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What happens if a chef develops an allergy or an intolerance?

I try to avoid gluten because it makes me feel unwell. If I was a chef, I'd have to be careful with something like pasta or cake or beer.

And I really can't have dairy. Certainly not fresh milk or cream or a bechamel. I could maybe have cheese or chocolate but not a lot.

And then I don't eat lamb (or venison or rabbit...) for personal reasons.

What happens to chefs who have these problems, or perhaps develop them after they have trained and worked as a chef?

Do they have to work in specialty sectors (weirdly I can eat almost all Chinese food, it seems to avoid all of the things I don't eat) like vegetarian or vegan? Would they retrain as a bartender? Do restaurants have to make allowances for them? Since almost everyone has something that they just don't like (coriander (cilantro) comes to mind). If not, surely some things are protected because of religion? Hard to imagine a chef is fired because they now can't eat pork after converting to another religion.

EDIT: To clarify, I am interested in experiences of people in the industry and what happened in real life cases. This is not an opinion based question and it barely was before someone decided to block this question. Geez

Leonhard Euler
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    Welcome to SA! While this feels like an interesting discussion question, it doesn't feel answerable. Each chef's circumstances are going to be different, and there's no general rule, particularly when you think of this as a worldwide question. – FuzzyChef Jan 20 '23 at 17:26
  • (for example, a chef with gluten allergy in Vietnam would hardly be inhibited at all) – FuzzyChef Jan 20 '23 at 18:00
  • I recall there being a vegan chef in one season of Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen. She didn't win, but as she couldn't taste half the food, that doesn't really surprise me. She had to make everything by look & feel. – Tetsujin Jan 20 '23 at 18:58
  • @FuzzyChef I am just interested in some examples of when a chef couldn't eat something. I only listed a few things to show that there was an interesting spread of reasons, some better than others, for why someone, including chefs, couldn't eat something. Please reverse the block on this question. It's very reasonable and of interest to lots of people. – Leonhard Euler Jan 21 '23 at 18:12
  • @LeonhardEuler as everywhere on the network, we only accept questions which will have one objectively correct answer. "A list of examples" is not the kind of thing you can ask for. See also https://cooking.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask, your question fits the first four of the five criteria for question we don't answer. – rumtscho Jan 21 '23 at 18:21
  • Yeah, this is not a discussion forum. I suggest joining eGullet and asking there. – FuzzyChef Jan 21 '23 at 20:20
  • Now, if you wanted to ask: "I have a severe dairy intolerance, how could I still become a chef in Location" then that's a question that potentially has a verifiable answer. – FuzzyChef Jan 22 '23 at 21:43
  • I always thought a goalpost for being a true cook vs. someone-who-cooks is being able to cook things very well that you don't eat/like. For me it's mushrooms. True dietary restrictions like religious or allergy-based ones would be real tough though, I'd think. Unless you're the Beethoven of chefs you HAVE to be able to taste things, at least the first few times, to know if they'll be any good. – Peter Moore Jan 27 '23 at 13:38

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The same thing that happens to anyone who finds themself unable to effectively do their job: They find a new job.

You don’t need to chow down on massive amounts of food to be a chef, but you do need to taste things. So something like a dairy intolerance would probably be okay. But if someone’s allergic, or morally opposed, to tasting ingredients in food they have to taste, they won’t be able to cook them anymore.

Any legal aspects are off-topic for this site.

Sneftel
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  • It would become quite interesting if they couldn't have something because of a protected characteristic like religion or disability - while protections aren't absolute it's not simply a matter of forcing them out either. I'm not sure we can separate the legal aspects. – Chris H Jan 20 '23 at 16:47
  • We can't comment on the legal aspects in SA; we're not lawyers, let alone lawyers with expertise in many employment jurisdictions. – FuzzyChef Jan 20 '23 at 17:05
  • Perhaps the chef could collect disability since his primary profession is made unavailable due to medical concerns... – gnicko Jan 21 '23 at 01:51