I’m intolerant to sulphites and msg. Neither will kill me in the small doses that are eaten in a meal but both will make me wicked sick. If I go to a restaurant and ask for no onion or onion related bits in my meal due to an intolerance I get completely ignored. My husband just adds ‘she is allergic’ and sometimes they listen.

Now I am Australian and I spent a good month in the states at the beginning of the year, and I had the best service and people actually listened to my issues and never brought me food I could not eat. Here it is a different story and I am forever sending food back or picking badness out of my meal that I am paying for the privilege to eat around the ‘bad stuff’.

Why do people treat intolerance as a nothing? It’s not nothing for me or my husband or my family if I am either projectile vomiting or hiding a dark corner dehydrated with a migraine.

-Crazy Onion Lady

QFT

I may be too cynical and overly snarky, but I tend to translate “I don’t want to be mean” as “I want to say something mean without you thinking I’m being mean.”

We don’t delve too much into it at school, unfortunately. For the most part, I think I was taught that pesticides wash off most produce without too much problem, and aren’t supposed to affect the nutritional quality of the food. I, personally, don’t worry about it too much, because I frankly don’t have too many options regarding where I buy my produce. Your concerns/circumstances may vary, and I do understand the concerns with pesticides, especially as it relates to sustainability and environmental pollution.

If you want to look into it, please do.

Here is a Health Canada fact sheet on food and pesticides.

And here is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s page on chemical residues in food.

What I’ve found out is that, when a pesticide is questioned for potential health hazards in the US, the EPA does a Special Review to determine its safety. You can find out which pesticides have been thus far reviewed, and which ones are currently being questioned here:

http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/special_review/

And here’s some information about how the EPA assesses the health risks of various pesticides:

http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/riskassess.htm

And here is the FDA Q&A on washing fruits and vegetables before eating.

And here are the results of the FDA’s Pesticide Monitoring Program for 2007.

Dietitians of Canada also has a FAQ on whether it’s better to buy organic. Hopefully this will be helpful for people looking for more info on whether pesticides are safe.

I enjoyed this post, and I have a follow up question: How would the possibility of lingering pesticides on produce and hormones and/or antibiotics in meat affect the (generally sound) “food is not poison” rule? While I don’t restrict my diet in any way wrt meat, fat, carbs, whatever, I still do worry about what might be in our food.

Do you delve into this in your nutritionist studies?

Because we’re adults, and we are trustworthy when it comes to feeding ourselves appropriately.

Thank you, Heidi.

Dieting never made my body feel better. It soothed the “control! better me! striving for perfection!” itch in my head but I never physically felt better when I was depriving myself or dealing with the resultant binges.

And these changes, while they may make me mourn the fact that I have health issues that make them necessary, do not trigger binges. I absolutely know that I can, as my nutritionist says, always choose to eat the food in question. I just also then have to deal with the fact that there will be consequences for the way that I feel. Sometimes the consequences are worth it. More and more they are not…and the thoughts that go through my head as I decide what to eat are not about self-loathing or calorie-counting but focus on “hmm – I want that coconut cream pie but maybe I can wait until after dinner, because otherwise I know I’ll have an energy crash.”

I especially appreciated your framing diabetes in terms of danger from nutrient loss, with the hideous blaming attitudes around Type 2 in particular. Not that some fear-ridden blamers distinguish between types; I’ve heard some astoundingly ignorant comments aimed at Type 1, too. Food is often framed as an enemy here, and serious weight loss from illness is treated as a good thing. With Type 2, I only recently figured out and started correcting some deficiencies (Vicious circles: Diabetes, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies) on my own. Besides the straightforward energy deficits, this kind of thing is surely responsible for a lot of suffering and reduced lifespans.

Excellent points about getting a good balance of nutrients through food, as far as possible. Balance is crucial, and rarely emphasized as much as “eat $FOOD and DIE”.

Indeed, thanks for commenting on the appalling rudeness of loudly dismissing other people’s food intolerances. It’s not nice, but sometimes I can’t help but wish it were possible to give some boors celiac for a month. :)

And there’s quite a looooong piece of geography to tread between eating a vegan diet and eating an all-icy-poles diet.

I appreciate that you’re on a roll here, and I think it’s a really interesting subject, to be honest. I’d love to read more about it.

But my comments section is getting quite cluttered now, and I’m sensing some tension as well.

Perhaps you could go into more detail about this on your own blog (not being sarcastic), and I’ll even link to the post, and we can have a discussion about it over there.

Well, it depends on the individual, on their constitution and so on. There are no particular health risks associated with vegetarianism. How about a raw food diet? Well, fifty percent of women who adopt a raw food diet stop menstruating, so it’s not a long-term (generational) proposition. And as I said, cutting out *all* animal products has very definite risks. If health was your main concern, be vegetarian rather than vegan.

That shouldn’t be a contentious thing to say, any more than saying that an all-icy pole diet is a bad idea. But because there’s an ideology attached to it, people become hostile and defensive on reflex, and, let’s face it, irrational.

But my comments section is getting quite cluttered now, and I’m sensing some tension as well.

Perhaps you could go into more detail about this on your own blog (not being sarcastic), and I’ll even link to the post, and we can have a discussion about it over there.