DIAGRAMMING DINERS’ DIETS:

These days, it’s not uncommon to give a dinner party where you find that one person’s a vegan, a second eats gluten free, the third is allergic to tree nuts, and a fourth will not eat shellfish or berries. After you add up all the religious and moral prohibitions, the allergies, the sensitivities, and the preferences, what remains to serve your guests is … a nice big helping of air. HEPA-filtered, low-humidity air.

I recently saw just such a problem in my Twitter feed: One brunch guest was a vegetarian and another guest had eschewed gluten, nuts and dairy products. How do you cope with such a conundrum?

There are three basic strategies you can employ here: Capitulation, Divide and Conquer, or Armistice.

Or just throw cocktail parties.