That has been exactly my experience:
The funny thing, in the County (PEC) locals (around 10,000 people over a fairly large geographic area) have less overall allergies, adversions, preferences than the average person coming from urban areas, specifically Toronto. Most inquiries for alterations of all sorts are from this demographic. How would I know people ask. Because we are seasonal and fully booked each night and always have a name and number and the area code are generally, a very high percentage, the GTA which is Toronto and the surrounding area. I guess country (rural) people are just more healthy lol.That has been exactly my experience:
"I'm allergic to onions."
"Are you allergic or do you just not like them?"
"Oh, I'm allergic. It's something in the enzymes."
"So, no onion...no onion powder...no onion salt...?"
"Well, I can eat them if I have to, they just need to be chopped up fine, so I can't see them."
Butthead.
That is my hypothesis. The gluten thing has gone from almost non existent 10 years ago to a multi billion dollar business. As people get more informed with nutrition in general, the waist size and disease of the general population continues to increase. makes no sense to me, except maybe misinformation and fully entrenched motives with large companies that are only encouraged by increase profit margins and happy shareholders.
Purely my opinion, but a lot of it in my extended family (and my wife's) appears to be generational. Every last one of our adult nieces and nephews have "allergies" or "intolerances" - and I put those in quotes intentionally because when pressed, every single one of them are self-diagnosed, nothing from a doctor.
The people that actually have celiac are benefiting. They have many more delicious offering than at any other time. They're laughing all the way to the bakery.
To a chef, well any reputable one when the word allergy is spoken it's very serious stuff, peoples lives are at risk and we can't take it upon our selves to second guess, ever. Saying that, those people that have allergies do make it known to us, and we work around it if we can. Others have a card they're issued by their Dr. that lists allergies and our regulars always provide us with one and have on file. Saying that a high % of people that say their allergic is pretty much poppycock.
No. With the pumpkin, I always just figured it was something to do with the pumpkin guts drying on my hands and arms as we cleaned them. We always did quite a few, several each. But, then DD got old enough to start cleaning and carving on her own and the same thing happened to her. We don't know about her children because we switched to carving the fake pumpkins once they started making the almost real looking ones. DD won't eat eggplant because it's 1 of her ewww foods so we don't know how it affects her or her kids because they are the same way about it.