Or is it something like Lawn Darts: “The kids that died aren’t here to vote”
I don’t recall, growing up, that ANYONE had a Peanut allergy. Bee Stings? Yeah. But not Peanuts.
I think it is a new thing my doctor told me they do exist but the amount of reports has increased to the point of almost impossibility when you get into way genes work and stuff. I think a lot of it is just stupid parents wanting their kids to be special trained to think they will die if they eat a peanut.
I gonna go with they didn’t make the cut… my guess… in the passed they didn’t live long enough to make it to kindergarten…like near sighted cave men…how long did they last…?
I’m a teacher.
Honestly, we have nearly zero peanut allergies where I work. We have 800 kids and about 3 allergies, none of which are super serious.
It’s quite rare, over-exaggerated, and a really weird phenomenon.
Which is just great…makes it kinda hard when we’re supposed to send the kids to school with snacks and 40% of them are some kinda peanut butter things.
My cousin who is 8 cant bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich to school because this kid apparently will hive up and start having trouble breathing if he even touches a surface that had peanut on it…yes it was in the note they sent him. That is so fast acting absorption he has there. My guess is a lot of it is physiological. Make the kid be afraid and sooner or later his fear will be symptoms. Its why placebos work and not belving medicine will work can make it less effective
Allergies in general are significantly more common than they used to be. One theory as to why this is true is the Hygiene Hypothesis:
(Note: I am just presenting the idea, not defending it. It’s a hypothesis and not a completely accepted explanation. I mention this because the last time I talked about the Hygiene Hypothesis on the SDMB someone decided that they had to argue with me because I was so gullible as to accept the hypothesis. Argue your case with medical researchers, not me.)
IIRC it was mentioned in some thread recently that peanut allergies have mysteriously skyrocketed in recent years, by something like a factor of ten or more. So if you didn’t run across it when you were younger, it was probably because it wasn’t there. Also, allergies aren’t necessarily a matter of dropping dead, they can be much more subtle like causing an upset stomach. If you aren’t looking for it you won’t necessarily recognize the connection between an upset stomach and eating peanuts.
Edit: Aha! It was this thread. Among other things mentioned is this report:
I did get the numbers wrong, oh well.
Well, I didn’t have ANY allergies til I was 24 or so…now I’m allergic to damnear everything in the wild (although I don’t have any food or medical allergies)
Perhaps it has something to do with the changed recipe in New Coke? It was about that time.
In France, peanut allergies are strikinglingly rare (even though the overall number of allergy sufferers is rising sharply). I’ve heard of only one person with this issue (a former manager) and it appeared when she was about 40 yo.
So, I can’t help but think it has to be related to lifestyle and my best guess (although uneducated) would be that it has to be related with people (and particularly children) eating peanut butter in the USA and not in France.
That said, assuming that American kids have been eating peanut butter for a long time, it wouldn’t explain the rise in numbers, but the already mentionned fact that allergies of every kind are becoming more and more common, for some reason, in all develloped countries could.
A whole article on food allergies in last week’s New Yorker.
I’ve found the proliferation of food allergies baffling as well. It’s a good article.
The school I worked at two years ago had about 300 kids and 8 kids with food allergies. Documented, throat-closing, epi-pen-worthy allergies. NOT overprotective parent allergies. The kids with allergies weren’t from the more affluent of the families, and one was a Vietnamese immigrant kindergartner.
It’s documented that allergies tend to go with the national cuisine. Europeans tend to have more hazelnut allergies. Middle Easterners have more sesame allergies. And so on.
From “Food Allergies” in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 2006:
I think you mean “psychological”.
Is it possible that we’re just starting to hear about it more? That it’s simply in the news more nowadays, than it was before.
I have a cousin (actually son of my cousin) who is truly, deathly, allergic to peanuts (which they took pains to point out is not really a “nut”…that said he avoids nuts altogether because something generically described as having “nuts” in it may well contain peanuts).
He carries an EpiPen with him at all times (literally). Force a peanut into him and he will die sans treatment in relatively short order from a sever allergic reaction.
His house is scrupulously devoid of anything that has peanuts or might have them.
His sister told me he once left for a weekend and the family took the chance to gorge on all things peanuts while he was away.
That said I think a disservice is done to the few with a real issues by those who just do not like peanuts. Claim an allergy and you can avoid things without seeming a pain in the ass.
One of my brothers claims he has an allergic reaction to onions to avoid them. There is no allergic reaction…we know because we have fed him them unknowingly and he was completely fine (do not test people’s claims of allergy…we were kids, was stupid, if he was allergic would have been bad but he was fine).
Such allergies do exist and they can be bizarrely severe. Just do not know the real claims from the bogus claims and get it wrong you could kill someone or at the least send them to the emergency room.
They are rare in the population however. Most people are fine.
I have a nephew who is very allergic to peanuts, which are legumes. He was over at my brother’s house (not the kid’s dad) and they served lentil soup. Lentils are also legumes. Guess who had a trip to the emergency room?
After I heard the story, it was obvious that he could be allergic to all legumes, but it was really nothing that I had considered before that.
According to the Onion, some werewolves are allergic to peanuts.
That’s how we discovered that my daughter is allergic to all legumes. Lentils are nasty little things. Up to then, she’d been eating regular beans with no problem, but now we avoid all legumes of any kind. Poor kid, she’s my adventurous eater and she misses beans.
I personally have an issue with the “if you’re allergic to one legume you must avoid all of them” meme. Yes, some people are in that position, but while I do react badly to some legumes (among them lentils, which I used to really enjoy) I am just fine with most of the others. Given how many food restrictions I already have I just can’t afford to exclude large categories of foods based on being allergic to just one or two of the group.
So I can’t eat lentils or peas any more, and I started having issues with peanuts so I gave those up before it got worse, but soy, chickpeas, green beans, and a lot of others I have no problem with, and I’m not giving them up unless I have to do so.
Of course this is something to discuss with an allergist, and it may or may not be right for any particular individual. But I really do think in some instances people go overboard on the restrictions, which can needlessly hamper a person.
That’s what blood testing with an allergist is for. I hope you’re not assuming that I restrict my daughter’s diet–as severely as I have to do–without some evidence.
Part of it is redefining what allergy means. For instance, my whole life I’ve had periods of really bad hives. I never did find out what I was allergic to. I even went to the Mayo Clinic when I was living in Rochester and Johns Hopkins when I lived in DC (not exactly bottom line medical centers) and neither could tell me what caused them.
But after six months to a year it goes away for years at a time.
My whole body would swell with hives. One time I came to work and my boss thought I’d been mugged as both eyes were black and my nose was swollen.
But it was just the hives.
But if this were to happen today they would call it anaphylaxis, even though my throat never swelled up and I never had any issues breathing. But in 2002 when it happend that is what my doctor said. I had NO trouble breathing, no swelling other than hives on my lips. Suddenly something I had that came and went my whole life was now anaphylaxis.
So I think it’s a redefining of terms that helps increase numbers.
Also TRUE allergies are different from reactions. Allergies are an immune system response. A lot of people have “reactions” to food and substances, that are REAL, but they are not allergies, but different medical issues.
This isn’t to say some people don’t have true anaphylaxis but now if you eat a peanut and you get a hive, suddenly it’s life threatening, while in my day you just ate the peanut butter and scratched.
And I am living proof that hives can come and go at random (Or whether what seems random).