It happened again last week...anouncement from the flight attendant: "We have a child with a peanut allergy so we won't be serving peanuts. If you have any peanuts or food with peanuts, please do not eat them."

I don't ever recall any of my childhood friends having a peanut allergy. Maybe it is because our moms licked their fingers and used their saliva to wipe our faces; who knows, but there is a theory that in a germ crazy society we are raising a bunch of kids with weak immune systems.



https://www.google.com/url?sa=...6BWnzINqFPFAdRoz6rqw

My buddy was an A&P mech at Kennedy Airport. His group used to eat lunch/mingle/sight see in the terminal. He said his immune system was like cast iron after mingling with the refuse the goes through there.

Well, unless or until you have a close family member with such an allergy, and witness them facing a real possibility of dying, I guess it is easier to make light of such things.

Hopefully you will never experience such a situation, but I have, and it really isn't something to make fun of!

I took it that AAZW was asking a legitimate question.

The peanut allergy seems to be fairly common which I find surprising along with wheat. With both I wonder if it is a allergy to a fungus, spores or other microorganism rather than the peanut itself.

Allergy issues do seem to be far more widespread than when I was younger . . . more exposure to develop them or just weaker humans overall created by all of the protections from exposure they all have received.

I think that like the "rise" in autism there is MUCH more to be learned . . .

BUT the cause may be as important as the cure, actually treatment where much of the money is being spent.

Statistics are that the allergy rate and cancer rate have , in 10 years increased 20 % !!
That is said to be for the most part due to the ever increasing number and amount of chemicals introduced into our environment !!
To me with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities , understated !

I remember as a child that people would explain to new mothers , that they should introduce new foods slowly. That advice seems to have been lost and only now being slowly reintroduced !
In any case there have been introduced recently here a treatment to help the peanut kids .It's said to be 80% effective. In Oz they have finished a 4 year study that in those years prevented peanut allergy in those with the allergy. Much of these studies involve the number and amount of good guy bacteria in the gut !
Just one year ago they found that there is a direct connection between the brain and immune system !!
Yes people beat up their immune systems then scientists come to the rescue !! Hug your local scientists !

During WW2 Jim Corbett (of tiger hunting fame) helped to train the British troops in India in jungle war fare.He was seen on many occasions to stop + take a handful of water from tepid pools + drink it. He claimed it kept his immune system up.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially documents 13 deaths (including six adults) between 1996 and 2006 due to peanut allergies.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem...ough-researcher.html

Here's the Australian research .

We have never heard of any allergy when I was young.

We ate everything, never got sick!

Now everyone is allergic to something or other!

Raw onions makes me sick. If someone else eats them on an airplane, doesn't bother me---I don't like the smell of them though. Cucumbers also don't agree with me, but I like pickles and can eat them. Bring on the peanuts and peanut butter.

quote:

I took it that AAZW was asking a legitimate question.

Funny, I took it that way also!

My response is based on my experiences in a couple of different ICU's with the Drs. working their butts off to keep my wife from dying of a food allergy.

Until a person has experienced that type situation, it is all too easy to not really understand how dangerous such allergies are for those that have them! Since I have experienced it, I get defensive when the subject comes up.

Another reason I react as I do on the subject of food allergy's, is because of the type food my wife is allergic too.

She has undoubtedly the WORST food allergy a Texan could have. She is highly allergic to Capsicum/Capsaicin, the stuff that makes hot peppers hot.

I love Jalapeno's, they are a food group to me, bur when we eat out we have to be extremely careful where we go and sometimes we still run into problems, but Lora takes every precaution she can so it rarely becomes an issue, but it still creates a quality of life issue for her because of her inability to eat food that looks and smells good to her or being able to go in just anywhere to eat.

She also gets tired of having to explain her problem to the staff at restaurants, even though they are always nice and go out of their way to accommodate her and she hates putting them to that kind of effort.

Now as to the increasing frequency of Allergy's across the board, not just food, my personal observation was in the early to mid 1960's something changed and childhood allergies exploded, and it seemed like everyone born in 1962 and later was allergic to something.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a couple of alcoholics on board, no alcoholic beverages will be served. Wonder how that would go over ?

Grizz

That is one of the problems with modern society.

Lora and I don't ask or expect anyplace to force their other customers to be inconvenienced because of her problem. Hell she buys me 3 gallons of Jalapeno Tabasco sauce during the year and I eat on practically everything. We have learned to check before ordering when we go out to eat, but that is our responsibility.

In our modern society for some reason some folks have decided that everyone has to "Pay" for another person's problem.

A fellow in Maine told how they deal with the peanut allergy there . The peanut kids[ the minority ] get the use of the lunchroom !
Normal kids have to find other places !!

Restaurants present other problems .While the menu may call for a certain sauce ,what they make and what they get out of a jar may be two very different things .I ask if they make it , if not I skip it ! or read the label !

quote:

Originally posted by mete:
A fellow in Maine told how they deal with the peanut allergy there . The peanut kids[ the minority ] get the use of the lunchroom !
Normal kids have to find other places !!

Restaurants present other problems .While the menu may call for a certain sauce ,what they make and what they get out of a jar may be two very different things .I ask if they make it , if not I skip it ! or read the label !

Son walked into an upscale restaurant claiming organic foods, told the waitress he had a carbon allergy and what was available. She actually went and checked.

Grizz

When I was teaching in high school 10 years ago, my wife and I had to make a trip from Atlanta to NOLA for a funeral. We spent the night at her sister's place in Mississippi, and after dinner I broke out in a rash. It got worse and worse, and I finally went into anaphylactic shock. EMS were called, I was hauled to the ER where the doctor on call categorized my condition as "life threatening."

I was given a prescription for EpiPens, and after returning to Atlanta and my teaching job, I took one of the pens to the school nurse to hold in case of emergency. She went to a full-size metal file cabinet and put my EpiPen in the "staff" drawer, which had quite a few pens. Then she opened the "student" drawer, which was filled nearly to overflowing with EpiPens and other allergy medications!

I hadn't realized how epidemic allergy issues were until I saw that drawer full of EpiPens! The nurse said about 1 in 8 students had some kind of serious allergy.

There was a senior girl in my class that had a peanut allergy--I was told if a peanut got "loose" anywhere in the classroom, she would break out.

BTW, after all kinds of testing, it was never discovered what had caused my allergy reaction. And I have never been allergic to anything in my life, although I'm told anyone can develop a new allergy at any age.

Finally, years later, my current allergy doctor told me there's a delayed reaction allergy that is caused by the combination of a certain type of tick bite and the consumption of red meat. Since I was frequently a tick bite victim in GA, and ate cube steak that night at my sister-in-law's house, we figure that's what caused it.

I've been in Florida three years now--no tick bites, no allergy problems.

Allergies can be immediate or delayed .So getting a reaction up to perhaps a day later is possible !Makes for much fun in diagnosis !!
Red meat? It's the Lone Star Tick that does that. That's spreading too. Now found mostly in the SE and East. It involves a certain sugar in the meat .Yes it's delayed and will mean a change in the diet .Learn to like fish, chicken etc.
If you have to restrict your diet for allergies of other reasons make sure you are getting proper nutrition.
There's a fellow in my area who developed a contact allergy to Deer fur !! Always a hunter but atone time developed the weird allergy ! Still hunts but now always with someone who will take care of the deer!

quote:

Well, unless or until you have a close family member with such an allergy, and witness them facing a real possibility of dying, I guess it is easier to make light of such things

Yes. It can kill. As here:

 http://www.independent.co.uk/n...-curry-a7043321.html 

Now me, if I were the Judge I'd have said the victim was part to blame for ordering from an establishment that sold ANY food with peanuts. And them for not just simply refusing his order.

But there it is. One man dead and the other six years in prison.

Yep, we or Lora found out almost the hard way just how bad her allergy to capsaicin is.

One of the first incidents occurred when she took a couple of bites of a sausage roll at a work breakfast one morning at her office.

The little smokie sausage itself was okay, but it had been cooked in the same oil as some jalapeno smokies and that was enough to trigger the attack.

I buy my lunch every day in the local delis. There are a few place i frequent. One day I decided on fish and chips. I came back to work and ate my lunch, my face/eyes got swollen. Never had any allergic reaction before. We had a nurse in the building. By the time I got to her it started subsiding. I took a benedryl. Never happened again but I never ordered the fish again either.

Getting back to the topic, it is ridiculous for schools to make everyone in a class have to give up something because of one person's problem.

To me that would only cause animosity toward the individual over something they have no control over.

The folks I know that have allergies go out of their way not to inconvenience others.

Well,it is along the same lines as our current educational dillema; i/e: lowering the standards for all so that some would not fail.That is not the answer anymore than outlawing peanut butter sandwiches for everyone else. Now,personal feelings are that in the 50's I NEVER heard of any kid getting sick on PBJ's.

Was on a Southwest flight recently that anounced "no peanuts will be served as there was someone on board with a peanut allergy", I was hacked!

I like airplane peanuts!

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Sorry, the psgr should have made the info available before boarding the flight and then be given the option of re-booking to a non-peanut flight.
I too, in my misspent youth, never, ever heard of anyone getting sick from eating a PBJ. Those and baloney and hot dogs made from the more disgusting parts of pigs and cows was a lunch staple when I was growing up.