I have a food intolerance. I’m intolerant to people with fake allergies

Most people who suffer chronic illnesses quietly navigate their way through life. It’s hard for them to be heard above the hullabaloo of people asking for gluten-free muffins and a soy decaf chai latte.

Woman with the flu. Sick. Illness. Generic image.

“Tomatoes are making me fat,” an acquaintance declared. A naturopath had informed her the root of all her weight problems lay with tomatoes.

Not chocolate cake, pizza, chips or the 14 glasses of wine she drank a week.

They were in no way related to the fact she was carrying an extra 20kg.

No, it was all down to those tomatoes.

“Good job you’re not Italian,” I said. She looked at me blankly, as I explained that telling an Italian they couldn’t eat tomatoes would be like telling an Aussie they should drink their beer warm.

Some people are allergic to tomatoes. But as far as I’m aware it doesn’t cause you to balloon four dress sizes.

Food allergies are on the increase, especially in children. That’s a fact. We are allergic to everything from dairy products, chocolate, shellfish, fish, soy, eggs, food additives and flavouring, citrus fruit, wine and of course nuts and seeds. For those suffering severe allergies, life can be pretty restrictive and fearful. Worrying your child could go into anaphylactic shock if someone gives them a biscuit is horrendous.

I know several people with coeliac disease, and it’s unpleasant. They have to follow a strict gluten-free diet in order to manage it and are regularly debilitated by their condition. The same with diabetics.

So it makes it all the more perplexing why so many people, who don’t have anything wrong with them, claim they do.

Walk down the “health food” aisle of your local supermarket and there are hundreds of gluten-free packets of highly processed rubbish for sale. A few years ago this aisle was chock-a-block with carb-free ranges, but we’ve obviously all got Atkins amnesia now.

Well, I’ve got a food intolerance. I’m intolerant to people with fake allergies.

As anyone with a serious health condition knows, the last thing you want to do is invent problems if you don’t have them. Seriously. For as long as you have your health, enjoy it. It can — and probably will — disappear just like that. If that happens, I can assure you, you’ll be wishing you scoffed that last Tim Tam.

We have more food resources in the West than any other time in history. So what do we do? Look for elaborate guises with which to deny ourselves food groups. If we’re not avoiding carbs, it’s sugar, if not sugar, fat, if not fat, dairy, if not dairy, gluten, if not gluten, just about everything else, with Paleo.

Now I have no medical qualifications and I am not a trained nutritionist. But I may as well be compared to some of the crackpot advice out there.

Here’s my mantra: Forget eating like a caveman. Their average lifespan was 25. Forget eating like someone who has never tasted sugar — in God’s name, why would you do that? And forget eating like a coeliac, unless every time you have a cheese sandwich your stomach blows up and you are bedridden. In that case, as you were.

No. Let’s be sensible. Lots of fruit, vegies, protein and some carbs have and always will be on the food pyramid. Four thousand chocolate M&Ms will not.

Eat a lot of healthy food and run around and you will be thin. Eat a bucket of crap washed down with beer and sit on the sofa, and you will not. Complicated, isn’t it.

It’s sad so many of us invent conditions. And that the most vocal of us are usually the ones with the least cause. Most people who suffer chronic illnesses don’t speak endlessly about them, but quietly navigate their way through menus and life. In fact, all the noise out there from the fakers is making it worse for people with real — often life-threatening — allergies or conditions. It’s hard for them to be heard above the hullabaloo of people asking for gluten-free muffins and a soy decaf chai latte.

I’ve had gestational diabetes. I don’t remember ever telling a waiter what I couldn’t eat. I had to go dairy free too — so I just drank long blacks and put rice milk on my cereal. It was boring, but I didn’t start a blog.

I also suffer from Hashimoto’s disease. Well, when I say “suffer”, there’s no suffering at all to this thyroid condition. I discovered I had it, went to the doctor, she gave me some pills, I took them and went home. The end.

I didn’t even consider it a thing, until I read that Sarah Wilson has it too, and her quest for solutions to this auto-immune disease led her to give up sugar and develop an empire out of it in the process. Last month it was reported she’s worth $4 million.

All I’ve been doing is eating cake. It was the first time I’d felt sick.

Originally published as I have a food intolerance. I’m intolerant to people with fake allergies