If like an increasing proportion of the population you are faced with needing to restrict your diet, implementation can be difficult.
Despite the fact that all food that we buy is labelled with the details of its contents, it can still be difficult to avoid certain food ingredients. There are some intolerances that are fairly common such as gluten and dairy and so foods that don't contain them are relatively easily found and the only time it's a real problem is when you're eating out. The main problem here is that most of the time, chefs do not understand the full extent of the effects of a particular ingredient on someone who suffers from food intolerances.
A well-intentioned chef may sometimes put a little flour into a sauce to thicken it up, believing that such a small amount will not trigger the intolerance. If the person does not seize up and start choking there and then, they believe all is well and the trace of flour went unnoticed. However, it is not until the food is digested that the intolerance takes effect around an hour after its consumed, and then the effects can last for several days.
This makes eating out very difficult for people with food intolerances and it's not always easy or possible to give a chef a list of foods to avoid putting into your meal, and you will notice that eating out starts to become something of a gamble and the more foods you are intolerant to, the higher risk the gamble becomes as its more likely that you will eat something that will upset you. Sooner or later, people may realize that its hard to find good food that doesn't contain any of the common foodstuffs people are intolerant to, so don't be surprised if the amount of dinner invitations drop as people tire of trying to accommodate you.
For the sake of your health, it is of the utmost importance that you avoid all foods that you have an intolerance to. It is very hard work for your body to process these foods and so to allow it to recover, you should stick to foods that you know your body can handle. Having said that, if you start eating just a few foods that you know aren't going to upset you, you may find that you begin developing intolerances to them as well.
For this reason it is important to maintain as wide a diet as possible. This is sometimes difficult if people have many allergies, a lot of the time people will find foods that don't upset them, and stick to them so as to avoid triggering the intolerances. However, you should try to keep eating as wide a range of foods as you can to avoid slowly but surely becoming intolerant to everything.
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