Folks, I realize that some people are allergic to peanuts but c'mon, this has gotten completely out of hand. My son used to sell chocolate covered almonds as a fundraiser for school but no...Ooops almonds are nuts so we can't sell them.
One school around here recommends that if your child is having peanut butter for breakfast they eat it in their pj's so the smell doesn't get in their clothes.
Now we have peanut free MARS bars..What's next..peanut free peanuts!
What I don't understand is where all the people who have a bad reaction to peanuts came from. When I was in elementry school I had peanut products all the time and there was no problem. And I am only 20 years old!
Well lets face it, it's the majority that can die from something that seem to rule the country. Peanut free peanuts are just around the corner, I guarantee it. Then it will be the milk people. Well you cant sell chocolate any more period because of laxtose intolerance.
New school fundraiser: Sell dairy free, penut free snickers bars, should sell like hot cakes. Oh wait a minute, hot cakes, crap...... someones gonna say something about syrup now.
Well here's what happened this spring to the Edmonton Eskimos. 1 mother phoned them and ask them to ban peanuts from the stadium, so she could take her son to a few games. And you guessed it. they stopped selling peanuts and invoked a total ban of peanuts.
Anaphylactic shock is nothing to fool around with. It can be triggered by peanuts or other buts, depending on the allergy itself. Anaphylactic shock is not limited to peanuts. Problem is, lots of other nuts have traces of peanut oil in them..not sure if it's because they roast them in it or not, or if it's just a CYA affair.
However.. small children (elementary level) cannot be and should not be responsible for safely maintaining a peanut free area, so the adults around them have to be. It's a matter of life and death.
If YOUR child could die from the smell of peanuts or peanut oil, would you not want some cooperation?
Experts do not know what causes an allergic response (other than histamines). It is actually an autoimmune response.
Children with peanut allergies are quite often allergic to other things as well.. like pollen and onions and pets.
One cannot safely say that if one wasn't exposed to antibiotics until after a certain age they would not have an allergy to them. hogwash. Nor can the same be said for peanuts.
And exposure to many other allergens can actually increase a person's chance of having an allergic reation to something else.. (the allergist explained it to me as a cup half full scenario... if the cups almost empty.. the chances of having a reaction are less than is the cup's half full.. because then the body's chances of coping are diminsihed due to already present irritations)
In short.. a child with a peanut allergy can go into full blown anaphylactic shock the third or fourth time they are exposed to peanuts.
Failure of other parents in a school to recognize or regard this is the purest form of idiocy.
My school doesn't do anything about it
I find the whole subject to just reek of nannyism and hypocrisy. That a very few people are affected by this problem is not justification for society as a whole to have to change their eating habits.
In the USA we have historic buildings that are being eviscerated or demolished in the name of handicap access. I'm wondering when we'll destroy the US Capitol becuase the Rotunda does not have an elevator up to the dome.
With the peanut allergy it is the responsibility of the parents to keep their child safe. Period.
It is not my problem any more than if a child afflicted with diabetes accidentally ingests a small amount of sugar at a sporting event and goes into insulin shock. Do we also ban starches and sugars from public places because a very few kids will die if they come into contact with those chemical compounds?
Puh-leeze.
If your kid is so sensitive to peanuts then keep the kid home.
Just the same as parents of children who are acutely sensitive to sunlight keep their kids at home during the day instead of demanding that <b>sunlight</b> be banned from public places.
There is money to made here some where...moblie bubble suits perhaps?