The last 10 or 20 years I’ve heard so much about this peanut thing. I can’t remember a single case of the same thing going back through all my younger days, youth and childhood.
>>The last 10 or 20 years I’ve heard so much about this peanut thing. I can’t remember a single case of the same thing going back through all my younger days, youth and childhood.<<
I agree it is most strange. When I was a kid we ate PB&J sandwiches all the time. I never once heard of someone who was allergic (MUI PB is not allowed in most/all schools).
That and autism and can’t be scientifically traced to anything so far.
Response from chemical and biotech firms pumping our environment full of random artificial junk:
“I didn’t do it, no one saw me do it, you can’t prove anything!”
Same observations here -
Interesting article with some hypothesis.
http://home.allergicchild.com/possible-causes-of-food-allergies/
Ditto and I’m 50 something.
Lord knows how we made it this far without bicycle helmets and school grief counselors.
” I can’t remember a single case of the same thing going back through all my younger days, youth and childhood.”
Part of that...we didn’t have the means of communication back then that we have now. Think about it. Something that occurs on the other side of the world is suddenly news and posted at a hundred (thousand?) internet websites within minutes...usually with pictures and running commentary.
Throw in the fact that EVERYBODY wants EVERYONE EVERYWHERE to know EVERYTHING they’re doing right this second ALL THE TIME, and you have a world of information overload.
When we were young, bad things that happened probably just stayed in the dark. Our parents maybe even made efforts to shield us from the bad side of life.
Agree.
Never saw or heard of such things when growing up.
Back in those days you only got local news stories in the paper and since this event occurred in Montreal, you never would have heard of it.
The internet has provided us with news about everything happening everywhere...............
Me either
I grew up in peanut country. Kids would help with the planting and harvesting. There wasn’t anyone who wasn’t in contact with someone who had been around peanuts or touched or breathed peanut dust. School lunch trays had free government peanut butter on them every day. PBJ was the standard sack lunch and afterschool snack. No one ever heard of peanut allergies.
Recently, doctors are beginning to say to expose your child to peanuts early so they won’t develop allergies later. Makes sense.
My older brother had severe peanut and soybean allergies growing up. This was in the 60s. He survived, but only because he was very careful, and pretty lucky.
Lots of kids with severe allergies just died back in those days. There were no Epipens. My brother had an inhaler, and Primatine was available over-the-counter, but if he had a severe attack, it was a race to the hospital.
As an adult, the problem has become less severe. He is still careful, though.
The thing is, unless you were a member of the family, my brothers allergies were not your problem. He was responsible for taking care of himself. He did not eat anything without knowing what was in it. He would no more eat a brownie at a bake sale than he would jump off the roof of the house. (Come to think of it, we jumped off the roof of the house all the time)
It was not another parent's responsibility to keep peanuts out of the school building. It was his responsibility to keep them out of his mouth. He was a in very small minority, and it was never expected that the entire world would change to accommodate his particular problem.
Sort of like the so-called high infant mortality rate in the US. It is only because we are better at having them survive until childbirth. In other countries with a better rate those babies are "born dead" instead of kept alive for awhile while trying to save them.
I think it has a lot to do with parents’ paranoia about exposing their infants to germs. They never allow their immune systems to fully develop. An immune system is like a muscle, use it or lose it.
Believe it or not, some of these protein allergies (the big ones, nuts, shellfish) may come from vaccines and their immune adjuvants given to NEWBORNS who don’t have immune systems yet.
Whatever your thoughts on vaccines (I think their current formulations and combos are ancient and GHASTLY and risk too much harm), there is absolute evidence that jamming newborns with immune shock is not good science. No one should receive them until age 2 and then only depending on total health in child and associated bacterial biome.