Food allergies, and Mom rant

So yesterday I called Mom and asked her some questions about family medical history -- specifically, when she, her sister, and our maternal grandmother had hit menopause. The answer was around age 44, in all cases (though Mom's was surgical). Mom, of course, decided to attribute this to "food allergies". Er, no, 44 is a perfectly normal age for hitting menopause. And I told her so.

Mom attributes everything to food allergies. There's a saying, "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well, that's our Mom. Grr....

Also frustrating is her tendency to try foods she should know better than to eat, even though she can't read the label. I have more food allergies than she does, and I read labels religiously. I don't try new stuff very often; I know what foods I can eat, and I stick with them. She claims to read labels, but every once in a while she'll assume that a food is safe and eat it. The most recent episode involved a ham with a glaze on it. Er...

I'd told her a while ago that one particular ham from Safeway was cured with sugar and honey, rather than dextrose, and she's since eaten that ham without incident. ALL other hams I've found have some kind of corn or wheat contamination in them. So what does she do? She eats ham that has a glaze on it at a Christmas party (i.e., the ham was from an unknown source and therefore suspect). The glaze had wheat in it. She had a celiac episode, and felt sick for several days afterward.

She should simply know better by now.

If you confront her on these things, she'll attribute her stupid behavior to... food allergies. But fer Crissakes, woman, can't you LEARN from your mistakes? That's just dumb.