Tag: celiac

xiaq:

So my grandmother and I went into town today to hit up the Walmart for corn meal. She warned me that a lot of brands mix a little wheat flour in, so we’d have to check the ingredients. Since Deacon doesn’t have any experience with corn meal, I figured I’d give him a little test and have him check the bags before we looked at the ingredients. He alerted to every bag on the shelf.

My grandmother thought this was the Best. Thing. Ever. She was so delighted to have him alert and then she’d look at the bag and say “yes! he’s right! check the next one!” (video is him checking the second to last one on the shelf). Because of this we gathered quite a crowd of spectators, one of which was a store employee, who ran a few aisles over and brought back a bag of gluten-free cornbread muffin mix for him to check. He said it was safe, at which point everyone watching collectively lost their shit. You would have thought we’d just won the Stanley cup. Strangers were hugging. It was unreal.

So afterward I held an impromptu Q&A session since none of them had ever seen a service dog before, and then a police officer who was watching told me all about the Malinois their force had, and even got choked up talking about the dog’s passing last year.

Since getting home, my grandmother has proudly told this story to every single person that called the house this afternoon (she’s a very popular lady), whether it be family members, quilting friends, or the preacher, one of which responded, delighted, that her daughter had already heard the story from her husband who was doing the grocery shopping that morning.

Small town life, ya’ll.

strange-grace:

flyingblueyoshi:

strange-grace:

hi guys so guess what when you frame food allergies/special diets as a Luxury For Rich People (and/or any food-sans-allergens as a gentrification-esque Assault By Rich People On Normal People Food) you’ve progressive’d so hard you’ve looped back around to “back in my day we just suffered and it built character.”

it’s true that a lot of annoying trends have co-opted “gluten-free” in particular and used it as a marketing buzzword aimed at people who actually have no fucking idea what gluten is and just see “______-free” and assume it’s better for you. (i’ve spoken to several people who just thought “gluten” was another word for “carbs” and insisted that potatoes weren’t gluten-free.)

but the problem with that is that it equates some people’s lives with luxuries. and it feels like the Popular Discourse is going more towards ceding the language of dietary needs to the people who’ve stolen and warped it to sell six-dollar hamburger buns rather than collectively saying “nope, this is too important to let you fuck it up, and there’s no actual reason this shit needs to cost this much.”

idk man.

Also it forces people to disclose medical information to not have you put their life at risk and even then people still do it

Someone shouldn’t have to disclose that they have diabetes when ordering a coffee or soda out so that you actually give them diet or sugar free. Someone shouldn’t have to say they have a gluten allergy or celiacs disease to get the gluten free option

The environment becomes “snobby/entitled until proved disabled”, and that just becomes further a situation where we have to choose between having our privacy respected or our needs accommodated

Most abled people would flip their shit if they had to make that gamble or choice themselves. (Not that they can’t have their privacy invaded, but it doesn’t become the price they pay for having the right accommodations)

Also it shows where people forget disabled people exist yet again or completely don’t care enough to include us. It’s the snuggie, fidget spinner infomercial issue all over again. People get a good laugh at “rich” or “lazy” people not considering that the products are even made to accommodate certain needs. How many abled people would know that the snuggie was designed for wheelchair users to make wearing a coat easier? Zero.

And do you think they would help with the price gouging of these products? No. Because it’s seen as “frivolous”

Fuck poor disabled people essentially. It’s the same “poor people can’t drink Starbucks/eat out/have nice wine they should only exist on rice and beans and maybe one vegetable a week” argument just directed specifically at disabled poor people.

It just all over shows how little disabled people matter in sj spaces imo

The environment becomes “snobby/entitled until proved disabled”

Papa John’s has made a gluten-free pizza that gluten-intolerant diners can’t eat

meanwhileonwednesday:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

jbk405:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

geekwithsandwich:

dysfunctionalqueer:

celiacandthebeast:

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

Because they want to make money off of abled hipsters and don’t care if they hurt disabled people in the process.
Or, more concisely, capitalism.

For those who don’t want to click through- it’s not some kind of problematic ingredient, it’s the fact that Papa John’s doesn’t want to make any changes to the way their kitchens are set up and go through the difficultly of ensuring the gluten-free pizza doesn’t get contaminated by the kitchen equipment.  So they can’t guarantee that your pizza won’t be contaminated, in fact it probably will be contaminated unless that specific location decides to set aside gluten-free kitchen space, which i don’t know if they are even allowed to do on their own.  probably not.

anyway, point still stands- they did the reasonably cheap part of the process and ignored the equally important, but way way more expensive part of the process, and now they will almost certainly reap the financial benefits from all the people who go ahead and order this pizza anyway.  some of whom will probably actually be celiacs and will get very very sick.  fuck you, papa johns.

Dominos Pizza is guilty of this exact same fucking thing. Here’s a GF pizza! But there is no mandate to make certain it remains uncontaminated. Our local place had a worker that would make certain to make EVERYTHING clean so the pizza wouldn’t get contaminated. His manager screamed at him to stop wasting time and he’d be fired if he kept doing it. The worker then delivered the pizza himself just to let me know it wouldn’t be safe to order it again.

Ugggggghhhhhhhhhhh

Sadly not even surprised that they apparently don’t care about ACTUALLY making the pizzas safe for people who need stuff to be gluten free to eat…

Just this past Friday I was eating dinner and saw a “gluten free” option with a note next to it specifying that the restaurant was not a gluten free environment.

I have trouble understanding what is even the point.

I think they genuinely don’t realise or care that food being gluten free isn’t just “Trendy” it’s a medical necessity for some people for the sake of their health

I had a patient the other day, in fucking anaphylaxis, because there was some wheat in his soup. His fucking soup, that he was guaranteed was gluten free, had gluten in it somewhere, and this poor dude nearly died. So think about that next time you roll your eyes at someone being ‘picky’ or ‘trendy’ 

What’s even worse with Domino’s is that here their cross-contamination procedures are accredited by Coeliac UK. I’ve had their pizzas multiple times now without getting sick, and by now I’m really sensitive to trace amounts. Have to say I was pretty nervous about trying it at all with all the ways that could go wrong, but now I don’t hesitate to order from our local Domino’s.

So, it’s really not that they couldn’t do better if they wanted to in the US. Any of them.

Papa John’s has made a gluten-free pizza that gluten-intolerant diners can’t eat

Besides getting the HMS diagnosis (fitting hEDS criteria) when I was 14 and then not having it get treated as relevant to even other joint problems? One reblog reminded me of more fun when I was younger.

Unlike that writer, I really did develop a restrictive ED. Especially on top of the unrecognized celiac, that was not great for the general state of my health for a while. To put it rather mildly. (And yeah, I think some damage done then has been continuing to catch up with me, which is a slightly different story.)

The ED did get diagnosed. But, besides basically getting some kind of recovery going eventually in spite of the treatment? The classic health problems from starvation got put off on depression and anxiety. Not even kidding. They knew I was dealing with an ED, and obvious complications from that were still all in my head. Because silly teen girl.

It just didn’t get treated like a physically dangerous problem at all. Presumably because my BMI never dipped under 20 or so, but who the hell knows. ETA: That also still looks pretty scary with my frame, which was what got my family flipping out.

(Basically the same thing also happened later, after I finally got the celiac dx at around 30. With the guaranteed malnutrition complications to go along with that. I’ve had literally zero followup under the NHS, and consistently got predictable complications brushed off. Some of them pretty alarming and, yes, dangerous as hell.)

But yeah, that’s just one of the reasons I do not feel safe even mentioning the ED in medical settings. Not even to try to get them to back the fuck off with triggering it. I have been shown plenty of reason not to trust them around any perceived mental health problems. And I know good and well that I’m far from the only person with experiences like that.

This stuff does get legitimately aggravating when you do need to avoid any of the common allergens they’re supposed to label for, though. Especially given how common this labeling approach is.

Examples like that one are ludicrous enough that I have to get a dark laugh. One of my other favorites? Items like chocolate which the company won’t guarantee aren’t full of celery and mustard cross-contamination either. Hard to imagine how that could even be relevant, right?

But, it’s also an insultingly good indication that the brand in question isn’t even pretending to try. (No surprise with that particular label, but hey.) It’s enough cheaper and easier that–as a blanket policy–they are not willing to guarantee that anything they are selling is not contaminated all to hell with pretty much any substance they are actually required to list. To the point that they’re afraid of liability over the quality of their supply chain.

They almost may as well not have to warn for any allergens, if they’re unwilling to guarantee the bay leaves they’re selling don’t contain traces of completely ridiculous other foods.

(Also, what other inappropriate substances might be in there in trace amounts, which they don’t have to warn for? They probably don’t even know or care, if that’s the kind of quality oversight involved.)

Would I expect dry bay leaves to reasonably come into contact with egg in processing? Not really, unless the same factory is packaging powdered eggs or something. Soy or wheat? So many other seasonings do contain those ingredients, and there could possibly be a shared facility risk. And dust gets everywhere. Hopefully not the same production line, but they’re not willing to guarantee that much.

As someone with celiac and not anaphylactic food allergen responses, I might go ahead and take the risk with those bay leaves. Worst case, give them a good rinse before putting them in my food to try and get rid of any possible traces of wheat flour dust.

This is a simpler case than many others, dealing with a single ingredient product consisting of readily identifiable whole leaves. And again, I don’t have any known risk of more immediately fatal reactions, “just” autoimmune misery.

When at least half the products you look at in the store carry shotgun cross-contamination warnings like that? It’s a problem.

Today, I fucked up… by sending a 3 year old to the hospital…

ceooftheworld:

today-ifuckedup:

So this actually happened today. For some background, I am the kitchen manager at a small restaurant in a small country town. We have been having some complaints over a few menu items that were recently changed so I have been slowly rolling things back.

One of those menu items is our mac and cheese. Not too long ago, our owner decided she wanted to make our mac and cheese gluten free to fulfill the requests of a few customers. Since the change, it has been our #1 complaint and sales have been cut in half. So, I decided to order regular pasta for 99% of orders and keep the gluten free for requests. So far, so good. We have had a lot of compliments and a lot more empty plates coming back. I let all of the servers know but hadn’t told the owner yet because she was so adamant about keeping the gluten free pasta, even though just about everyone hated it. I figured I could just go to her with the increased sales later since she isn’t having any sort of dissenting opinion now. Ya know, ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

Well, today, on my day off, we had a 3 year old girl order the kids portion of mac and cheese. She also has Celiacs. This girl had apparently ordered the mac and cheese several times in the past couple of weeks with no problems, so her mom did not notify anyone of the allergy this time. About 2 hours ago, I got a call from my boss telling me that my decision put the 3 year old girl in the hospital and the mom had called to let us know she would be suing us since it does still say “gluten free” on our menu. I have now been suspended for 2 days until the owners can figure everything out. If the mom sues us, not only am I out of a job, it will sink the restaurant and everyone will lose their jobs. Not to mention it will financially ruin our owners and crush their dreams. So I guess we’ll see.

TL;DR: A 3 year old girl with Celiacs was rushed to the hospital after I ordered regular pasta for our restaurant without telling the owner. Now the mom is threatening to sue us, and not only is my job in jeopardy, but the restaurant itself.

By: throwawaykitchenman

Check out more TIFU: Internet`s best fuck ups are here.

what the fuck did you expect when you specifically mentioned on the menu that it fit dietary requests and then served something harmful???