Thought for Food

I was poisoned the other day – again. Mrs Wumber and I were on an otherwise enjoyable trip to Edinburgh and its surrounds. We were in a very nice pub on the coast, perusing the delights on their menu, ‘I’d like the sea bream please, but I should say that I’m allergic to egg, so if you would…’

‘Oh that’s fine sir, no eggs in the sea bream.’

‘No, I’m sure. It’s just that there’s often coleslaw or somesuch in the salad.’

‘I’ll make absolutely sure they understand, sir.’

‘Thank you. A nice oil dressing is perfectly fine, just nothing mayonnaise-based.’

‘No problem sir. And may I compliment you on your choice.’

‘You may, thank you. Ooh, free bread.’

I apologized to the rest of the party for my precipitate diving into the basket of crusty bread by my plate. However, I was quickly able to observe that there had been egg on the small pillow of bread now residing in the capacious Wumber belly. After swilling a whole jug of water, the burning in my mouth, unusually, disappeared and I felt I might have been mistaken. Fortunately for all present, my subsequent and inevitable gastric distress only appeared as I completed the main course. A tiny amount of egg then.  Small enough to not be detected so that I could ingest it all – but sufficient to make me ill – sooner or later; as always. The evening’s delicious and rather expensive delights were offered to the god Sewer once we arrived home.

This is not a rare occurrence and I shall be a lot more careful about eating bread in public from now on. The baiting of bread has become irritatingly commonplace, second only to the seemingly obligatory cross-contamination found in Chinese restaurants; I’d say I’ve lost about £100 worth of Chinese in the toilet before it’s even been paid for – I no longer do them the honour of my business.

I’m quite understanding about the use of egg on the whole, though I am often bewildered by some instances of its use – and dispirited by the inconsistency of it. If you were interested enough to check the ingredients of pork pies and pasties, you would see that some are glazed with egg and some are not. Moreover, one manufacturer’s small pie might not be glazed, while its bigger brother is. This minefield is shifted periodically so that I, and the eternally patient Mrs Wumber, have to read all the ingredients of all products that could possibly contain egg, all the time.

My main frustration is that the use of egg is clearly unnecessary in these circumstances. If a pie needn’t be egg-glazed today, it doesn’t need it tomorrow. Bread hasn’t needed egg-glazes for thousands of years; why does it now? It smacks of pretentiousness and lack of thought. After all, a glaze is for the sake of appearance only, supposedly something to make a thing more attractive – even though it’s probably beneath opaque packaging.

The thoughtlessness is the worst thing. Somebody has to consider and write the list of allergens for the packaging. Why then, do they not arrive at the conclusion that the list is there to deter potential purchasers and the shorter it is, the more purchasers they might have. Some ingredients are unavoidable, but why use those that are demonstrably not? Egg is one of the most common food allergies, using more expensive ingredients to repel potential consumers – or make them ill – seems ridiculous to me. And as for spending money on eggs to adulterate something you give away – preprandial bread – bizarre!

I realize this will come across as somewhat self-focussed, but it isn’t at all. I don’t care what ingredients a restaurant uses, nor do I wish to be difficult. Just tell me what to avoid and I will do just that. But if they stopped putting egg on bread, pastries, mashed potato and the like, then they would improve their profit margin and not make some of us ill, with nobody being any the wiser.

And while we’re at it, the makers of triangular sandwiches might stop putting mayonnaise in every single sandwich and thus bring down the nation’s weight by several tonnes.