Mary’s dinner parties now dictated by food allergies
SHE grew up in a time of strict war rationing, where most people simply ate what they were given.
Now veteran TV cook Mary Berry has lamented the fact dinner party menus today are dictated by people’s allergies.
The 82-year-old said the rise in dietary requirements has made a ‘big difference’ to the process of hosting, as rather than cooking whatever you want, you now have to ‘ask about allergies’.
She told Radio Times: ‘The big difference today is that we have to ask about allergies. That never used to happen. You just cooked whatever you wanted to. You have to respect that people need different meals now.’
Miss Berry’s comments come after chef Raymond Blanc has blasted the ‘fashionable’ obsession with having a food intolerance. He told The Mail last year that up to 50 customers claim to have issues every night at his Oxfordshire restaurant, which has two Michelin stars.
He said: ‘In my restaurant Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, I look at my board when I look at the order and it’s horrifying – you have about 50 people who have an allergy or a food intolerance and we take each of them seriously.’
French-born Blanc, who moved to Britain 45 years ago and opened his Oxfordshire restaurant more than three decades ago, added: ‘We are a kitchen not a hospital. Of course, now, if you don’t have an allergy, you’re nobody.’
In the UK, it is estimated 1-2 per cent of adults suffer from food allergies, but more than half of British households bought a product which was marketed as ‘free from’ a certain foodstuff in the first three months of last year.
There has been a surge in popularity of ‘clean-eating’ – a diet which involves eating only unprocessed foods – in recent years following celebrities who claim to have restrictive eating plans.