Food and its Functions

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I'm a person who look at food beyond eating, feeding and nutrition. I look at it too as a celebration of love, of friendship, of solidarity. Because of this, most of the time I don't refuse the food served, although I control the quantity of intake. It is not my practice to ask for alternative food. It's just a lot of bother. However, if I know in advance the kind of food to be served, I will ask my family to leave for me at home such fibrous foods as vegetables and fruits. These serve as my cleansing diet, which I try to take immediately at home, depending on my capacity to take in more. However, if the food to which I have been invited to share also consists of generous helpings of fruits and vegetables, then I will not be taking a cleansing diet immediately at home. In this manner, by every meal I bind ever more strongly my relationship with friends, relatives and loved ones, and, at the same time, I keep myself healthy despite the food that I ingest with them. Fortunately, I do have an adventurous taste, and I consider every meal as a food-tasting adventure. I also don't have religious and cultural restrictions to my diet, and fortunately no health restrictions too. What I'm doing may be difficult for anyone with religious, cultural, or medical restrictions to certain foods, or whose taste is not as adventurous as mine, or whose stomach may easily be vanquished. Have you been confronted with this kind of situation? How do you cope? Do you tell your host/ess that you cannot eat the food being served and will you ask for other food? Or will you simply go through the whole episode and endure without eating or drinking and tell your host/ess that you are full? Will you refuse if your host/ess brings you a plate which is just for you that contains food offensive to your taste, if not to your religious and cultural sensibilities?