Word: peanuts
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...more and more schools set up peanut-free zones and as food manufacturers add warning labels that their products might contain particles of peanuts, soy or other allergens, the abundance of caution is starting to trigger a backlash. Given all the attention paid in recent years to food allergies, the number of people in the U.S. who die from them - 15 to 20 a year - is relatively small. More people die each year from bee stings. "But we don't remove flowers from schools or playgrounds," Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, commented recently...
Christakis notes that peanut and other food allergies are a real problem; it's the community reaction to them that is getting out of hand. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of U.S. children under 18 with a reported food allergy jumped 18% from 1997 to 2007, and the number of children hospitalized for food allergies has nearly quadrupled in recent years. So forget pet dander and pollen. "In this day and age, allergy in pediatrics is all about food, food, food," says Dr. Allen Lapey, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Each year...
Read "The Peanut Butter Sandwich Under Threat...
...trend is not an entirely American phenomenon. European nations have posted increases similar to the one in the U.S., and in a study of the relatively confined residents of Britain's Isle of Wight, rates of peanut allergies among toddlers doubled from 1989 to 1994. While prevalence in Asian countries, where peanuts are a popular dietary add-in, remains low, experts warn that could simply be the result of spottier awareness, diagnosis and reporting of allergic reactions in those nations. (Read "Allergies Nothing to Sneeze...
...often parents of newly diagnosed children aren't given enough information about when and even how to inject the lifesaving epinephrine. "Our allergist said, 'Here you go. Here's a prescription and see you in a year,' " says Dena Friedel, an Ohio mom whose daughter was diagnosed with a peanut allergy when she was 2. When her daughter had a reaction several months later, Friedel didn't know when to use the syringe and called 911 instead. The EMT told her she had made the right decision, but when they reached the hospital, "the doctor yelled at me and said...