Time Magazine Online is running an interesting article about America’s recent obsession with allergies to peanuts and peanut products. Being a relatively recent high school graduate (2006), I can safely say that I remember when my school started implementing precautions against peanuts. It seems like such a ridiculous thing. I understand that there are people who are severely allergic to peanuts and should not come into contact with them, but as the article points out, more people die from bee stings a year and yet we still plant flowers and other plants that attract bees in public places. There are so few people who are actually deathly allergic to peanuts that to be so concerned and obsessed with them seems really pointless. As the article points out:
As more and more schools set up peanut-free zones and as food manufacturers add warning labels that their products might contain particles of peanuts, soy or other allergens, the abundance of caution is starting to trigger a backlash. Given all the attention paid in recent years to food allergies, the number of people in the U.S. who die from them–15 to 20 a year–is relatively small. More people die each year from bee stings. “But we don’t remove flowers from schools or playgrounds,” Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, commented recently in the British Medical Journal. When asked about his editorial, which he wrote after his son’s school bus had to be evacuated because someone spotted a peanut on board, he said, “We should be having a sober-minded, public-health debate, and instead the overresponse to food allergies is preposterous.”
An entire bus had to be evacuated because there was a single peanut on board. That is incredibly ridiculous. The article is definitely worth a read though because it really points out some of the absurdity of our unhealthy obsession with peanuts and allergies to peanut products.
