finally came out and said it. Having (fake) wheat / gluten / peanut allergies is all the rage these days.

This is so, so true. Having actually HAD allergies for most of my life (and almost dying from a couple of them!), I just roll my eyes at people having "fake" health issues.

haha, I know someone who had a fake allergy for awhile too. I agree, when I was a kid I didn't know one person with an allergy in my class. Nowadays, every kid has some kind of allergy - just like every kid has ADD.

Bingo! extremely overblown.

The worst part of all of the "fake" allergies is that it hurts the credibility of those who actually have the allergies. Telling a server I am Celiac and being asked "Is it because you read Wheat Belly?" was infuriating.

bcattoes

I would not cater to a bunch of special dietary needs. I would serve food to anyone that wanted it. If they don't want to and can't eat it, then they can eat before or after the event.

I like to drink alcohol at events, but if I went to a wedding that didn't offer booze I wouldn't be offended. It's not as if the bride and groom are obligted to give me booze. I'd still toast with their nasty soda or sparkling apple juice or whatever non-alcoholic crap they offered. I'd still be happy for them.

RaquelCasul

The truth of the matter is if you force a meat eater to conform to your eating pallet than you are not catering to them. You are simply feeding them. It is literally no different from a meat eater asking the vegetarian to conform to their eating pallet.

Serving someone a meal which does not include every single item they regularly eat is absolutely not the same as serving someone a meal made with items which they have a moral or physical objection to eating.

alychil820

As a person with celiac's, I think it would be wonderful to have a gluten free option, but it's not something I expect. Which is why I'm usually eating garden salad and veggies at events.

At my wedding, it's going to be gluten free, and if people don't like it - that's tough. But at weddings that aren't mine, they get to serve what they want, and I can suck it up if I can't eat much.

ldrosophila

Personally, they would be my family and friends and I love them thats why they are at my wedding so yes I would cater to the special diets.

My little sisters has diagnosed celiac's and there is no way that wedding wouldnt have gluten free options.

alychil820

That being said, it IS rude, not to appropriately describe dishes to people. If someone asks if there are nuts/gluten/whatever in the dish, then the servers need to be educated enough to know. I ordered something once because I was told it was gluten free, and then got incredibly sick after because it wasn't.

Anthonydaman

NOPE,,,,,, if its your allergy or special diet, YOU take care of it.

This

t8tersalad

i am pretty amazed that their are people who wouldnt consider catering for someone who is celiac!

my sister in law is celiac, so she got a separate meal... it didnt cost us any extra! i didnt have any vegetarians so that wasnt a problem, but like someone else said if i liked someone enough to have them at my wedding i would want to feed them too!

^^^ This! I think I love you! lol

I have a severe gluten allergy and so does my mother and my sister. We are going to a wedding in October that I am pretty sure will not have things we can eat. When it's my wedding, I will certainly ask about allergies and I would want people with serious allergies to still enjoy a meal, but that's just me. Look at those with a peanut allergy, a little girl just died a few months ago at school from ONE little peanut. Would you want someone at your wedding, who came with gifts for you to possibly end up in the hospital or die over an allergy? As one person posted as well, it's rude to say "it's their problem"

MrsPong

Military Husband so I was lucky enough to even get a wedding.
Planned in 6 weeks (not me...blame military they told us when lol ) and no one got a say in anything. (No one died either..)
We did have a buffet so you can pick and choose what you liked....alot of problems solved.

lithezebra

I love it when someone prepares gluten free food for me, but I don't expect it at a large, already complicated event like a wedding. I bring my own snacks. So no, I don't think it's rude. It would be pointless for me to invite someone over for a small dinner without catering to their dietary needs.

What about wearing perfume? Is it rude to wear perfume, because some people are allergic to it?

RaquelCasul

It's pretty simple if you know combinatoric math.

Take the basics: gluten, lactose, nut.
Then add in the lifestyle: paleo, vegan, vegetarian, and maybe lactovopescatarian.

That's 7 combinations that should cover all the bases. To be sure, you might have lactose-intolerant vegan, or maybe gluten-intolerant vegetarian, so, to be safe, you can't just make 7 meals. A bit of wheat in that veggie burger and you're all done!

Now, and it's been a long time since I was in discrete math, but IIRC the number of unordered unique combinations of R choices from a list of N is = n!/r!(n-r)!

With a fairly conservative estimate of that a person can only be, say 3 at the same time, that's 7! / 3!(7-3)! combinations.

Now 7! is about 5000, but that's ordered, and I don't want to do all the math, but it does give us an upper bound to work with, so it should be no more than a few hundred separate dishes at worst.

I disagree with your calculations. Vegetarian is covered by the vegan option, and so is lactose-free. It's difficult to combine paleo and vegan, but fairly easy to combine paleo and gluten/nut-free. Since I have a friend who's vegetarian and gluten-free, I'd just go with two separate dishes; one vegan, one paleo, both nut and gluten-free. Easy.

Of course, the best solution was mentioned quite a while back when someone mentioned separate side dishes cooked in vegetable oil. Anyone who's ever eaten a portion of french fries or an apple has eaten a vegan dish.

RaquelCasul

There were over 200 people at my wedding...really...you think I could have catered to everyone...allergies or not? That's just ridiculous.

Please stop putting words in my mouth. Words have unnecessary calories.

twinketta

NOPE,,,,,, if its your allergy or special diet, YOU take care of it.

This

If someone was in a wheel chair and there was a ramp to get to the table would you have the same attitude?

If you invite someone to share a meal/buffet to celebrate your occasion then the least you can do is make them comfortable and welcome?

RaquelCasul

What about wearing perfume? Is it rude to wear perfume, because some people are allergic to it?

Depends. If it's your sister or best friend, who is also your bridesmaid, and who will collapse if they breathe in too much, then, yes, that would be a severe act of aggression. If it's a distant cousin's plus one, and you had no reasonable way of knowing, then no.

KenosFeoh

Planning a wedding now, and we're not catering for special diets. We ordered one meal. The cake will be lactose-free because the groom is intolerant. Anybody else is on their own to pick and choose what they can/cannot eat out of what is offered.

Honestly, planning a wedding is hard enough without taking everybody's limitations into consideration.

djc315

Personally, if I were planning an event, my own wedding or a party....I would make sure there was a variety. That is what I have done in the past and it really isn't hard.

Most of the weddings I've been to you get three options, fish (or some kind of meat-free option, but it was mostly always fish) chicken or beef. I would probably do four options, vegan, fish, chicken or beef. I was a vegetarian for many years and I know what it's like to go somewhere and only eat a dinner roll. And by the way, I never complained about it, but EVERY time the host felt really bad I had nothing to eat. Even if I INSISTED a salad and/or dinner roll was just fine with me. By doing a vegan option, it would appeal to people who are vegetarian and vegan. I would probably even do the vegan option to be gluten free, as well. It isn't hard.

Not everyone decides to not eat a certain type of meat because they just "don't like it" or feel bad about the killing of animals. There are MANY reasons why someone decides to stop eating meat.

Now if someone asks for low fat or low cal, that isn't my issue. You can monitor your own eating by portioning things out. Even if its lathered in butter, you can decide how much to eat of it.

Or, if it is a picnic and you have certain dietary needs, it is YOUR job to bring something you can eat. Don't go to a BBQ and then be surprised there isn't a vegetarian or vegan or gluten free option at something like that. For a formal event that it would be rude for your guests to bring their own food, think about everyone when you are planning your menu.

soldier4242

The truth of the matter is if you force a meat eater to conform to your eating pallet than you are not catering to them. You are simply feeding them. It is literally no different from a meat eater asking the vegetarian to conform to their eating pallet.

Serving someone a meal which does not include every single item they regularly eat is absolutely not the same as serving someone a meal made with items which they have a moral or physical objection to eating.

Physical objections are right out the window because I have already stated that I would accommodate a food allergy even I was unaware of it ahead of time.

I also stated that if I know ahead of time then I will accommodate the vegetarian no matter what their reasons for being one is.

So we are talking about a vegetarian that is informing me of a moral objection to eating meat after the fact. Now we aren't talking about rape here, we are talking about eating animals. So while on the former I would say it is obviously immoral I would need to be convinced on the latter. Humans would not be alive today if people in the past did not eat animals. It was an absolute necessity and presently our population is so large if everyone became a vegetarian the result would rampant food shortages and people would start to starve to death.

We can't subsist as a society on the quantity of vegetables that we produce. That isn't much of an issue as it is today because we eat both meat and vegetables. We are after all omnivores.

So my response is there is nothing immoral about eating a steak. Your objection is completely arbitrary and pointless. I do not accept it as justification for not eating the "completely edible" food I have provided and I find it to be weak justification to restrict my diet when I am your guest.

That said if I am the guest I will keep my grumblings to myself if I am forced to eat as a vegetarian because as stated in that scenario I would be the guest. I still don't see it as different but it is by no means unacceptable.

djc315

I just have a question about everyone saying it is the bride's day, not yours....It isn't really related to the topic of catering exactly, but, if NO ONE showed up that the bride invited, she would be okay with that? I was always shown and told that the wedding is really about the guests, the honeymoon is about the newly married couple.

RaquelCasul

Humans would not be alive today if people in the past did not eat animals. It was an absolute necessity and presently our population is so large if everyone became a vegetarian the result would rampant food shortages and people would start to starve to death.

"Because we've always done it" or "because we built our society on it" or "because it's tradition" are not, alone, good reasons to do absolutely anything. You need something else; circumstances change. Western society was built on pillage, slavery, and rape, and no one suggests continuing those traditions.

You are factually incorrect regarding your statement that mass vegetarianism would cause rampant food shortages and starvation. Firstly, it's unrealistic that the entire world would go vegetarian overnight. Secondly, what exactly do you think farm animals eat? That specific grain may not be of a quality sellable to humans, but the space needed to grow crops to feed humans only is a lot less than to feed creatures consumed by humans.

ChristineS_51

The vegetarian thing is really getting to some people isn't it.

To be honest, you could serve vegetarian food and have no meat. No need to provide special diets for meat eaters. :laugh: