Do fuck off North Americans. Does it always have to be about you, with you, FFS? '1000 things about japan' addressed this recently and well. Most of these are a fad a person's taken up without any medical evidence or understanding, and even the ones from a 'Sky God'/Gods, you could always 'offer up' fasting. Were I 'king of the world', I'd accommodate better than half of those with bean* mash in a bad mood, or South Indian cuisine in an expansive mood. The expansive moods are getting rarer.Choice of special meals:
- Asian vegetarian meal
- Baby meal
- Bland meal
- Children's meal
- Diabetic meal
- Fruit plate meal
- Gluten intolerant meal
- Hindu meal
- Kosher meal
- Low-calorie meal
- Low fat meal
- Low lactose meal
- Low salt meal
- Muslim meal
- Vegetarian meal (non-dairy)
- Vegetarian meal (lacto-ovo)
- Vegetarian oriental meal
*Pythagoreans can bite me.
Offering customers a wide variety of choices is narcissism on the part of North Americans? Interesting conclusion. One of the things that I hear from visitors or immigrants from developing countries to North America is their amazement and love of the affordable variety available in comparison to their home countries.
ReplyDeletePoint missed.
DeleteYou loss, sir. But at least have respect for others who might want to eat healthy.
DeletePoint missed again: it's not about scientific facts about their health, with rare exception.
DeleteI agree, a lot of that is ridiculous, but as a lactose-intolerant person, knowing that a meal definitely won't have any dairy on it is really comforting, especially on a plane where *nobody* wants to deal with how my body reacts to dairy in an enclosed space.
ReplyDeleteI'll also say, in defense of gluten-free, that my father, sister, and myself have never digested gluten well (Irish genes, maybe?). We get bad breath and mild gassiness. I refuse to be the asshole who won't eat a friend's meal or bugs a waitress about it, but where possible I'll avoid having too much in a day, especially at home. A lot of people are into gluten-free for the wrong reasons, but there *are* non-celiacs who don't handle it well.
It sounds like what you're really annoyed by is people who think they're entitled to demand others work around their whims, and yeah, I totally agree -- just keep in mind there's a socially conscious, non-asshole middle ground here. In fairness, I don't think most can be trusted to do it right at this point.
I recently visited Quebec City, and saw way too many 1-2 star Yelp restaurant reviews from people who tried to take their infant child to a nice restaurant and were chided by the waiter. It was always in the form of "how DARE they tell me I can't take my loud child to a nice restaurant", and almost always written my Americans. Quebec hasn't yet succumbed to entitlement culture, and I hope they never do.
I think we're on the same page, but as a post getting all moderate would have diluted the point which you state well: "I don't think most can be trusted to do it [a socially conscious, non-asshole middle ground] right at this point."
DeleteIt sounds like if you were served a meal on the plane with a cream sauce you wouldn't raise a fuss, but just not eat that part. Yours is not life-threatening, nor is the way that milk gives me acne, so we won't expect busy flight attendants and ticket agents to move Heaven and Earth for us, fuck the others waiting. Nor have we made up our food issues to get more attention, which is neither rare for self-diagnised adult celiacs nor not a few of the parents who have diagnosed a nut allergy in their children. These conditions certainly exist and are serious, should require medical evidence, and are RARE.
Now airport security theatre doesn't help any: the airlines cannot say, 'Fuck you, take your own food.'
The children thing. I have two, and they are my problem, not the staff's and not every other patron in a place. Given that basic principle I am not taking them anywhere patrons have a $100+/head tab, nor expecting significant disruption of those parties for them; elsewhere I'll ask politely for things like a high-chair, and either make do or go somewhere else if they are unavailable. I'll also choose something from the menu for my kids unaltered. And any consideration from staff or patrons I will thank them for sincerely, and make the kids thank them too. When my family acts like that, it is amazing how much cooperation we get.
DeleteYeah, pretty much agreed.
DeleteI think the larger issue here is not the diet nonsense, it's the gradual decline of empathy, stricter social mores, and general decency. It's the same idiocy that makes people text in movie theatres, stop moving the second they enter a subway door (god damn it, Toronto is terrible for that!), and vote for populist pseudo-libertarian politicians.
The instinct to consider how your actions will affect others is something that we as a society aren't doing a good job of promoting. Inasmuch as politicians reflect their constituents, we're a society full of selfish, delusional assholes.
Rob Ford is maybe the purest distillation of where this takes us. I lived in Toronto when he was elected and just recently left, and I still can't get my head around how fucked everything about his mayoralty is. He's basically a caricature of everything wrong with western society, and people love him for it.
I love the 'Bland Meal', as though Flavour is now a food intolerance up there with Gluten and Lactose. Seems to me it's also a description that'd cover half the other things on the list.
ReplyDeleteDid your kids' meals look better than yours? Ours did, and god help me I ate it all. Daddy's been awake for thirty hours straight, you snooze you lose, kiddo.