Food restrictions are the dirty little secret of food writing. I'm revealing mine.
A personal update on eating.
People think food writers spend all their time swooning over foie grass at fancy restaurants, traipsing through Italy eating mountains of pasta, or that we stand in pop-up lines for hours for a taste of the latest fad food or baked good.
Okay yeah, I’ve done all that. But even when I reviewed restaurants long ago, I had eating limitations to work around. Maybe you have them too? I think lots of us do but don’t want anyone to know. Few people in our business actually do write about their eating issues, but when they do, it’s usually about disordered eating or choosing a particular diet.
In my case, the first limitation happened decades ago, I stopped eating spicy, hot or acidic foods because they caused bladder pain. That meant no tomato sauces or curries; plus no chocolate, coffee, lemon sauces or citrus fruits. When I had to taste something dangerous for a restaurant review, I did so by taking a pill called Prelief with the first bite. It helped, but the bladder pain often hit anyway. I ended up in bed for hours or days, with a hot pad over my belly.
More recently, I figured out that my body could no longer process garlic or onion, which are in just about everything. In addition, I must also limit most produce, my favorite thing. I can have small portions only, such as 1 1/2 tablespoons of watermelon or 1/8 of an avocado. This is the FODMAP diet. If I don’t follow it, foods containing sugars ferment in my gut and cause all kinds of bodily horrors.
Now I am in a constant state of grief when it comes to eating and fantasizing about food. Before, I delighted in the latest list of best new restaurants and plotted which ones to try. I looked forward to potlucks. When someone invited me for dinner, I rejoiced. When I thumbed through new cookbooks, I wanted to taste so many of the dishes. When I travelled, I couldn’t wait to taste the foods specific to the people there.
Now all those things are fraught. I can no longer eat Mediterranean, Indian, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and many other kinds of foods. Soups, sauces, and salad dressings are all suspect, since most have garlic and onion in them. Meats are usually marinated in garlic and onion, so they are out too.