Gluten Free???

Kill is a little extreme but I'm sure they don't say it on purpose. Most people have no clue about nutrition and in the last decade the proliferation of people with every intolerance and allergy known to humans manifesting in the tsunami of the vocal demands of consumers towards every type of retailers who sell food can be confusing and is confusing.
A lack of education however basic, is not an excuse period, not when sometimes life can be over in a handful of minutes. (I"ve worked in catering (in the kitchen, including stand in chef) and my brother was a chef until he had the sense to retrain just before Covid.)

When you're looking to eat at a place, it does not inspire confidence when the person serving you can't tell the difference between gluten and dairy, or if asked for dairy free anything inform you they have lactose free milk. The latter I'm more understanding with because education is a limiting factor, though personally I do think catering staff should know the difference between an intolerance and an allergy, and absolutely know the difference between gluten and dairy/milk products. I can 'sort of understand' (actually i don't but I'm betting kind) not being able to tell a milk sugar from a milk protein (even if that was the cause of my list anaphylactic event when hospital catering staff screwed up and almost killed me, anaphylaxis from dairy protein is not less severe from anaphylaxis from nuts or peanuts, it still kills without immediate treatment in my case). What I don't understand is how anyone can think gluten from wheat, barley, or other sources, has anything to do with milk or anything made from it, from any (mammalian) source.

Put it this way. If anyone asked for something that was nut free, would you accept anyone on your staff saying, "no but we've got celery/dairy/gluten free"?... they just don't compare

Perhaps I'm less tolerant of the uneducated than others because my life is literally in their hands and almost every incident I've had has been either in hospital or occasionally when out eating (though that's normally where a brand has changed contents for a new "improved" version and I'd previously been OK with the old version, and staff knew me etc). The only exception has been medication and 1 incident where I was caught out when wanting some fresh coriander and there was none, so my husband picked up a tube of fresh coriander innocently believing there would be no dairy in it. We know know better.


For reference, my last anaphylactic episode, October last year, I was in hospital following major surgery. I'd been in for over 2 weeks and we had a system with catering where i literally wrote down what i wanted. Vegetable salad wasn't enough for them, (I've no idea why), it had to list all the ingredients I wanted in it that day. I knew they had vanilla soy ice cream and I knew they had 2 flavours of dairy free sorbet (not all sorbet is dairy free), mango and lemon. So when I was served a cream coloured frozen (ish) desert marked sorbet whilst I was suspicious that it looked marginally different to before, I'm used to accepting that brands change. Every single entry to the kitchen for me had it very clearly marked with a highlighter pen that I'm anaphylactic... because food takes so long to get to your room and things start to melt, I had taken to eating the ice cream or sorbet first, once I had finished nebulising with salbutamol and atrovent, both asthma medications.
It turned out that this time around the person serving me thought lactose free ice cream was dairy free despite it clearly being marked inn bold that it contained milk (bold ingredients in Australia are allergens). Now if he (it was a he) had been honest and marked the lactose free ice cream up correctly or even vaguely accurately instead of writing sorbet on it (I had requested sorbet by the way), i wouldn't have tried it period. The soy ice cream is white, not cream, but the lemon sorbet and the mango sorbet were very similar colours and curiously a similar texture, but it was that that made my suspicious. As it was marked sorbet, I took ¼ tsp to test because it didn't look 100% identical to the 2 sorbets I'd obviously had. And yes I had been very careful with them as well. I wasn't happy that the hospital didn't even have vegan as an option on their menu and when I've been there previously for day surgery, staff have to accept that they have to discharge me without me eating or drinking anything other than water. My reaction is immediate and life threatening. It took 6 separate medications to control that episode, including both if my epi-pens and because medication also frequently contains dairy (in the form of lactose monohydrate, the source of which doesn't have to be identified (it can be made from a non-dairy source or cleaned properly to remove trace casein, in which case I'm fine)) so it is harder to treat me that someone who is in anaphylaxis for other allergies.
 
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