How to Be a Conscious Eater

died from eating at an Indian restaurant, the owner was said

to have a “cavalier” attitude and was sentenced to six years

in jail. The Times reported, “He had cut corners  .  . . replac-

ing almond powder in his recipes  .  . . with a cheaper mix of

groundnuts, and hiring untrained, undocumented workers

to turn out the popular curry dishes at his restaurants.” The

silver lining of tragedies like this one is that, over the years,

restaurants have beefed up their food safety protocols and

staff trainings.

It’s changed what’s on the menu in the first place. As mentioned, the

eight most common allergenic foods in America are crusta-

cean shellfish, eggs, fish, cow’s milk, peanuts, soy, tree nuts,

and wheat. They account for about 90 percent of food allergies.

More and more, rather than finding ways to accommodate

individual substitutions, many professional kitchens are

doing away with the top eight altogether. Sure, it means the

95 percent of adults with no food allergies aren’t eating ingre-

dients there that they might enjoy, but they have countless

CONSIDER THESE SOBERING STATISTICS:

The number of health insurance claims from severe

reactions caused by food allergies jumped almost

400 percent between 2007 and 2016.

Roughly $25 billion is spent annually in response to severe

allergic reactions to food.

Food allergies affect children the most—8 percent have at

least one, and milk is the most common. About 5 percent

of US adults have a food allergy, and shellfish is the most

common. (Most children with milk allergy outgrow it.)

The rate of people with food allergies is doubling roughly

every decade. In the 1980s, it was estimated that only

1 percent or less of the population had a food allergy.

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