Well, sense of smell does work by molecules from the thing being smelt entering your nose and being absorbed. (Basic info here). So it might be possible to get a reaction that way.
That’s not to say that you’re wrong about this however. I have no idea whether the amount of peanut that has to be absorbed to smell them (a very tiny quantity I am sure) is enough to trigger his reaction, or if, as you say, it is psychosomatic.
Incredibly small amounts of allergens can trigger lethal reactions. A single bee-sting can kill, and that is but a fraction of a ml of fluid.
A date of mine once wound up in the ER after consuming some tomato sauce. The tomato sauce had been contaminated by a piece of fish small enough to be removed with a teaspoon. The fish had been removed 20 minutes before our arrival at the buffet, so her reaction was not psychosomatic. (We found out about it because we asked how she had gotten the fish, her sole food allergy and something she knew could kill her.)
As for smelling it, I used to be deathly allergic to Mesquite, a kind of tree. These days, since I have been on treatments, it is only a problem during the spring. However, I have discovered I can’t tolerate the smoke from burning it, either. I found out by going to Spring Creek Barbeque, a chain that has its smokers etc, placed at the front of the line. I went in with a friend, and in seconds, started sniffling, choking and tearing up. I knew I was having an allergic reaction, but I didn’ t know why. It wasn’t until I got into the dining area (where the air was smoke-free) that I realized what had happened. The waitress bringing our drinks asked us how we liked those “mesquite smoked ribs.”
I’m sure you’re thinking, “DUH! You breathed in great big lungfulls of the stuff!” The unusual thing about that is that allergies to things like trees are usually to their pollens only. The reaction I had was quite unusual.
Since allergies are immune system related, they can be eliminated as one’s immune system comes back into balance. Most holistic physicians believe and have seen allergies vanish nearly as quickly as they showed up. Unfortunately, modern Western science is dumbfounded by the immune system, and typically reacts by trying to suppress it’s functioning. As you might imagine, forcibly suppressing the reaction of an immune system that is overreacting because it has nothing to do, is not exactly the way to go. Since certain circles argue that Western midicine’s reliance on antibiotics, steroids, and other non-immune system friendly substances are the actual cause of most immune disfunction, you can see why they’d cringe at suppressive therapy. Holistic medicines, treat the body as a whole, where the misfunction of one part is indicative of an imbalance in the whole - which can be treated. Ask your M.D. about the causes of immune disfunctions or cancers, and wait for the blank stare - just as they give you some antibiotics for your flu.
Ignore the terse tone - board ate the first three attempts to post.
Anyway, akrako1, while you personally believe " ** we need enough people to go into shock to force companies to label ingredients and possible contaminants**," it isn’t likely. Food allergies are rare, life-threatening food allergies are almost unknown. Even the highest estimates put it at 150 deaths annually. That’s 150 deaths each year - some in people who are not hale and hearty but are compromised by genetic conditions, recent chemo, or a full-blown AIDS - from an activity that we all engage in two or more times every single day.
The average bear are more likely to be severely injured by something from a high shelf falling on your head at Costco than to have a life-threatening reaction to something in the picnic basket. At least 50 people die from accidents each year in National parks, 4,000 people drown every year, and almost 500 people manage to electrocute themselves annually. You can find all of this on the CDC website.
Incidentally, Kraft doesn’t get to decide what natural flavorings are - the FDA, USDA, and FTC have regulations about labeling.
Re: j.c. - my point about non-labeling wasn’t necessarily directed toward allergies, but more toward food intolerances. I follow a strict food intolerance diet, derived from a blood test, that tells me what I cannot digest. According to the philosophy of the test that I took, everyone is intolerant to something. This is where the ingredient problem comes into play. The unknown additives can wreak havoc on someone intolerant to that substance. While it won’t result in their death, it can cause intense pain and discomfort. I was simply making the point that it takes a good amount of people to complain, for products to be labeled properly. And while peanuts are one of the few currently accepted allergies - new ones may emerge, and further force strict labeling.
It’s fun how people can quantize death and thus apply a value to it. I’m sure if you talk to the families of people dead from food alergies, they’d agree that only a few deaths isn’t worth properly labeling food.
As far as ‘natural flavorings’ - I’m sure there are regulations - but that doesn’t help people trying to cut out a certain substance.
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I thought corn syrup was just sugar that was made from corn? Does it have anything except sucrose in it?
People have to quantify death. There is nothing funny about it. It’s a fact of life.
It’s very sad when an old person, like Larry Hagman, can’t get a new liver because some young child when a congentical defect needs the liver… oh, wait. That didn’t happen. Larry did get a liver.
On the other hand, we’ve obviously decided that the benefit of having cars is worth the cost of all the deaths.
What does philosophy have to do with this? This is a question of scientific fact. The statement that everyone is intolerant to something is either true, or it is false, and either way, it is factually testable. But if the test you took assumes a priori that everyone is intolerant to something, then is it really significant that it found you intolerant to a few things?
As for “holistic” medicine, it’s true that the kind of medicine which works doesn’t know much about autoimmune disorders. But what makes you think that any other “medicine” is any better?
THe only reason I stated the philosophy of the Intolernace test iI took, was to make the point that most everyone is intolerant to something, and thus might some day want to try and cut that food entirely out. I thought this was a pretty simple point. It pertains to the discussion at hand and my point about labeling of possible allergens and intolerances. I’m sorry if this confused you. As far as the merits of a test that assumes everyone is intolerant, it makes perfect sense to me. Why would a singe individual have the capacity to properly digest every type of food on the planet? It would make more sense to me that people would adapt to only making the digestive juices for their local type of food. Most recent ex-vegetarians will tell you of the discomfort from eating a large meal of meat, until their body begins producting proper enzymes. Which it does… but apply this to a sedimentary population - and I can imagine there’d be some differences between geographic groups. Makes sense to me.
Even though I don’t want to go into an alternative health debate here, experience tells me that other types of medicine are better with autoimmune disorders. I’ve personally known people suffering from rheumatiod arthritis and lupus that have benefited greatly from alternative medicine. My mother-in-law is an ND, so I’m constantly exposed to 1st and 2nd hand accounts of all kinds of conditions cured or helped by holistic medicine.
akrako1Why should we recognize your experience? My experience tells me that brindle dogs make the best pets. That’s not science. That’s my experience - and at the root of that experience is an attraction to brindle dogs that leads me to seek out brindle dogs and to pay less attention to good and bad dogs of other colors.
Why does it make perfect sense to you that everyone is intolerant to something? Why not consider that over the years we upright bipeds have defined “food” as the stuff most of us can digest?
I think Chronos and I are looking for our old friend reproducible results. If you wanted to take my experience with brindle dogs as your guide for pet shopping, you could easily get into to trouble. Many fighting breeds - the kind of charming but badly socialized dog who can end up in badly-run shelters - are brindle. If you took a scientific view on your pet hunt, you’d find a dog who would fit into your life.
Back to the OP. Some of us have problems - an allergy, a handicap, a phobia - and it simply isn’t reasonable to expect everyone to reinvent the world for our unique needs. Despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, the rollers I know tend to call ahead when flying or booking a hotel, just to make sure things go smoothly. (The ADA says nothing about having to wait 30 minutes while someone hunts up the key to the special needs elevator.) That’s extra time they take, because of their unique needs.
It seems odd to me that, for instance, an entire city will ban peanuts from the YMCA day camps - meaning that they Y must buy more expensive lunches with their shrinking budgets and sacrifice that much more staff and volunteer time to vetting all the food that enters the building - rather than get a few pre-loaded injection kits and explain to parents that they’ll do their best to accommodate children with peanut allergies… if there happens to be such a child in that town. Especially when the odds are high that one day, one child will come to camp with peanut buttery hands or clothes from a PB&J breakfast.
A few things- flu is a viral infection. If your MD prescribes antibiotics, its not because of his medical judgement and training (since those would tell him that an antibiotic would be completely ineffective), but because of external pressures-HMO’s, Insurance companies, and insistent patients who won’t leave the office without a pill-who all seem to know medicine better than the person with the degree.
While the cause of allergies is still open to question, the proper treatment is not. Allergy injections are the preferred treatment, and they work by STIMULATING the immune system, not by supressing it. They do so by administering very small doses of the allergens into the body; those doses are slowly increased over time. The body’s immune system becomes more and more tolerant of the allergen, recognizing lower levels as “normal” rather than as pathogens. Only when a person’s allergies are severe or when the person does not want injection therapy does medication become preferred. For instance, my allergies were so severe that my immune system had to be supressed for 3 years while on injection therapy. Without the steroids and antihisimines, I stopped breathing in about 3 days. Now, after years of treatement, I take no medication, but still take injections.
As for intolerances, most of those are based on evolving in a culture that historically does not consume that kind of food, like the fact that many Asians are lactose intolerant. This doesn’t mean they have an allergy, what it means is they lack a digestive enzyme that allows them to digest dairy products. This is quite different from the immune response to an allergen.
I realize that intolerances are different from allergies. I was just bringing it up to further my point that food is not properly labeled. And the label ‘May Contain Peanuts’ simply illustrates that. I was just trying to make a simple point about labeling. Geez.
My bad! I guess I just misunderstood your post. I’m used to dealing with people who don’t get it.
And yeah, labeling is pretty sketchy, but much better than 20 years ago. And I just heard that the gov’t is looking into improving the labels. One can only hope.
While it is unreasonable to expect people to bend over backwards to accomidate phobias, etc. food allergies are a different matter, IMHO. We’re talking about the nation’s food supply and how everything has become “cross contaminated” with traces of this and that.
As a test, go to your pantry, or your grocery store, and read labels on your favorite foods. Look for peanuts, soy and corn. Unless you eat only organic foods or some such (and that’s no guarantee), you’ll find at least one of them in almost everything you eat. Sometimes its a filler, or a flavor enhancer, or a thickener, but you’ll find them. If its not labeled…
Or, perhaps you go into a cafeteria or eat at a buffet. What happens when a steam-tray loses its serving utinsel? Unless another one appears rapidly, someone will grab one from an adjacent steam-tray- cross contamination.
Even the professionals sometimes err. I had to spend some time in the hospital getting my ACL and MCL repaired. I told them about my food allergies. After 2 days of eating only sparse amounts of food, the dietician came to ask what was wrong. Showing her the labels, I pointed out to her that half of what I was being served contained things I was allergic to.
The allergic person has to be careful, yes, but others have to do their part. It does us no good to read the labels and ask for consideration if people around us don’t respect our requests. We’re not “kidding,” its not “psychosomatic,” don’t ignore us, and please, PLEASE don’t slip us what we’re allergic to in an effort to test us. If the person really is allergic, not only will that person get sick, but you could face criminal liability. Assault, defined as an unauthorized touching, can be applied to the introduction of harmful substance into someone’s food.
Plus you’d really feel bad if the person died while you were testing them.
Not as bad as the dead person.
When peanut allergies lead to tragedy, no one feels worse than Mr. Peanut. Sure, he has a hard outer shell, but inside …
That’s just what he wants you to think…
But, be that as it may, his buddy Mr. Corn is a cereal killer.
It is possible for someone to be so allergic to a substance that the minute amount of particles in the air required to generate a scent could trigger a reaction. Obviously, the more powdered/fragmented the substance the more of a problem this is, because more stuff gets into the air.
But, more likely, it’s a conditioned reflex.
Here’s how that works: Every time our hypothetical peanut-allergic eats a peanut or something peanut flavored he has a horrific reaction - all over body hives, swelling throat, wheezing, tearing eyes swelling shut, running nose, involuntary and forceful urination and defecation, vomiting — this is really unpleasent stuff, folks. Maybe even seizures.
Well, after a few go-rounds of that your body has learned to associate peanuts with severe illness the way Pavlov’s dog learned to associate a bell with dinner. Conditioned reflexes are probably a survival strategy, and really, if you’re near to a toxic (to you) substance then CR induced vomiting is actually a pretty good way to avoid the problem - you can’t swallow a peanut and vomit at the same time.
Likewise, after my allergy problem was analysed and the doctor handed my mom the list of forbidden foods she said “Hey, wait - these are all the things she hates to eat” and the doc said “Well, yes - if something makes you sick you aren’t going to like it.”
This is why the smell of most Mexican cooking makes my stomach queasy - I’m allergic to corn and tomatoes (actually, I now suspect the corn thing may be intolerance, but even if true, I shouldn’t eat it. Tomatoes, however, are definitely an allergy for me). My body has learned that consumption of those things leads to much unplesentness. By shutting down my appetite and making me feel uncomfortable in close proximity to such things it’s actually protecting me from eating these things.
Now, my husband (who loves Mexican food) has found a very few Mexican restaurants able/willing to accomodate my difficulties (I have extremely limited food choices, of course, but it is possible). I no longer feel queasy going into those particular restaurants because my body/mind has learned that I can eat there without getting ill.
So, if someone with a peanut allergy says the smell of peanuts makes him ill - well, it probably does. But it’s not an irrational or crazy thing, it’s a protective thing for that person. Does that mean we should make the world a peanut-free zone for that person? No. But some consideration for the guy’s real problem - and real nausea - should be made.
Have you ever actually seen one of those “pre-loaded injector kits”? Read the warning label - the first three “possible side effects” listed are heart attack, stroke, and death. The little package insert also cautions that improper administration can lead to the amputation of limbs.
This stuff is a little more dangerous than Benadryl syrup.
Also keep in mind the non-medical day camp staff may have to correctly administer this stuff in a matter of seconds to prevent fatal shock, without killing the kid in the process. Those “epi-pens” also come in different doses based roughly on body weight. Too big a dose, the medicine kills or permanently screws up the kid. Too little, the kid can go into shock and die, or not recover enough lung function to breathe and maybe experience permanent brain damage.
All of which is why the best strategy is to AVOID the problem in the first place.
In the bad old days, kids that allergic simply weren’t allowed to go to Y day camp - the parents were told “sorry, we can’t handle that” and the kid stayed home all summer. Is that a better or worse solution? I don’t know, I could probably argue it either way.
I think, however, that at a certain point parents have to realize that yes, little Timmy or Sally has a real and permanent limitation and do some adjusting themselves.
I am responsible for what goes into my body. I ask a lot of questions, I read labels, I do a lot of cooking from scratch (there are almost no “convenience meals” I can eat), and if necessary I skip the buffet or the dinner to protect my health (C’mon - I’m an American, I’ve got enough flab to tide me over a couple of days if necessary). I don’t expect others to stop eating food that is good for them just because I can’t have it.
There’s a big problem, though, with trying to shape the entire day camp’s menu around those kids with allergies. What about people with severe wheat allergies, for instance? Should the camp stop serving bread of any sort? And then there are people with dairy allergies (no, I don’t mean lactose intolerance, I mean allergies)? One of my mom’s friends used to be deathly allergic to both wheat and dairy, in minute traces (fortunately, she’s not so severe now). The thing is, if you tried to accomodate every allergy, or even just every allergy as common as peanuts, you’d end up not feeding anyone anything.
I don’t know what the solution is. It’s very reasonable, for instance, for the school or camp or whatever to have a variety of menu choices, so that someone with a common allergy can (probably) choose something safe. And of course, the folks serving the meals should make certain that they don’t run out of those choices before the allergic kids get through the line. It’s probably also reasonable to offer special choices for those kids with unusual allergies, by arrangement. But it’s impractical to try to limit everyone’s menu to accomodate the allergic kids. If that means that little Timmy can’t go to camp with everyone else, well, that sucks, but it sucks that he has the allergy in the first place. There’s only so much that you can do.