For once I was impressed by the NYTimes’s P1 editors’ story choice. The report summarizing the new research on how rare food allergies really are should have been above the fold, but it was enough that it made the front page. I would only have turned around the figures and said 95 percent of adults/92 percent of children have nothing to fear from peanuts/shrimp/milk/etc. Back in the last century I did a piece for Vogue asserting much the same thing, and it set off a shitstorm because even then people were going out to restaurants armed with business cards listing their food restrictions. Not, of course, described as issues but rather as allergies. At least now maybe it will be harder for people to pull the stunt a woman we used to eat with always did: Make a huge fuss over not being able to eat butter on her (inevitable) chicken. And then order ice cream for dessert.