The wedding meal I didn't trust
A cèilidh, a stranger, and a steak pie I had to outsmart
Hey {{first_name}},
Last week I was at my brother's wedding.
Ceremony, food, speeches, then a cèilidh. For anyone who hasn't been to one, a cèilidh is full-on Scottish dancing. Lots of movement, lots of energy, lots of grabbing strangers and spinning them around the room.
Which is exactly the kind of evening you don't want to be running off to a toilet for or feeling like your stomach is about to blow up. Especially mid-dance, with someone you've just met, who you'd then have to leave standing on their own.
So when it came to the meal, I had a plan.
My brother already knew I couldn't eat onion or garlic, so he'd asked the catering company to accommodate. They came back saying the steak pie filling was clear, no onion or garlic.
Now I've been here before. Many times. A restaurant or caterer says a meal doesn't contain something, and a few hours later I'm in a bathroom wishing I'd been more careful. So even though the answer was "you're good", I wasn't fully convinced.
Here's what I did.
When I went up for food I still asked for the steak pie filling. But when I sat down to eat it, I scraped off as much of the sauce as I could and stuck mostly to the meat itself. Then I filled the rest of the plate with veg I already knew I tolerated.
That was it. No drama.
Later that night I asked a stranger to dance, they said yes, my stomach behaved and I had one of the best evenings of my life.
(Turns out the sauce did contain onion and garlic. I felt slightly off afterwards, but not enough to change a single thing about the night but only because I was careful.)
Why it worked
Most meats on their own are low FODMAP. The triggers usually hide in the things around them. Sauces, marinades, seasoning, fillings like sausages or pepperoni that are quietly packed with garlic. So if you reduce the bit you can't see and stick to the bit you can, you massively cut your exposure without giving up the meal.
The veg side was the same idea in reverse. I knew exactly what I could eat, so I leaned on that for the rest of the plate.
This week's practical tip
Next time you're eating out and you're not sure about a sauce, scrape most of it off and enjoy the meat with whatever else on the plate you know you tolerate. Same trick works for chicken too. Peel off the fried coating or seasoning layer sitting on the skin, and you've cut a huge amount of risk in one move.
The honest bit
There's a catch with all of this though. It only works if you can remember everything you can and can't tolerate, in what quantities, while staring at a plate you didn't make, sometimes in dim light, sometimes a couple of drinks in. That's a lot to hold in your head.
I'm currently almost at the end of building an app that takes all of that off your plate. Literally. Wherever you are, whatever's in front of you, in seconds.
A camera function where you can take a photo of a meal, menu or ingredients list and it comes back with the potential triggers, potential triggers specifically for you, a list of the top meals id recommend from the menu and how to go about switching anything that is potentially a trigger.
The app would also have a library of IBS friendly recipes, a recipe creation section, a reintroduction guide and symptom tracker so you have the best possible tools to take back control of your life.
is this something you'd be interested in?
This week's mindset
You don't have to eat perfectly to enjoy a big night. You just have to be a bit smarter than the plate.
Scrape the sauce. Lean on what you know. Go ask someone to dance.
See you next Friday.
Zak