they invented cuddling in 2005

Walking Suit: Bodice and Skirt

c. 1890

made by Madame Adelaide Martien, American

The only way to completely eliminate risk (of cyclospora specifically) is by eating only canned or frozen veggies. Cooking kills cyclospora, but there's always a risk of cross-contamination during food prep if the veggie starts out raw.

People love to throw out lists of things to avoid, always implying that if you get sick it's because you're stupid. So here's some actually useful info for if you get sick

1) The food that made you sick was something you ate in the last week. Throw out any leftovers & do some cleaning of cooking surfaces just in case

2) Normal symptoms: watery diarrhea, "loose" stool, abdominal/stomach cramps, maybe a little vomiting, nausea

3) NOT normal symptoms: bloody diarrhea, dark & tarry stool, fever, lots of vomiting. If you have any of these (or start to get these later), it could mean complications due to cyclospora or it could be something else. Go see a doctor asap

4) Most infections are self-limiting (they'll get better with a few days rest). Sometimes symptoms go away and then come back a few days later. That's normal & fine. If you're sick for longer than 2-3 days without any sign of getting better, that's NOT normal & you should see a doctor. The infection can persist for a month if not treated & you happen to be one of the cases that isn't self-limiting

5) if you need to see a doctor, do your very best NOT to poop beforehand. they will want to do a stool culture and it sucks so bad to do that at home

6) there are rapid tests for shiga-toxin that they'll do on your stool sample which will be done in about a day. The other tests for non-cyclospora diseases take ~2 days to complete. The centers that do cyclospora tests are completely overwhelmed right now, so that result might not come back for weeks so...

7) DEMAND A TREATMENT PLAN FROM YOUR DOCTOR. this is critical. At your first visit, get them to make a plan where after the negative tests come back, they will prescribe an antibiotic & do not wait for the cyclospora test

8) The antibiotic for cyclospora should be Bactrim (TMP/SMX), which has a 96% efficacy by 3 days. It might be something different if you have allergies tho. There are lots of options, it isn't hard to kill. You'll probably start to feel better in less than 24 hrs.

9) Take ALL of the pills they give you (2/day for 7 days). Do not stop just because you feel better and the pills make you feel nauseous and it's probably fine right? Wrong. That's how you get antibiotic resistance & that can kill you stone dead

cons of eating your lunch outside on a nice spring day:

MY NAPKINS

Dress

c. 1850-1860

And if you also hadn't heard of her go read this because uhh... Holy Shit

This story sounds like it could have been a brilliant exploration of gender and warfare and violence but instead it was attacked by people who didn't know how to confront a story that made them uncomfortable, and the author faced horrible consequences.

As far as I can tell the reasons that this happens are:

The interpretation of disability accommodation as wokeness - a lot of the same people who are shitty about food limitations are also shitty about sign language interpreters and ramp requirements (also building regulations relating to the latter) because they view any accommodation as capitulation to a group they think should "suck it up and deal with it" (quietly exist without named or obvious accommodations). The conversations around peanut-free or milk-free classrooms to accommodate children with allergies are similarly unhinged and possibly more horrifying.

Conflating specialty diets as a result of proximity in the popular consciousness - you're a lot more likely to see something described as "vegan + gluten free" or to see vegan/vegetarian/g-free options grouped on menus than you are to see keto/vegan/gfree options so the "lefty" animal-free diets get grouped with gluten-free (it's also interesting that there are right-wing diets, and I wonder how many of these people remember when you used to be able to find "atkins-friendly" symbols on casual dining restaurant menus)

Gluten free diets became a fad fifteen years ago; tons of people read "Wheat Belly" and stopped eating wheat as a weight loss hack and when they went back to eating wheat because it's actually pretty difficult to get around a major staple grain they didn't experience any negative consequences; people saw this and basically think that it's a trend, that people are faking medically necessary diets as part of a fad. When questioned about this they always go "but, I mean, it's okay if you REALLY need to skip the wheat because you have a condition but most people are doing it because it's popular" when g-free diets haven't been a major trend for quite a while now. TO BE QUITE FAIR, I think that things like "Gluten Aware" cookies and beer and such, which contain a little gluten but not NO gluten contribute to this perception (these have annoyed me forever for two reasons: 1. They make people without celiac think that a little gluten is fine for people with celiac, which it is not; 2. fucking commit, companies. *I* want the cookies and beer and it's deeply annoying that these business will go to the lengths to create products with minimal gluten but won't actually make g-free foods - this is often because of the risk of cross contamination, they won't claim to make g-free things because they won't work with a dedicated g-free facility)

Anyway, in conclusion: it sucks, I'm sorry.

US specific:

Is your ham made with vinegar? Does your ham have the generic word "spices" on the ingredient list? Does your ham include "smoke flavoring"? Does your ham include caramel coloring?

Because malt vinegar has gluten in it. "Spices" may include wheat products in a mix. Smoke flavoring may be made with barley flour. Caramel coloring may be made with wheat or barley syrup.

If the label says "gluten free" that means that the "spices," caramel coloring, vinegar, and smoke flavor are certified to contain 20ppm or less of gluten.

If the ham is cured in any way, it may include gluten. If the ham was marinated, it probably includes gluten. If the ham was prepared in a facility that processes wheat in any way, it might be cross contaminated with gluten.

There's a company out there called "Gluten Free Water" that makes water in plastic bottles, poking fun at the idea that too many things have a gluten free label. I fucking hate that company. Because that company is functionally saying "lol, people are so sensitive and over the top about this, let's be a little silly and laugh about how crazy people can be with their 'gluten free' nonsense."

Did you know that there are sustainable food containers and straws that contain wheat? And that you don't have to label them? There are definitely people with celiac who have been sickened by biodegradable plastic straws in their "obviously water is gluten free there's no risk here" water.

"It's over-labeled so it looks trendy" just means you don't know how foods are made or what foods contain gluten. Gluten is ridiculously common in foods in general, and also in packaged meats.

Your ham has to say gluten free because it distinguishes it from the hams that do contain gluten, which is a fucking lot of them. And you're annoyed that your ham has to say gluten free and I'm annoyed that I'm standing in the grocery store calling a ham company to figure out where they source their caramel coloring so I can figure out if the damned ham is safe to eat.

"lol, oats don't have wheat in them, are people so stupid that they have to be told what is and isn't wheat? why does this oatmeal have a gluten free label?" Cross contamination; gluten free oats are not grown near wheat and are not processed in facilities that process wheat.

"lol, rice doesn't have wheat in it, why is this rice labeled gluten free, all rice is gluten free" Cross contamination; the rice isn't processed on equipment that processes wheat.

"lol why does this turkey breast say gluten free, it's just fucking turkey" read the ingredients on your "just" turkey, lots of packaged meat is packed in broth, some of which contains modified food starch, which may contain wheat.

"lol why are these strawberries labeled gluten free? they're fucking strawberries" WAX, BUDDY. SOME FRUITS ARE COATED IN PRESERVATIVE WAX FILMS BY THE MANUFACTURER AND SOME OF THOSE FUCKING FILMS CONTAIN GLUTEN.

I think that part of the reason that people are so irritated by g-free labels is because it exposes them to just how vast and alienating their food systems are.

"Ham should just be meat from a pig, maybe with sugar and salt; what on earth is happening that there might be wheat in that process? Nothing in that process should involve wheat." And then you might have to think about it for a second, might have to wonder what "sugar" and "salt" mean when someone is producing a million hams to be delivered thousands of miles away. It's not just sugar and salt; it's preservatives and nitrates and batch cooking and getting corn syrup instead of sugar and getting smoke flavoring instead of smoking the ham and turning your "whole food" into all the ingredients that make up the ingredients that make up the ingredients.

A "gluten free" label says "you can eat this" to somebody with celiac disease, who has already pounded their skull against the shittiness of the medical system and the food system.

But to someone who doesn't have to worry that their food is going to disable them, a "gluten free" sticker on ham takes a known quantity and turns their sandwich into a hyperobject that contains animal agriculture and industrial additive production and shipping pollution and the ongoing assault on regulation.

If it doesn't have the label, you can just eat your lunch. If it does have the label, you are haunted by the specter of RFK junior imploding the FDA.

I can tell when companies are cost cutting because they start using corn sugar or maize starch as a bulking sweetener and it makes me incredibly fucking ill. Are they kind enough to put a "new recipe" label on it? Sometimes! Only fucking sometimes. A bunch of times I discover it when my stomach is trying to exist my body in aggressive, stabby maneuvers. It sucks.

And people will literally laugh at it and pretend it's no problem that they don't know why every yoghurt in the shop has cornflour in it rather than real fruit. Or their meat is all preserved with corn to make it look good for longer.

People have no idea what is in their food unless they have to have.

She literally clocked the change in the label — it wasn't marked as changed, she just noticed that the "gf" label was gone — and that was enough for her to flip the jar over and check.

I gotta say that the most infuriating recipe change I've had to deal with was when a company started using "barley syrup" instead of their previous HFCS, which is how I suddenly started sweating and whimpering from drinking frozen lemonade.

"Lemonade is always gluten-free, it's stupid for them to label that shit!"

lmao ok bud

They didn’t even remove an icon or anything, because these were peanuts bars, so when we called to complain that they’d added a whole ass major, deadly allergen to their recipe, they told us they’d never claimed the product was nuts-free. Because it was the peanut butter flavour.

Motherfuckers, peanuts are NOT NUTS!! When a product says “peanuts”, IT DOES NOT MEAN “ALSO EXPECT NUTS”!!!

There was a golden age period of my life when you could trust most peanuts-flavoured products to not also contain fucking almonds. But that time is long past, because almonds are cheap and they are shoving them into fucking everything