Posted on 01/10/2009 9:19:49 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Your kid doesn't have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. Your kid also spends recess running and screaming, "No! Stop! Don't rub my head with peanut butter!"
Yes, a tiny number of kids have severe peanut allergies that cause anaphylactic shock, and all their teachers should be warned, handed EpiPens and given a really expensive gift at Christmas. But unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.
~snip~
Parents may think they are doing their kids a favor by testing them and being hyper-vigilant about monitoring what they eat, but it's not cool to freak kids out. Only 20% of kids who get a positive allergy test result need treatment. And a 2003 study showed that kids who were told they were allergic to peanuts had more anxiety and felt more physically restricted than if they had diabetes. "It's anxiety-producing to imagine that having a snack in kindergarten could be deadly," Christakis said. Remember, this is a demographic so easily panicked that, equipped with only circles and dots, it invented an inoculation to cooties.
~snip some more~
So bring back nuts to schools. If parents need to panic about a food, at least go with seafood allergies. Those fish sticks are disgusting.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Nuts, anyone?
No thank you. I’m allergic to Yuppie Nuts.
Aw nuts.
I didn't know they had them. :)
Warning of nut allergy 'hysteria.' Measures to protect children increasingly absurd
BBC ^ December 10, 2008
Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2008 1:27:20 PM by billorites
A peanut on the floor of a US school bus recently led to evacuation and decontamination for fear it might have affected the 10-year-old passengers.
Such extreme steps to reduce exposure to nuts are not isolated and are fuelling fear and anxiety, reports the British Medical Journal Online.
A UK allergy expert said a similar "epidemic" was present in Britain.
Professor Nicolas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, told the BMJ there was "a gross over-reaction to the magnitude of the threat" posed by food allergies, and particularly nut allergies.
In the US, serious allergic reactions to foods cause just 2,000 of more than 30 million hospitalisations a year and comparatively few deaths - 150 a year from all food allergies combined.
In the UK there are around 10 deaths each year from food allergies.
Professor Christakis said the issue was not whether nut allergies existed or whether they could occasionally be serious. Nor was the issue whether reasonable preventative steps should be made for the few children who had documented serious allergies, he argued.
"The issue is what accounts for the extreme responses to nut allergies."
He said the number of US schools declaring themselves to be entirely "nut free" - banning staples like peanut butter, homemade baked goods and any foods without detailed ingredient labels - was rising, despite clear evidence that such restrictions were unnecessary.
"School entrances have signs admonishing visitors to wash their hands before entry to avoid [nut] contamination."
He said these responses were extreme and had many of the hallmarks of mass psychogenic illness (MPI), previously known as epidemic hysteria.
Often seen occurring in small towns, schools and other institutions, outbreaks of MPI involve healthy people in a flow of anxiety, most often triggered by a fear of contamination.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
very true, but those that have nut and foold allergies can really get sick. As a matter of fact the 21% of frauds are who are causing the scoffing for the 4% that are truly allergic....
Peanuts are not nuts. They are legumes. The parents are the nuts.
this article would make sense if genes were solely responsible for allergy. but it is a little more complicated than that. hygiene, age of exposure, gut flora, antibiotic exposure, all probably play a role. allergies are increasing. but skin testing, and RAST testing are probably over sensitive.
“I didn’t know they had them. :)”
Yuppie Nuts are quite popular in certain areas of the country. I do believe Berkeley is where they’re produced, as well as all public education institutions. :^)
I think I see mine there on the upper left....the shriveled ones.
The assault on peanuts was just the beginning of politically correct food nazis.
Today they go after transfats, corn syrup, and everything else.
These are the same people who go after smokers, cologne/perfume users and anything that looks, smells or feel uncomfortable.
Or a 500% increase since the seventies when I was in elementary school.
I guess that's not done anymore.
I’m allergic to yuppies, yippies, hippies, guppies, and muppets. Especially elmo.
What a coincidence.
I believe I saw something like that on November 4.
Thank you for posting this. You’re quite right...Peanuts are related to “peas”.
I like fish sticks.
Although I DO agree about the mass hysteria about the peanuts (It's a peanut - hit the floor!), as a family with food allergies that nearly killed my child - allergy to wheat, misdiagnosed as ulcers, and therefore fed more wheat... I can truly feel the pain!!!!
I think we as a society are becoming more aware of the allergens and are diagnosing them. As a child I was told I just had a nervous stomach because I didn't like school - "now drink your milk or you can't go to recess"...to finding out as an adult my severe stomach pain was caused because of milk allergy/lactose intolerance.
People who have not been there should not judge - severe allergies are real!
You said your best one is the size of a pea, but the other one is a little bitty thing?
I am a little confused? I thought California liberals liked ‘nuts’. Wasn’t that what Prop 8 was all about?
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