Recipe for success: how to decline a friend’s dinner disaster

Q: I regularly catch up with friends for a bring-a-plate lunch. We’re all pretty good cooks, except for one friend who is terrible; she doesn’t follow a recipe and just makes it up as she goes. How do I decline her dish and only eat the other dishes?
J.C., Ryde, NSW

A: I have a great solution and it’s an acronym: FODMAP. It’s a special diet where you’re supposed to avoid all “fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols”, but I have no idea what any of those words mean, so I prefer “Food Offensive, Disgusting Meal, Avoid Plate”.

It’s designed for people with gut problems and it’s extremely complicated: you can only eat certain vegies, certain fruits, certain proteins – you’re really only 100 per cent safe with sunflower seeds and, even then, just a couple.

My doctor put me on the FODMAP diet a couple of years ago and not only has it helped my gut health, it’s got me out of eating anything I don’t want to eat. You just say, “Sorry, I’m on the FODMAP diet.

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I think there’s fermentable oligosaccharides in your dish. Yep, I can see them. What a shame, it looks so delicious! Arghhhh, bloody FODMAP!” Nobody’s feelings get hurt and it works on any foodstuff. Someone could offer you a bowl of boiled rice and if you don’t want it, just make something up: “Sorry, no short-chain monosaccharide polymers after 6pm. It’s 6.02. Bloody FODMAP. But I can eat cake. Got any cake?”

That’s all you need to do. Tell your terrible-cook friend that you’re a FODMAPPER and unfortunately, as it turns out, you can eat everyone’s dishes except hers (if you go into a bit of detail on possible post-meal irritable-bowel effects, you’ll notice the plate moves past you extra-fast). FODMAP: it’s also Fiendishly Outstanding, Deviously Manipulative, Artfully Persuasive.

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