Tag: fuel

Recently, Queen Elizabeth’s eating habits have come under close scrutiny.

Why? Well, she’s the queen—her subjects and others around the world are interested in every last detail of her life.

CNN

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“It has to be the dark chocolate, the darker the better. She wasn’t keen on milk chocolate or white chocolate.”

For what it’s worth, that habit might help to explain the queen’s extraordinary health. Cocoa is rich in flavanols, which help to protect the heart and could reduce the risk of diabetes.

As for exercise, McGrady says the queen’s habits help her keep fit.

“I don’t think she has a weight room at Buckingham Palace, but she loves horse-riding and walking the dogs,” he told CNN. 

“She’s 91 years young, and she still goes horse riding. She’ll walk for miles with the dogs or just around the gardens at Buckingham Palace.”

“It always made me laugh that, you know, one day, the Queen would be at an estate banquet, and she’d be eating off Meissen china from the late 1800s, beautiful hand-painted Meissen china, with gold and silver gilt knives and forks,” McGrady said.

He followed up: “The next day, she’d be at Balmoral, and she’d be on the estate out in the hills, and she’d be eating lunch out of a Tupperware container. One day they’re normal; one day they’re royal.”

Few fast foods are as wonderfully addictive as McDonald’s fries. They’re big business, too. 

According to Fox News,

, a food chemist specializing in flavor research, told Eater. “So they needed to find a way to make the flavors that didn’t start with meat products.”

How do they do that, exactly?

“Food scientists identified the amino acids found in beef, added some very common sugars—starch hydrolysate—put it in a pot, added some citric acid to drop the pH, controlled moisture content, and heated it to the same temperature as meat,” Reineccius explained. “Then…*poof* we have meat flavor.”

McDonald’s creates its fries by starting with a base of hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk, as the website notes. This creates processed free glutamic acid, otherwise known as monosodium glutamate or MSG.

Through the past several decades, scientific studies have indicated that some people react poorly to MSG, and for a time, researchers believed that the substance caused headaches, nausea, and other symptoms. However, a review in the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners showed that there’s “no consistent clinical data” to support those claims.

That’s good news, and McDonald’s lovers just breathed a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, we’ve also got a bit of bad news. Some studies show that certain umami tastes can make people hungrier. MSG might influence metabolism and “stimulate the orosensory receptors,” potentially causing a person to overeat.

Can we blame MSG for making McDonald’s fries so addictive? Not entirely. They’re also fried in fat and coated in salt, and anything salty and fatty will taste pretty good. Still, MSG might play a role, and regardless, dieters should beware.

A small fry packs in 230 calories with 29 grams of carbs and 11 grams of fat. Spring for a large, and you’re putting away 510 calories—more calories than what you’d find in a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

In other words: No, we don’t want fries with that, but thanks for asking.

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), “natural flavors” is one of the most common ingredients listed on food labels—only surpassed by salt, water, and sugar.

So if you pay any mind to the labels on the food you buy, you’re probably familiar with the term—but what does it actually mean?

The answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you might have thought.

While it would seem intuitive that “natural flavors” are precisely the opposite of “artificial flavors,” the reality is that the two have more similarities than differences.

According to David Andrews, senior scientist at EWG, “The differentiation is really down to the origin of those molecules, whether synthetically produced in a lab or purified in a lab but from a natural source.”

“Most often, as far as I could find, the actual chemicals themselves could be identical or extremely close in terms of natural versus artificial,” he told CNN.

There’s still more to it than that, though.

A given flavor, whether natural or artificial, can contain anywhere from 50 to 100 different ingredients, and they’re not all as healthful—or as natural—as you might have hoped.

“The mixture will often have some solvent and preservatives—and that makes up 80 to 90 percent of the volume,” said Andrews. “In the end product, it’s a small amount, but it still has artificial ingredients.”

According to Andrews, the solvents and preservatives in natural flavors are present in such small amounts that there’s no real risk of adverse health effects directly from them.

They do present a less obvious problem, however.

“Natural and artificial flavors play an interesting role in food. They’re essentially providing the taste and often they’re added to make the food more appealing, or to potentially replace something that’s lost through processing, storage or in some cases even from pasteurizing,” Andrews says.

“One concern we have is the ability to make things more appealing than they may necessarily be,” he continued. “You can make [foods that aren’t as healthy] more appealing or even taste as if they’re extremely fresh when they may not be.”

Ultimately, Andrews says, the purpose of these additives “is to make a short intense flavor that quickly dissipates so you come back for more.”

Basically, if you consume them on a regular basis, foods containing these additives can play tricks on your body.

Because of this, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics spokesperson Vandana Sheth believes that added flavors—both natural and artificial—can cause increases in food cravings for some, much in the same way that artificial sweeteners can distort our body’s sense of caloric intake based on sweetness.

“As a consumer, it is important to be savvy about ingredients,” Sheth said. “Recognize that any food consumed in excess of your needs is going to affect your weight loss journey.”

Overall, the takeaway seems to be this: Although you don’t need to eliminate all natural (or even artificial) flavors from your diet until the end of time, you’re better off sticking with whole, unprocessed foods as much as you can.

Jim Rosenthal had a table at one of the best restaurants in the world.

It was 2009, and the British sportscaster joined his wife, Chrissy, and a few friends for dinner at

(close to $2,000 at the time). Two days later,

The Guardian in 2011. They would not be serving oysters this time, the spokesperson said.

The point is, if it can happen at one of the top restaurants in the world, it can happen anywhere. Just ask Jim Rosenthal.

When Whole Foods began offering pre-peeled oranges, packaged in plastic and sold at $5.99 a pound, the world couldn’t help but notice. Keyboard warriors around the globe took to Twitter to call them out on just how bizarre this particular product was.

“If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn’t need to waste so much plastic on them,” wrote Nathalie Gordon in a tweet that quickly went viral. It drew a massive amount of attention to this chain and the irony of a store known for healthy and environmentally responsible foods selling an orange in a plastic container.

Within hours, Whole Foods publicly responded to the Twitter firestorm by removing the product from their shelves and returning to selling oranges in the original packaging—their peels.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Whole Foods and their clientele have been noticed for their strange practices. They have a certain reputation for being unique and uniquely expensive.

With the recent buzz surrounding the purchase of Whole Foods by Amazon, we thought it would be interesting to dig into a few secrets most people don’t know about Whole Foods. Here’s the inside scoop.

1. How to Get the Most Bang for Your Buck

It’s no secret that shopping at Whole Foods isn’t exactly budget friendly. In fact, one popular nickname for the store is Whole Paycheck, a nod at how easy it is to blow most of your money in a single trip.

Still, there are ways to save money on your organic produce and specialty supplements, and it is all about when you shop. The sales cycle at Whole Foods begins and ends on Wednesday.

This means that every Wednesday you can shop both the previous week’s sales and the sales of the upcoming week. So next hump day, hightail it to Whole Foods for the best deals this store has to offer.

2. You don’t have to put up with rotten food.

There is nothing quite as frustrating as returning home from a grocery trip only to find that a mold-covered berry was hiding in the middle of your pint or the new product you grabbed on a whim is actually disgusting. The good news about shopping at Whole Foods is they have a no-questions-asked return policy.

There doesn’t actually need to be something wrong with the food you bought; just not liking it is enough. If you aren’t satisfied with your purchase they will either give you cash back or give you store credit.

3. Whole Foods has a “never” list.

The founding principle of Whole Foods was that food that is free from less-than-healthy ingredients should be accessible to everyone. So Whole Foods has pretty strict rules about what can never be found in their products.

Specifically, anything you buy at Whole Foods will be free from artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and colors and won’t contain any hydrogenated fats. Outside of this rule, they also carry a wide variety of organic and responsibly sourced foods and other household goods.

4. You still need to use discretion.

It is easy to assume that just because you’re shopping at a store known for their nutritious foods, anything you buy there will be good for you. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Not everything there is high quality or even healthy, according to one anonymous employee interviewed by Thrillist. Asking employees’ advice isn’t enough, either, since they’re not allowed to be up front about the uselessness of certain products.

Any time you plan on going for a shopping spree at Whole Foods, be prepared to spend some time reading the labels of any packaged products you buy or do a quick Google search on the actual health benefits of certain supplements.

Let’s face it, Whole Foods is simply too expensive to spend money on something that doesn’t deliver what is promised.

5. You’re going to need a list.

The age-old budgeting advic
e of creating a list and sticking to it religiously is a necessity if you’re going to be making a trip to Whole Foods.

They may have killer organic produce, and they might be the only grocery store in miles selling grass-fed beef, but they also have a lot of products you really don’t need to buy if you’re living on a budget.

Prepare yourself to be tempted to try gimmicky products like store-brand kombucha or a $5 bag of organic marshmallows. 

Make your list ahead of time, stick with it, and leave with money still in the bank.

6. If you don’t love it, leave it behind.

It is hard to shell out your hard earned cash for products you aren’t certain you will love, so it’s important to know that Whole Foods has a policy that allows customers to try before you buy.

Even if you are interested in taste-testing a packaged product, they will open up a box for a free sample before you commit to the purchase. It’s a good way to avoid unnecessary spending on things you won’t eat, and it almost beats the free samples at Costco.

7. Don’t waste your money on these items.

Rumor has it the organic produce available at Whole Foods is far better quality than any available at most box stores and supermarkets, but there are some items you are better off not buying at all.

Specifically, buying conventional (i.e., not organic) products at Whole Foods is a waste of money. Regular produce, for instance, is likely to be the exact same choice available at a less expensive supermarket, according to one insider article written by a former Whole Foods employee.

8. A free perk you probably missed.

Before you head toward the checkout line, make sure you’re not missing out on this little-known free perk offered by the butchers at most Whole Foods locations. Apparently, if you pick up a cut of meat, they will also dress it for you.

Their butchers can do specialty cuts; some even have rubs and seasonings and will get your meat totally ready to be cooked. Additionally, if you are looking for a creative way to prepare your meat, ask the butcher for tips. They’re the experts on the meat and on how it tastes best.

9. It pays to be healthy. (At least if you’re an employee.)

Employee discounts are a fairly common practice among grocery stores, but Whole Foods takes their employee perks to an entirely new level. 

The percentage employees receive off their grocery purchases is actually based on how healthy they are perceived to be.

The store’s Get Healthy plan is based on employees’ body mass index (BMI), and those with a lower number get a better discount on their groceries.

This hasn’t been the most popular incentive program, that’s for sure. Whole Foods has faced criticism for discriminating based on BMI, since this measurement has been deemed ineffective at determining a person’s overall health.

10. The company works hard to prevent waste.

When you run a big box grocery store, wasting food seems inevitable. However, Whole Foods works hard to prevent unused food from being thrown away. Their first approach is to serve fresh food that is near expiration on their salad bar, according to an anonymous employee interviewed by Thrillist.

Additionally, Whole Foods is known for donating expired food to food pantries and other nonprofit organizations, which led to the company being awarded to the 2013 Outstanding Food Donor Award from Food Lifeline.

You eat plenty of vegetables, stick to lean protein such as chicken and turkey, and choose fruit over candy when it’s time for a treat.

Sounds like a pretty clean diet, right? Not necessarily.

Did you know these nutrient-rich items are often the dirtiest foods in the grocery store—and are the cause of an estimated 48 million cases of food poisoning each year in the United States?

We rounded up the eight dirtiest foods (along with tips for safe consumption so there is no need to ditch your healthy diet).

Poultry and Eggs

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Although scientists and philosophers have long puzzled over this age-old conundrum, what we do know is that both poultry and eggs are two of the dirtiest foods we eat.

Raw chicken, especially from large distributors, can contain harmful bacteria such as Salmonella. This contamination is estimated to cause more than one million cases of food poisoning annually. A lot of this has to do with poultry living conditions on factory farms, where birds are kept in extremely close proximity to one another, allowing bacteria to grow and spread quickly.

Many people think that looking for poultry labeled “free-range” or “certified organic” means their meat is safe from bacteria, but this isn’t always the case. According to Modern Farmer, pasture-raised poultry has just as much bacteria as birds raised on factory farms.

So how can you safely prepare and consume chicken?

First, don’t rinse raw chicken. This actually raises the risk that bacteria could be spread all over the kitchen. Instead, experts say you should gently wipe the chicken with a paper towel then immediately throw the paper towel away. Heating the chicken to a temperature of 165 degrees is the safest way to kill any bacteria before consumption.

For many of the same reasons, eggs can also carry harmful Salmonella bacteria. The pasteurization process for eggs has dramatically reduced the number of people infected with salmonella each year, but eggs should still be consumed with caution, especially if they come from a pooled carton.

According to egg experts, eggs should always be refrigerated, cooked all the way through (sorry, sunny-side-up lovers), and eaten immediately after cooking.

Fruit

It turns out nature’s candy isn’t so sweet. Most of the fruit we purchase from the produce section are coated in pesticides. Strawberries, nectarines, apples, peaches, pears, cherries, and grapes are among the most highly contaminated fruits.

Pesticides are heavily used in commercial fruit production to kill weeds and insects, but because a lot of fruits have porous skins, the pesticides are absorbed straight into the fruit itself. Even after being washed and packaged for purchase, some fruit can contain traces of up to 21 different pesticides.

Although fruits that have been labeled “certified organic” are better options, they’re not 100 percent free of pesticides. Many large organic farms use  “organic” pesticides (as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture).

Make sure your fruit is pesticide free by soaking it in a solution of white vinegar or lemon juice (both are natural disinfectants) and water for about 20 minutes. Then pat it dry with paper towels before storing.

Deli Meat

Before you grab your ticket at the deli counter, you might want to consider that cold cuts such as roast beef and ham can carry bacteria that cause listeriosis.

Listeria, unlike most other bacteria, can grow in cold temperatures, which is why it is usually found at the deli counter. Listeria can also be found in prepackaged deli meat, often contaminated at the processing facility.

Listeriosis can cause flu-like symptoms and can be especially dangerous for pregnant women.

You don’t have to give up your lunchtime staple just yet. Pasteurization kills most bacteria in cold cuts, and there are other precautions you can take before consumption.

Use fresh deli meats within five to six days of purchase. The prepackaged kind will usually last a little longer, about two weeks. Keep deli meat refrigerated until ready to use. When in doubt, heat deli meat to a temperature of 165 degrees to kill any bacteria.

During pregnancy, women should either avoid deli meat as a precaution or make sure the meat is heated to steaming before consumption.

Raw Milk and Cheese

Milk straight from the source sounds refreshing, but there is a reason dairy products are pasteurized in the United States. Raw dairy products like milk and cheese can contain harmful bacteria like Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli.

Pasteurization kills harmful bacteria by slowly heating milk to a safe temperature. In 1987, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated that all milk products be pasteurized for consumption in the United States, but over time, several states have lifted restrictions to allow the sale of raw milk.

Soft cheeses like Brie are also unpasteurized. These unpasteurized cheese products are banned from import into the United States, but American cheesemakers continue to produce unpasteurized soft cheeses.

If you do decide to consume raw milk or cheese, take precautions to make sure your dairy is bacteria free.

First, purchase milk or cheese from a Raw Milk Institute (RAWMI) provider. RAWMI ensures that listed farms follow safe milk production guidelines to prevent contamination. Safely drink raw milk by using it within one to three days of purchase. Cheeses shouldn’t be frozen, but freezing milk for at least two weeks before you consume it kills much of the bacteria that could be hiding out in raw milk.

Raw Oysters

They’re salty, slimy, and downright delicious, but raw oysters can pose serious health concerns.

Oysters are filter feeders and can clean between 30 and 50 gallons of water a day. This is great for the environment, but unfortunately, it’s also the way people get sick from eating oysters.

That’s because oysters can get infected with Vibrio vulnificus. This may sound like a spell Harry Potter would cast, but Vibrio vulnificus is actually a bacterium that is found in seawater and can cause food poisoning.

Cooking oysters is the safest way to consume them, but if you must eat them raw, only purchase raw oysters from a licensed, reputable dealer who legally harvests them.

Because raw oysters are consumed while the mollusk is technically still alive, the shell of good oysters will be tightly closed. If the shell is slightly open, tap on it with your finger. If it closes, the oyster is still good to eat. If it remains open, the oyster is not safe for eating and may contain harmful bacteria.

Leafy Greens

It’s recommended that people get at least three to four servings of leafy greens per day, but your salad may not be safe to eat. Leafy greens, like fruit, can contain high amounts of pesticides and bacteria.

Spinach is the worst culprit and was shown to have more pesticide residue per pound than any other produce. It is second only to strawberries on the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list.

Bacteria can also survive the factory cleaning process because spinach leaves contain so many folds and contours that only about 15 percent of the leaf is actually exposed to disinfectant.

Even if you purchase prepackaged greens that say they’ve been “triple-washed,” you should always rinse your greens at home before using them in a salad. As with most foods on this list, however, the safest way to consume spinach is to cook it first.

Leave it to a college student to turn beer into a health food.

A student from the National University of Singapore (NUS) spent nine months creating a beer that contains the probiotic lactobacillus paracasei L26, which offers a host of health perks.

Researchers from NUS wanted to expand the traditional choices for getting probiotics in the public’s diet. Currently, dairy is the primary source for this “good” bacteria, and for many people, dairy isn’t an option (about 65 percent of human adults are lactose intolerant to some degree).

Beer might be a more effective way to introduce probiotics to adults.

Alcine Chane, a food science and technology student, chose to focus on beer as part of her studies. Chane set out to produce a craft beer that could act as an alternative source of probiotics.

Her brew contains a billion units of probiotics per three ounces of beer. For comparison, the recommended daily amount is 250 million units, according to the Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics.
Probiotics have a number of positive effects on health, particularly in the digestive system. A properly balanced gut biome can reduce diarrhea, improve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, and help manage various types of infections. Good bacteria can also strengthen the immune system, reduce allergies in children, and prevent brain disease.

Keeping probiotics alive requires a delicate touch.

The goal of the project was to create a good-tasting, unpasteurized, and unfiltered beer. The pasteurization and filtering process would have killed the good bacteria, so Chane decided to use old-fashioned methods.

She told the New York Post:
“For this beer, we used a lactic acid bacterium as a probiotic microorganism. It will utilize sugars present in the wort to produce sour-tasting lactic acid, resulting in a beer with sharp and tart flavors. The final product, which takes around a month to brew, has an alcohol content of about 3.5 percent.”
Chane’s supervisor, Liu Shao-Quan, worked with Chane to create the probiotic brew. Professor Liu believes that consumers will respond favorably to her and Chane’s creation—if the drink ever comes to market.

“The general health benefits associated with consuming food and beverages with probiotic strains have driven demand dramatically,” Liu said. “In recent years, consumption of craft or specialty beers has gained popularity too. Alcine’s invention is placed in a unique position that caters to these two trends.”
Of course, beer does not typically rank as a healthy beverage. Overconsumption of alcohol can cause pancreatitis, [linkbuilder id=”6437″ text=”liver damage”], and cancer. Given the high dose of probiotics in just 3 ounces of Chane’s beer, however, drinking in moderation still benefits the health of the beer drinker.

The unusual health benefit combined with the finely crafted taste could make Chane’s creation a hit. We’re guessing that the beverage will do especially well on college campuses where students might look for a healthy way to drink (again, we stress that binge drinking is never healthy).
“I am confident that the probiotic gut-friendly beer will be well-received by beer drinkers, as they can now enjoy their beers and be healthy,” Liu said.

Go to the freezer aisle of your local grocery store, and you’ll see no shortage of ice cream options.
There’s just one major flavor that’s always missing: grape. Why is it that you can easily find strawberry, raspberry, pecan, or mint ice cream, but not grape?
A few years ago, an internet hoax came up with a (false) reason. Grapes, as it turns out, contain anthocyanin, which is deadly to dogs. Grape ice creams contain large amounts of anthocyanin, and as a result, they’re extremely poisonous for pets—so poisonous, in fact, that the FDA supposedly banned the sale of grape ice cream in the United States.

As myth-busting website Snopes pointed out, there’s no such prohibition in the United States or any other country. Grapes are poisonous to dogs, but the FDA doesn’t regulate products based on toxicity to canines. If that were the case, the administration would step in to ban the sale of avocados, chocolate, and macadamia nuts.

The real answer is scientifically interesting, but not nearly as scandalous.

There’s no real reason why ice cream makers can’t infuse ice cream with a grape flavor, but consumers generally expect chunks of real fruit in their frozen treats. That’s a problem because grapes are about 81 percent water.

Freeze a grape, and you’ll end up with a little grape-flavored ice cube—hardly something you’d want to bite into while enjoying a sundae. In small batches, ice cream makers can effectively manage the consistency of their pureed grapes, resulting in a tasty ice cream, but in larger batches, the process becomes more difficult (and therefore expensive).

“Jerry and Ben will talk about the days of making melon ice cream, or cantaloupe ice cream, and how good that was,” said Sean Greenwood, PR lead for Ben & Jerry’s, to Thrillist. “But then, they were doing it on a 2-gallon batch. To try to do that on a massive scale is much more challenging.”

Grape ice creams do exist, but they don’t usually have those satisfying chunks of fruit.

But Cherry Garcia, one of Ben & Jerry’s flagship products, does have big chunks of a very similar fruit: cherries.

“Grapes are a difficult fruit, because of the water content—but it’s also not a very mainstream flavor for ice cream,” Greenwood said. “Most people don’t even associate grape with ice cream. People grew up on cherry and vanilla—so now, they love cherry-based ice cream. Grape has not broken through the creme-de-glace ceiling, if you will.”
So that’s the reason that grape ice cream isn’t commonplace—most people don’t want it. Greenwood did tell Thrillist that Ben & Jerry’s tried a similar flavor several decades ago, with poor results.

“So, we have an actual graveyard of flavors we made and just didn’t hit,” Greenwood explained. “One of the most iconic examples is ‘Sugar Plum,’ which is a similar flavor profile to grape made in the late ’80s. A lot of our employees still talk about how it was a fun idea, but not a great flavor. I don’t think there’s a huge appeal or appetite for it.”

Bananas are one of our favorite fruits.

What’s not to love? They’re technically berries, they come with their own carrying case, they have a large window for ripeness, you can buy them year-round for a low price, and they’re a perfect addition to your smoothie.

Not to mention that they’re nutritious. According to the USDA, bananas have significant amounts of vitamins B2, B5, B6, B9, and C, as well as magnesium, manganese, and potassium. That’s quite a punch for a low-calorie, low-cost food.

Bananas have all these nutrients because of phloem bundles.

Stay with us for a minute. “Phloem bundles” is the admittedly unappetizing name for those flat strings of banana that exist between the peel and the fruit itself. These bundles distribute water and nutrients throughout the berry.
If you throw those phloem bundles away, you’re not alone. Some people find the strings as unappealing as their name while others happily gobble them down. Nicholas Gillitt, a director at the Dole Nutrition Institute, told The Huffington Post that no nutritional studies had been done specifically on phloem bundles.

Still, he believes that they likely contain “more and varied types of fiber” than the rest of the fruit, and they’re likely a healthy addition to your diet.

You’re probably throwing away other important parts of your favorite fruits and vegetables.

For instance, you’re being wasteful if you toss peels of apples, oranges, and bananas, as they’re fairly nutritious. For example, apple peels contain an antioxidant called quercetin, which benefits the lungs and brain.

Orange peels have a compound called polymethoxylated flavones, which lower cholesterol and protect the heart. If the bitter taste of the rind doesn’t appeal to you, you can still get the benefits using only the zest.
While banana peels have an abundance of the antioxidant gallocatechin, we don’t expect anyone to start chowing down on them. Even monkeys discard the chewy, bitter peel of bananas.

If you’re looking for a delicious, nutritious skin, try a potato.

Potato skins have several B vitamins along with vitamin C, iron, calcium, and potassium. Potato skins also have a ton of dietary fiber, and given that most people need more of this nutrient, you might as well finish the entire spud.

Oh, and around Halloween, you’ll want to start saving your pumpkin seeds. Roasted pumpkin seeds contain magnesium, iron, and protein, so don’t toss them out.

Don’t throw away half of what you buy.

Many people eat Swiss chard for the leaves, but the stems are also edible. You can cook them alongside the leaves for a dose of glutamine, an amino acid that helps heal the body.
Similarly, the greens on beets and turnips are edible, though most people simply toss them in the compost. They taste wonderful when they’re blanched and sauteed in olive oil. When you make the most out of your veggie purchase, you’ll save money and receive a bigger dose of vitamins.

Deciding what parts of fruits and veggies to eat is a personal choice. Some people won’t eat a peel no matter how nutritious it is (and we can’t always blame them). However, by knowing what parts have the most minerals and vitamins, you can make an informed decision on what to eat and what to compost.

I’m sorry. I’m one of those people; I’ve got to ask my servers about all of the ingredients in their restaurant’s dishes.

See, I’ve got that crazy tick-borne disease that caused me to develop an allergy to mammal meat as a full-grown adult.

Now, when I visit a Mexican restaraunt, I’ve got to ask if the refried beans are made with lard. If I’m ordering seafood at a place that does crawfish boils, I’ve got to ask if they boil sausage with the shellfish. I can eat the bejeebers out of a chicken sandwich, but if there’s bacon on it, I could go into anaphylactic shock.

I know this makes me a pain in the bum, but I like supporting local businesses and trying new things. I’m not going to crawl into a culinary hole and never eat out again. I try to be polite and flexible when chatting with my servers. And I always tip at least 20 percent.

So when I heard that a seafood chef from Down Under was railing against fake food allergies, I was ready to roast the cook like a shrimp on the barbie.

The Angsty Aussie

Patrick Friesen is a Sydney-based chef who runs the kitchen at Queen Chow, where they specialize in high-end Cantonese-style street food.

In addition to cooking expensive Chinese food, Friesen has an active Instagram account. In mid-July 2017, the chef took to the photo-sharing app to rant about people with peculiar dietary requirements.

“Can people with dietary requirements start knowing what you can and can’t eat?” Friesen began. “Shellfish allergy but loves oyster sauce. Gluten free but loves gluten as long as it’s not a piece of bread. Vegetarians that love a chicken wing. Pescatarians who eat chicken.”

It’s definitely not easy for a cook to navigate all of these minute details.

“Sort your s*** out and let your waiter know,” Friesen wrote. “You make it really damn hard for people with actual allergies and dietaries to go out to eat.”

I can’t blame a chef for getting frustrated at having to cater to guest requests—who doesn’t need to vent about parts of their job? But it does seem like Friesen was frustrated at a broad swath of the population.

Context helps to sort things out.

The Daily Telegraph caught up with Friesen and learned that the Sydney chef’s mother suffers from celiac disease…as he says, an “actual allergy.”

It’s not that the Australian isn’t sympathetic to his mother’s condition, but he suspects that some people are just being fickle with their requests.

“You have these people who come in on a first date and they say ‘I’m allergic to onions’ because they just don’t want to have onion breath,” Friesen told the Sydney-based publication.

And we say ‘well, it’s an Asian restaurant, you know there are onions in pretty much everything’…or eschalots or onion powder or whatever. And then they say ‘oh OK it’s fine. I’ll just eat everything’. So clearly it’s not an allergy at all.

“And for the kitchen it can be torture. Especially when we have real allergies to be concerned about.”

It’s a little easier to sympathize with the cook when you learn where he’s coming from.

Wisdom in the Comments (for Once!)

When you’re emotionally invested in a topic, the best rule of thumb is to avoid reading the comments about that issue. For some reason, I read them anyway.

Many of the comments on Friesen’s post seemed to fall in the “there’s no such thing as food allergies” category, but there was one gem that helped calm me down about the subject.

Instagram user rach_the_wanderer put it this way:

“You can please a customer who doesn’t like nuts by not giving them nuts. For someone with a legit allergy, you need to rewash hands, change gloves, break out newly dishwashed (not hand washed) utensils and open fresh packages of all ingredients. The point is, just say you don’t like something and it won’t be included—you don’t need to fake an allergy.”

I still feel like it’s a little rough for a chef to judge paying customers for what they order, but I can understand his frustration with the way we talk about our relationships with food.

A Persistent Problem

I don’t think Chef Friesen’s complaint is going to get sorted out anytime soon.

Let’s all agree to stick to a few simple rules. For restaurant patrons, if you have an aversion to some foods, don’t call call your preference an allergy. If you run a swanky restaurant, accept that your customers are going to be picky and that nothing you say on the internet is private.

As for me, I’m just stickin’ with chicken—I hope that’s not a problem in the kitchen.