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 ...
Cross-contamination is a problem....there’s such a thing as “nut dust” In the bakery, it falls on other products that dont actually contain nuts......and contaminates them.
I do not have a peanut allergy (nuts fall under four seprate botanical categories).....but I am violently allergic to other nuts.
I did not eat a nut....but I ate a cookie that was made with other cookies near nuts....and had to be rushed to the hospital.
I think I have read in the past couple years that it is now recommended to start giving babies tiny bites of peanut butter when they are very small. This might stave off future allergies, is the hypothesis. I have not researched or studied this, but maybe past generations were exposed to peanuts routinely, much earlier in life.
I’ve seen products sans nuts still have the warning if the product is made in a facility that makes other products with nuts.
My bet is the Chips Ahoy bag has one.
Looking back at the kids I went to elementary school with I suspect that at least 20% of the kids would have been catagorized as learning disabled nowadays.
“””””Allergists are suspecting the huge growth in antibacterial soap as a root cause.”””””””””””””””
I can dig that. I’m 60, worked outside my whole life. No such thing as washing your hands before you eat. you just grab your sammich from the lunch box and eat it with somewhat dirty hands.You just wipe your hands of on your pants and that gets the big chunks off. I hardly ever get sick. Never had a flu shot.
On the other hand, look at how people work these days. All confined in a sealed building cramped into cubicle farms. When one sneezes they all get to enjoy it. No windows are open because the get recirculated air for heating or cooling.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to *rely* on friends and relatives to keep track of everybody’s allergies.
<<>>
Children with serious allergies could be taught
not to eat anything outside the family. They
could carry safe snacks to participate in outside affairs.
And I just looked at the packaging for the Reese’s version. It’s a different color, red, that the blue for regular Chips Ahoy.
Mom is on a cash grab.
Yes, many mfg do warn that a product is made in a facility that uses nuts......”nut dust” is also to be avoided.
If the kids had access to the bag, the different color should have been enough warning. The original is blue and has been for decades.
The woman iexperienced a huge loss.....cant blame her as she looks for solace anywhere she can find it.
This is a tragic shame, but I do have to wonder, why the host family didn’t have her EPI pen?
My daughter has a friend with a severe nut allergy and if she is EVER at my house I make sure her parents leave an EPI with us.
I grew up in peanut country. I never heard of a peanut death, not even an allergy. In the early Fall, when peanuts were plowed up, dust would be in the air, causing a haze like condition. I guess that de-sensitived all of us.
At 15 this girl should have been more aware. Inspire of what mom says she did not make her child aware of the necessity to be alert
Wow. Don’t make someone else responsible for your child
If I had to guess, I'd say it's some kind of vaccination, with a component of the vaccine contributing to an immune response leading to the allergy.
Your son at 7 was more aware than the 15 year old. Glad he’s ok
Precisely
Burgers are good too
There’s the tragic story of pop artist Andy Warhol....he was never treated for allergies.....never had an allergy that he knew about.
He was hospitalized for routine gall bladder surgery.....he was sedated in post-op.
He had hired a private nurse to sit by his bed 24 hours.
She was reading but looked over to check him out——he had turned blue.
Code Blue was called in——they could not get the tube down his throat to give him oxygen.
His throat swelled up ...b/c he was allergic to the post-op meds.....and he died.
This true-———there are “clean diseases” brought on in sterile environments.
Shingles is one.....and I believe the current thinking is polio was a “clean disease.”
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