Oliver, Aidan, Spencer, Finn -- Watch Yer Ass!

I worked in a restaurant that served organic and locally-grown food. To describe the customers at this place as "health-conscious" is like describing John Nash as "numbers conscious". They were obsessed with every part of a recipe, even going so far as to insist upon supplying their own ingredients to the kitchen for their individual dishes (a maneuver that, while assuaging to hypochondriacal customers, is also against every health code in the Union). To summarize, these were some of the most food-aware people in one of the most food-aware towns in the world (Boulder). Most of these people could proudly tell you everything they had consumed in the past 48 hours and add where the food had been grown just so you could know even though it's no big deal no really.

Yet, for all this healthy living, a significant portion of the regular-customer base was diseased. I don't mean this as an insult. I would estimate that nearly 40% of the regulars were self-proclaimed sufferers of celiac disease. This meant that their small intestines, upon contact from gluten (a protein found in all forms of wheat), would practically shut down, flatten their walls out, and prevent absorption of nutrients. All in all, its a serious disease. In many cases, the real sufferers of the disease are forced to eat at home or at the few restaurants in their home town that offer gluten-free menus. In Boulder, however, celiacs have plenty of options, as many (if not most) restaurants have a gluten-free side menu.

Here's where it gets ridiculous. While I guess that nearly 2 in 5 of our customers were "celiacs", the accepted science says that only 1 in 133 people have the disease.

That means that this restaurant was an epicenter of the disease, a renowned center of support for celiacs, a statistical anamoly on the scale of 45x the normal proportion, or simply that the people of Boulder are fools who are desperate to have drama in their otherwise successful, educated, and upper-class lives. I think you can guess which option I (and 90% of the other waiters) thought was the answer.

So, in one of those blissful moments of op-ed column meeting one of my pet peeves, enters Joel Stein's L.A. Times piece. RTWT.

And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.

Amen and Awesome.

Stein says most of what I think about food allergies, so I won't clog up your brains with too much more, but I would like to make a final point:

If this subculture of food fear, which we used to think utterly reasonable and practical, is basically a bunch of SoundN'Fury, what other deep fears in our society are, in reality, hollow?

coughcough*BigThreeAutoBankruptcy*cough*IllegalImmigration*coughcough*DrugLegalization*cough

Yikes, sorry 'bout that. Sound like I'm coming on with an allergy...