There are times when we question the things we know

[venta]

Hello! If you are a person with complicated dietary requirements, maybe you can give me some advice.

My dance team organises an event once a year (it's this Sunday, in Oxford, if you want to come along). It takes the form of a pub crawl, with dancing. At the final pub, people settle down for a chat and so on, and we provide home-made cake. We make sure that there is at least some gluten-free and some dairy-free cake, for people who eat that sort of thing.

However, for the past few years the landlord of the pub has started providing food as well. Not only does he let us use the function room for no cost he provides, at his own expense, food of the bucket-o'-stew variety. I think providing food (one meat option, one veggie, plus rice) for around a hundred people is jolly decent of him.

However, last year I got quite a mouthful from one of the attendees because their dietary requirements were not met by either of the options. If we were providing formal catering and charging people, I would expect to have asked in advance what people's requirements were, and tried to ensure they were all met. However, when the catering is being done entirely as a good-will gesture, I don't feel we can really present the landlord with a list of complicated requirements (last year I think the veggie option was also GF and DF, which I'd thought was pretty good already).

So... the details for the event say that the landlord will be providing food. I'd like to add something along the lines of this being a couple of basic options, provided by him for free, and that it might not be suitable for everyone. I have no idea how to phrase this, and don't want to sound like I'm dismissing people with detailed food constraints - I'd just like everyone to feel that they've been properly informed about what they can expect.

Alternatively, if you think I'm being unreasonable (from my privileged perspective of someone who can pretty much bite into anything without worrying) then please say so.

If it's relevant, the pub does also serve a regular pub menu (pub classics, sarnies, jacket spuds etc), and people are welcome to order their own food.

Comments

[ailbhe]

I'd definitely want it made clear that the landlord is giving the event free food, over which the organizers have no control and which may not cater to specific allergies or intolerances. The law is a little different this year, too, in that comprehensive allergy information *must* be available on request.

It's very isolating and miserable to be unable to join in major social events. A lot of human social interaction is built around eating together and spending half of the time establishing which (if any) of the "dig in, help yourselves" I can actually eat, and then making arrangements if I can't have any of it or there isn't enough because by the time I've checked the ingredients all the GF/DF/soy-free dish is gone anyway, spoils things. I'd rather know in advance and order my jacket potato with no toppings (sending back the first one because they put butter on it) and at least get to eat *with* people.

Two things make a huge difference: (1) early serving for people with special dietary requirements, such as allergies or vegan/vegetarian diets, with the eat-anythings waiting their turn, and (2) clear labeling at the place where food is obtained, not in a massive lever-arch binder none of the staff know how to look through which is anyway kept on a high shelf in a kitchen two floors away and which only specifies one set of allergies at a time, ie notes *either* GF *or* DF but not both without manual cross-referencing.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your thoughts - I'm not sure how much I do about (2), since I'm not very in control of what the pub does with its labelling. I'll need to call into the pub on the Sunday morning anyway, so will attempt to acquire details (if we can't get them any further in advance) so I can at least let people know.

[ailbhe]

Realistically (2) isn't up to you, but they may already label food (see under, new laws) and be able to easily do it for this too. Possibly the simplest thing to do would be to send people a link to the usual pub menu and say "We'll be given some food but we won't know in advance what it is, here's the usual menu so you can plan what to order if you need specific dietary requirements met."

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's a good way of going about it.

Not really relevantly: a while ago I was somewhere where there were cupcakes on offer. The baker also bakes semi-professionally, so had done a proper checky-box list of allergens to display. Except the cakes actually didn't contain any of the 16 (errr, is it 16? I can't remember) allergens you have to warn about.

Accordingly, not being familiar with these lists, I interpreted it as a bullet-point list (the unchecked check boxes just looked like square bullet points). OK, so these cakes contain gluten, fair enough. Eggs, OK. Dairy, no surprises. Soy? Wasn't really expecting that. Celery? Fish? Molluscs? What the hell are these things that look like cupcakes...

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Bivalve cupcakes?!

In fact this thread underlines the need to let people state our requirements. Ticky boxes are often more hindrance than help.

Eg yyour mention of cupcakes suggests a menu item I'd avoid. Gluten-free or dairy-free wouldn't have made any difference. Anything made from flour - esp wheat flour - is risky for me. But risky, not banned entirely. 100% rye sourdough bread is part of my staple diet. Wholemeal wheat bread is not. This makes sense: I have IBS, not coeliac disease.

If I'd been at your buffet I'd have eaten a postage-stamp sized piece of bread, esp if slathered with butter, maybe dipped in gravy. I'd have declined rice but if one of the stews had included potatoes I'd have scoffed a full portion. Unless it'd included more than a tiny bit of cabbage, cauliflower or asparagus.

Oh the joy of disability ;-)

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Would that mean that most people were offered a free meal, but those with 'special requirements' would have to pay?

I was in a situation like this while my cousin planned his wedding. The caterers provided the menu for their restaurant, but detail of ingredients for the wedding buffet wasn't available. I had to ask people to push my wheelchair from table to table while I tasted dishes and chose which to eat. In the end I didn't have to bring out the boring packed lunch from my bag, and everybody supported what I was doing, but for another person that could have been embarrassing. For somebody with an allergy, I dread to think.

[ailbhe]

I've reached the point where if there's *one* thing *in the restaurant* which I can eat without being sick, I'm almost pleased. So often there's nothing at all.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

What do you do?

[(Anonymous)]

If I know there's nothing, I eat first. If it's a surprise, I stay hungry and cranky. Some places don't mind if I eat cereal bars from my bag.

[ailbhe]

Er, that was me.