Posted on 12/12/2008 9:03:58 AM PST by bs9021
A Mix of Nuts
by: Deborah Lambert, December 12, 2008
The food Nazis are at it again. First they banned most of the yummy food groups that make it worthwhile for kids to attend school in the first place. Now theyve pounced on a North Carolina school district in order to crack down on a particularly dangerous foodpeanuts and peanut butter.
Of course, peanuts should be avoided by those children who experience allergic reactions. That goes without saying. ,p> But Investors Business Daily (IBD) recently reported that school officials notified parents to stop sending peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school with their kids. Compliance would be rewarded with a certificate of appreciation displayed at school to acknowledge the familys voluntary commitment to this project.
But thats not all.
The district is also shaming parents into washing their kids hands in the morning before they go on the bus, lest they transfer the dangerous peanut molecule and endanger a seatmate.
Just a small amount of food on your hands can get on desks, books, playground equipment, according to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
And heres the kicker. Despite the glut of information, warnings and sometimes an outright ban on peanuts in schools, the number of children with peanut allergies has doubled in the past ten years, says the CDC.
Could it be driven by media hype and parental neurosis?...
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Heard 150 people die from peanut allergies each year.
I thought that 150 deaths was from all food allergies, but maybe I misunderstood the stat.
Folks, this is not a bunch of liberals jumping on a cause with flimsy evidence to support it (i.e. Global Warming). Peanut allergies are very real and can be be quite deadly. I personally witnessed a 3-year-old boy go into anaphalactic shock because he was served a peanut butter sandwich by accident. He took one small bite, and that was enough. Despite injections of epinephrine, the doctors were unable to stabilize the condition, and he grew progessively worse until near death, but then his condition improved just in time. My wife was babysitting this child and some other children at the time. She served peanut butter sandwiches to the other children. She was somehow distracted, and absent-mindedly gave one to this boy as well, where ordinarily she would remember to feed him something else. She had been told some time before this that the child was allergic to peanuts, although the parents had said they thought it was just a mild allergy. I know this post is getting really long, but I’m recounting this in great detail because I think it’s important to illustrate how easily this kind of mistake can happen. Had the boy died, we probably would have lost everything (lawsuits). Even worse, my wife would have had to live the rest of her life with the guilt of causing the boy’s death. Until the boy recovered, this was easily the worst day of my life. If schools want to prohibit peanut products to prevent the possibility of accidental deadly contact, this seems sensible to me after what I’ve seen.
The near-tragedy involving that little boy notwithstanding, we’re headed down a slippery slope with this ban.
I had a co-worker who could go into shock even if she smelled an orange. It was easy enough not to eat them in her presence or to go outside and eat it, but at a school with hundreds of kids with potential food allergies, outlawing peanut butter, then let’s say oranges, will more than likely lead to other bannings all because one or two children might have a negative reaction. At what point do we just ban lunches from home?
This is not in any way intended to minimize the event you, your wife, and the little boy endured believe me. I thank God that other than a little lactose intolerance my family can eat anything. My son has a couple of friends who are a challenge to feed because of various allergies and when they are over we are very careful what they eat.
I’m also concerned about the slippery slope, and I’m not necessarily even advocating the ban, but I’m saying that there is at least some merit to the idea, unlike what you would normally expect. Peanut allergies are not a rare type allergy like your co-worker who goes into shock from the fragrance of an orange, peanuts are by far the single greatest cause of food allergy deaths, causing 54% of them.
There have been numerous studies, some recent, that blame isolating children from tree nuts and other foods for the life-threatening allergies. I have heard physicians advocate exposure from before birth, via the mother’s ingestion of the offending foods, and continuing as soon as they child can eat solid food in order to stop these allergies. In the same vein, children exposed to animals and dirt and the outdoors as soon as possible have fewer allergies. Also, many childhood allergies are *outgrown*. This happened to my son, whose asthma was exercise-induced.
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