A Beef

I had a knock on my door this week from my new-ish next door neighbour. Lovely bloke, very friendly. He looked a bit uncomfortable.

Him: "Um, do you eat meat?"

Me: "Yes."

Him: " Do you eat beef?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Him: "We got one of those HelloFresh boxes today."

For those who don't know HelloFresh, this is their website - https://www.hellofresh.co.uk

It's a great idea to encourage people to try new things and be more adventurous with their cooking. You order a box, and it comes with three recipes and all of the ingredients all packed up for you, all with fresh, organic ingredients. Great idea for busy people who like to cook, but who are in a rut when it comes to variety or lack the time to think of something new. But this conversation highlighted a problem with their system.

Him (looking slightly embarrassed): " Um, look, they gave us this beef, and I'm Hindu, and I'm not a veggie or anything, but I don't eat beef, and, um, it's not a lot, but do you want it? I know it's not a neighbourly cup of sugar or anything . . ."

Me: "Sure". He couldn't hand it to me fast enough, and handled with a disgusted look on his face like it was contaminated waste.

I'm not going to complain. One man's rubbish is another woman's treasure and all that - 

So out of sheer curiosity, I jumped on HelloFresh's website to see how much latitude customers get in picking things and to see how they accommodate dietary needs. As someone with food allergies and intolerances, nevermind the low fibre/low residue thing, this is an area of personal interest.

Here's what I discovered - While you have a choice of a 'Classic Box', 'Family Box' or 'Veggie Box', you only have a few meals (5 on offer, minimum order of 3) to choose from each week, and you pretty much get what they send you if you are a veggie. While their meals list common allergens, their labelling seems a bit hit and miss. For example, their 'Creamy Leek and Mustard Chicken' rightfully puts mustard on the common allergens list, they didn't put milk when the meal uses double cream. While the title may give away that there is milk in it, as someone who has successfully made 'creamy' foods without dairy (for example - http://foodlovingcrohnie.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/pudding-pops.html), that shouldn't be assumed. People with allergies often read the common allergens list first (there's a reason the EU requires these ingredients to be in bold on food labels), and the rest of the ingredients second, so it is important that food labellers get this right.

So I checked out their FAQ about special dietary requirements, and here is what they said - 'Whilst we don't offer specific dietary plans, because our ingredients are delivered to you in separate packets, if you have any specific dislikes you can simply omit or replace them with your own ingredients.'

Okay, I will give them points for packaging everything separately, but what they are pretty much saying is that you get what you get. Which would be fine if a 3 meals for 2 people Classic Box didn't cost close to £40. And as you don't have much choice in what you get, you are pretty much are paying for things you can't use and then are either passing things off to your neighbours, or throwing them out and wasting them. 

And I take issue with the words 'specific dislikes'. I actually really like grapes and their related products. Unfortunately, they really don't like me, as evidenced in the hives I break out in when I eat them. Every. Single. Time. 

That, my dears, is an allergy, not a 'dislike'. Just as my neighbour's situation is a religious matter, not a 'dislike'.

I'm not posting this to slam HelloFresh. I'm sure that have lots of happy and satisfied customers who are cooking loads of new, yummy things in their homes, and I'm all for companies helping people to do that. But it highlights that 'one size fits all' isn't the case when it comes to dietary needs.

This issue was highlighted in hospitals recently on one of my favourite IBD blogs. The writer, who has a stoma and is lactose intolerant, was recently hospitalised and blogged about what she was fed. Effectively, she subsisted on potatoes and dry fish because they couldn't accomdate her lactose intolerance - https://adventuresofthebaglady.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/chips-and-boiled-potato-why-can-hospitals-not-feed-people-with-intolerances-and-special-diets/

Lactose intolerance is seriously common and not difficult to accommodate. What got me in her blog was the hospital giving people who had had stoma surgery lentil soup and curries.

WTF?!!

And then they wondered why she wasn't getting better. I had similar problems when I was in hospital after my hysterectomy. Between their inability to accommodate my dietary needs and being sick from morphine, I pretty much ate nothing but rice krispies for 2 days.

Her blog post about this became mainstream news this week - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hospitals-serving-curries-patients-who-6820527

And she's started a campaign about hospital food - adventuresofthebaglady.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/a-fussy-or-unfeedable-mouth-hospital-food-standards-needed-in-wales-stoma-lactoseintolerant

I'll be sending her my experience!

As for that beef, I made bolognese, which gave me two meals with one more for the freezer. 

Cheers for that, HelloFresh!