Simple question, really: Do women suffer food allergies at a higher rate than men?
I ask because I’m a chef in the banquet/convention business, and my (purely anecdotal, admittedly) observation is that, the more women there are in a particular group, the more requests we get for special meals because of “allergies”. I put scare-quotes around “allergies” simply because, even when we’re provided ahead of time with a detailed list of the special meals we need to make to accommodate vegetarians/vegans, those with religious dietary restrictions, and those with allergies, there are always a few people who wait until the meal is being served to announce that they’re “allergic” to something on the plate and they need a special meal. And that particular behavior seems almost exclusively the domain of our female patrons.
Just anecdotally, I haven’t really noticed much of a gender correlation to food allergies. Except- it seems that more women than men are allergic to gluten.
I don’t have any allergies, but I despise bacon. For some reason I just don’t like it. I’m not Jewish, Muslim, nor vegetarian/vegan, so people are just mystified as to why I don’t love bacon.
It’s possible that women (and probably men too!) who dislike certain foods/ingredients will simply use “allergies” as an excuse in a restaurant in order to get something they actually like to eat, and because they are likely to face fewer questions about why they don’t like certain foods.
With the one ingredient that I would ask to be left off (pineapples, though I don’t think I’ve ever ordered anything that I knew had pineapples), I’m not allergic, but I have a very strong aversion to them causing me to literally gag and be unable to swallow them, even to be polite. I don’t know why I don’t like them, but for as long as I can remember, they make me feel queasy and gag. People assume I’m crazy, or I just haven’t had a good pineapple yet, or otherwise try and convince me to eat them, so I can see myself just saying “allergies” to avoid the discussion.
This sounds very similar to what we call “vegetarians of convenience” - the guests who see what the vegetarians are getting and decide it looks better to them than what everybody else is getting, so suddenly they’re vegetarians too. Of course, the problem with that is that when too many people do it, we find ourselves without enough meals for the real vegetarians. (Yes, we can whip up more vegetarian meals if we have to, but why should the real vegetarians have to wait longer for their food because a pretend vegetarian claimed the plate that was meant for them?)
Anyway, the reason this allergy thing is an issue boils down to something that, clearly, most people don’t understand: a banquet/convention facility is not a restaurant. We don’t have a set menu of meals that we can prepare on a moment’s notice using ingredients that we keep on hand at all times. Instead, our catering/sales staff books an event and then meets with event’s organizers to decide on a menu for that event. This meeting can take place weeks before the actual event, and includes instructions to the organizer to find out how many and what kinds of special meals are going to be needed. Then, when the actual event approaches, the head chef orders the necessary ingredients, which are usually delivered 1-2 days before the event. Obviously, in this situation, waiting until the meal is being served before you inform the serving staff of your allergies is a bad idea. Depending on the specific allergy, there’s a chance that we may simply have nothing on hand that you can eat - especially if you have multiple allergies. It’s relatively simple to keep things on hand to make vegan/vegetarian meals on a moment’s notice, but there’s simply no way we can anticipate every possible food allergy.
Strangely, with a group we hosted just last week, the organizer (she who chose the menu) herself was apparently allergic to corn. The menu she selected? One of our Mexican buffets At least with a buffet the individual can pick and choose what to eat.
Women are more prone to immune disorders in general than men, and allergies are an immune disorder. There is speculation that this is related to the fact that women, unlike men, will frequently carry a genetically dissimilar human inside themselves for up to nine months at a time, thus their systems are a bit more complex in order to still fight off Bad Stuff while not damaging their “guest”.
But, for reasons of culture and society, women are also more picky as eaters, and it pisses me off no end when someone who isn’t allergic claims “allergies” for various dislikes, hang-ups, or strange dietary practices as it just makes it harder for those of us who actually do have allergies.
Me, I’m pretty careful about notifying people ahead of time, and for catered type situations if it turns out I can’t eat what’s served I just don’t eat it - I make sure I had a small bite beforehand or have something to snack on afterward. And I prefer buffets because of the pick-and-choose aspect, I can usually find something I can eat.
I think the cultural aspect would be that for women it is acceptable and at times even desirable to be “high maintenance” whereas for men are expected to be a bit more rugged. So a woman would be more likely to do stuff like refuse food, whereas a man would be more likely to ignore the symptoms.
You know how women are more likely than men to to be “spiritual” — that is, more likely to join a religion, or believe in astrology, etc.? There’s a word that is right on the tip of my tongue but won’t come out (unfortunately, the word that wants to come out is “gullible”, and that is absolutely not the word I mean). I wonder if the same tendency makes women more likely to take to heart the health- and diet-related things they read/hear, and then turn what they’ve read into “I can’t eat this or this or this”. This idea was inspired by the observation that the number of special requests due to “allergies” shoots way up when we’re hosting a group of school teachers — a group that tends to be overwhelmingly comprised of a) women, who, b) due to continuing education requirements, are probably exposed to/have read more studies on health-related subjects than the average person.
I mean, I don’t find it at all surprising when a group of environmentalists includes a higher-than-normal proportion of vegetarians/vegans, but I do find it unlikely that a particular profession would disproportionately attract people with food allergies (the exception being doctors who specialize in allergies, who may have chosen that specialty because of their own, or a relative’s, allergies).
My years in food service have shown me that men are simply more likely to just eat what’s put in front of them, while women are more likely to expect every detail to be exactly right. This seems to be because men tend to have the view eating = fill my belly, while women look at eating as an “experience”. Listening to my servers in the various restaurants where I’ve cooked, when I hear them complaining about a demanding customer, it’s almost always a woman they’re complaining about. Male customers tend to be “Take my order, bring me my food, then leave me alone unless you’re topping off my coffee.” Female customers are far more likely to make the server run back and forth multiple times between the table and kitchen.
At least with a buffet the individual can pick and choose what to eat.