Grrrrr! Rant!

[alexx]

I went to a seminar today for work which was brilliant...except for the food.
I filled in a form when I applied for my place on special dietary requirements stating that I can't eat dairy. I've become hugely more sensitive to it in the past month (oddly), to the point where on Friday I ate something made with milk thinking it would be ok at a pinch as a one off and vomited shortly afterwards.(sorry if tmi!)
When the buffet lunch arrived, one girl was presented with a special gluten free meal. I asked about dairy free (they had it next to my name written down on their list) and was airily told that as "all the food was veggie it would be fine". Actually, as it was nearly all veggie it was worse than normal - cheese dipper things, mini pizza, greek salad are all not very good and huge cakes and biccies also not possible. My lunch was 3 veggie spring rolls and 3 crispy prawns.
Now, if I'd not said that I had the problem I would be cool with it, but surely people can understand that dairy doesn't mean meat??? And why does gluten free get taken seriously but dairy free doesn't? I'm getting sick of friends and family going "go on, eat it, it's not like you will die, you are only intolerant" and then having no understanding of how ill it makes me. Am I the only one stuff like this happens to? :angry:

[Copper]

It hasn't happened to me yet but then I don't really eat out. I arrange a December get together dinner in a pub and they are usually very good. I do go on quite a bit about my dairy intoleranceto make sure they get the message. I am sure that if I had to attend a works boring meeting with a few curled sandwiches thrown in, they would not understand that even putting ordinary marg on the bread is enough to make me ill :(

[linny]

Oh I get fed up with people telling me that 'you'll waste away if you don't eat more'. Last Christmas my mum kept saying 'oh I got some breadsticks for you, you can eat those can't you?'

I surprised them yesterday when they came here. I did rolls, Ritz, prawn crackers, salad and a few other things as well as dairy free muffins, Birthday cake and biscuits, and sat and ate a plateful. They didn't die of poisoning from'dairy free stuff' either. As you can see it annoys me too!!!:rant: I am intolerant and get awful stomach upsets if I eat dairy.

So sorry to hear that the food at the seminar was totally unsuitable. It makes me wonder if people actually know the meaning of dairy!! When I was a kid we had a 'dairy' shop at the top of our road and so I knew then exactly what 'dairy produce' is.

[alexx]

I'm sure people think it is some kind of fad diet, they don't understand that it makes me so sick!!
:(
Your spread of food sounds scrummy though!

[matt]

trick is to not sit back and take it. complain in writing so that if nothing else next time they have something proper for you.

[Pam]

I think this calls for a letter to the organisers. How can they believe that vegetarian is the same as dairy free? I tend not to make a fuss when I go anywhere because milk doesn't cause such a bad reaction for me if I have a lapse. If it is for my daughter I usually put on the form "milk intolerant - cannot eat anything containing milk, yoghurt, butter, cream, cheese, etc." and then I include a note of what the symptoms will be if she does have milk.

It just goes to show how much ignorance there is about special diets.

[squirrel]

Hi there,

I had my first experience of this yesterday, when I phone a restaurant to try to book a meal out. There are 2 sections to it - one serving different kinds of oriental food and the other is Japanese Teppanyaki. When I called I was put through to the first and spent 5 minutes trying to explain why I needed dairy free, and got absolutely nowhere. However, when I asked to be put through to the teppanyaki section, the girl I spoke to couldn't be nicer. She explained what I would and wouldn't be able to have from the menu and said that unfortunately all they would be able to do for a dessert was fresh fruit salad (which I don't see as problem - I love fresh fruit!).

It just goes to show that you can have wildly different experiences depending on who you speak to even in the same establishment!

In think in the UK we suffer from 2 angles on this. Firstly, there isn't the awareness of lactose intolerance and other allergies/intolerances/sensitivites that there should be. In is only recently that general society has become aware of gluten intolerance. Hopefully through better education and awareness campaigns, and people like us asking/complaining about food provided, more people will realise that this is a problem for a significant proportion of the population.

The other angle is that the UK still lags behind the US and (some of) Europe on public service. We seem to have lots of people working in jobs serving the public that genuinely have no interest in giving good service - but that is another rant for another time :D

I agree with Matt. Complain every time and maybe things will change. When I go to the restaurant on Saturday, I will be making sure that I speak to someone about the problems I had when speaking to the first person.

Cheers
Clare

[Nic]

I organised and ran a seminar last week, at my own place of work. I checked the food order form myself, and made sure it explained what non-dairy meant (I've had the 'but its *vegetarian* cheese issue once too often).

On the day, the seminar was very intense, and I barely had time to grab anything to eat. At the last minute, I went through and found that there were no (NO, NOT ONE, NONE) sandwiches that I could eat. Which left me with the veg spring rolls, olives and deep fried chicken. Which would have been OK as part of the meal, but was really unhealthy as the whole thing. And not very filling, either.

I didn't have time on the day to sort it out, and am now being told that there was dairy free stuff there so what am I complaining about. Grrrr!

Nic

[alexx]

Agreed to all, it is so frustrating that people really don't get it - I wonde if there is also confusion between vegan and veggie, as vegan food is dairy free?
:confused:
Matt do not worry I did complain - we had to do a feedback form so I made my displeasure felt!!!

[matt]

the trouble is ignorance and lazyness.
people see veggie and vegan and don't think what the differnce is. they see vegan as being slightly more fussy than veggie without actually putting any thought into it.

only way around it is to spell it out slowly and in words of short syllabals to let those who are hard of thinking get the message.:mad:

[Nic]

Matt - even when I do spell it out ('no cows milk - that includes cheese, butter, yoghurt, cream etc') they STILL get it wrong. I agree with you, its often laziness. But also there's an element of rabbit in the headlights 'oh help what on earth can I feed her'. Which I try and get round by suggesting a plain chicken sandwich, no marg, but even that doesn't always work. I've sat in a posh hotel (with in-laws!) for an hour waiting for high tea to arrive. All because the staff couldn't work out if the bread had milk in. They could at least have told us that was the problem (and I then could have told them that trace amounts don't bother me) but no, they just panicked and left us sitting there hungrily.

Oh well.

Nic

[matt]

and there we see the main reason i don't bother eating out... if out i end up going to a tesco etc and buying stuff then sitting somewhere to eat it. easier and i can choose and blame myself if i make amistake.

i suppose atleast they took too long because they were trying to make sure not because they didn't care:)