Posted on 07/18/2018 5:26:29 AM PDT by SMGFan
WESTON, Florida -- A Florida mother blames the death of her 15-year-old daughter on what she calls confusing packaging for Reese's Chips Ahoy cookies.
In a July 12 Facebook post, Kellie Travers-Stafford wrote that her daughter Alexi mistakenly ate one of the cookies at a friend's house despite her peanut allergy, because the top of the familiar red packaging was peeled back, hiding the Reese's label.
She says Alexi felt tingling in her mouth on June 25 and they administered two Epipens but Alexi quickly went into anaphylactic shock, stopped breathing and died within an hour and a half of eating the cookie.
"As a mother who diligently taught her the ropes of what was okay to ingest and what was not, I feel lost and angry because she knew her limits and was aware of familiar packaging, she knew what "safe" was," Travers-Stafford said in the post. "A small added indication on the pulled back flap on a familiar red package wasn't enough to call out to her that there was "peanut product" in the cookies before it was too late."
Travers-Stafford, who lives in Weston, which is near Fort Lauderdale, said she is sharing Alexi's story to "spread awareness."
(Excerpt) Read more at abc7ny.com ...
Umm... it’s Reese’s.
I don't think you can blame the packaging. If you see "Reese's, you think Peanut butter.
Looking for someone to blame (with the added benefit of a deep pocket).
A high schooler in our small town, while watching the local football game, ate a Whatchmacallit candy bar, not realizing it had peanut meal in it. Even though attended by two doctors and the ambulance crew, they could not save the boy.
Bingo.
Two epipens sounds like an overreaction for one cookie.
Was that Liberal Mom teaching or just Good Old Fashion Mom Teaching. There is a Huge Difference.
I wonder the same thing. I’m 66 and don’t ever recall hearing abou this until maybe 20 years ago. Of course, the internet took off 20 years ago and now we get highly local stories like this all the time. Has it always been with us? Is it something new? What changed?
I was thinking the same thing, as a child I never heard of people dying from these allergic reactions. Me, and all my friends, ate basically anything we were given at my house or their house and the idea of being careful of allergies was never brought up.
Even as an adult in the military in the 70’s and 80’s I cannot remember anyone having these kind of major reactions.
You obviously don’t know anyone with a peanut allergy. My son when he was 6 required 7 Epi pens (adult not chilld size) further iv doses in the hospital and a helicopter ride to children’s ICU. For ONE bite of a cookie. Had he not known something was wrong when it hit his mouth his story may well have ended like this one.
Yes people used to say that they “choked” on the peanuts, or they just choked and no mention of peanuts.
Yeah. I think a lot of “scientific studies” are just boondoggles, but I would really like to see researchers pin down why peanut allergies became a big deal. When I was a kid, peanut butter was a primary food choice for virtually every kid in school. No one died. No one “had a reaction”.
Today, we take extreme precautions, and still it’s not enough: kids die.
What changed?
“Overreaction”? The girl DIED!
Terrible tragedy for this family. It shows you how quickly an innocent mistake can become deadly.
The package clearly shows Reese’s on it. And I’m guessing that all Chips Ahoy packaging has a warning that the cookies are processed in a place where peanuts are processed. I could be wrong.
Some people “always” died from peanut allergy. One reason there is more incidence now is that allergic people are more likely to live through their episodes and pass on their genes. Another reason is that peanuts are found in many more foods than previously. There were probably “always” many people allergic to peanuts (or other nuts), but they never encountered the food so it didn’t matter.
And how - and when, does this deadly allergy manifest itself?
I mean, everyone eats peanut butter for the first time SOMETIME - is every “first time” like playing Russian Roulette?
When I was going through elementary school during the 1970s, most of us brought peanut butter sandwiches to school (I didn't have a school cafeteria until high school). We would have laughed then at anybody who said they were allergic to peanuts.
Then when I was sending my children through school, I would constantly get notices from the school warning me against having my children bring any peanut products into the school. So something definitely changed. Could it be the genetics in the peanuts we are growing?
The only peanut sanctuary left is the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain, which not only puts a pail of peanuts on every table but has a waiting area with a huge barrel of peanuts and which patrons are encouraged to throw the peanut shells to the floor.
I'm amazed that this chain hasn't come under attack yet from the peanut-nazi crowd. Until they do, it's one of my favorite places to eat out because I love peanuts. I could eat them all day long.
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