Nuts - This Hysteria is Out Of Control

by Martha Edwards (Subscribe to Martha Edwards's posts)
Dec 14th 2008 10:00AM

Recently, a school bus full of commuting kids had to be evacuated and decontaminated. Surely that kind of drastic measure would only be taken for something serious like a chemical spill or an outbreak of TB? Nope -- that's not what happened at all.

Students were rushed off the bus because a peanut fell on the floor. Yes, peanuts on a bus can pose a danger for kids with nut allergies, but I think the real problem here is the fact that the kids on the bus couldn't be trusted to not eat off the floor.

Isn't this nut allergy craze getting a bit out of hand?

Researchers at Harvard think so. They're claiming that this nut hysteria is actually a huge part of the problem. Professor Nicholas Christakis, of Harvard Medical School says, ''Well-intentioned efforts to reduce exposure to nuts actually fan the flames, since they signal to parents that nuts are a clear and present danger. This encourages more parents to worry, which fuels the epidemic. It also encourages more parents to have their children tested, thus detecting mild and meaningless "allergies" to nuts. This encourages still more avoidance of nuts, leading to still more sensitization." Furthermore, nut avoidance is causing even more allergies.

Here's the bottom line: Kids under three shouldn't eat nuts, but beyond that, stop worrying so much. As Professor Christakis points out, 10 times more kids diet from sports injuries each year than food allergies, but the idea of banning sports is laughable. Plus, nuts are really good for your kids ... and you!

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Comments (2)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kevin 12-15-2008 @ 12:16AM

As a father of a daughter with a peanut allergy and others too, I feel that you need to retract your idiotic comments on this post. My wife and I need to carry an epipen with us at all times because of the risk of my daughter coming into any contact with peanuts regardless if it is in the mouth or just on the skin. She may go into anaphylactic shock and quite possibly die. The epipen was given to us as a way to hopefully give us enough time to get her to the hospital but even this does not guarantee she would be safe. Your comments on how ridiculous it is that schools are needing to change are unnecessary. You need to research your comments prior to spewing them out for the world to see. Allergies have been on the rise over the past 10 years, so in turn, the safety is having to change as well. You and your children will need to deal with it or risk killing my child and possibly be charged for murder (there are already cases of this). Schools are going nut free because if a child eating a P&J sandwich touches the table, and then a peanut allergy child touches that same table, they may have a very bad reaction, the mildest being a basic rash, the worst being death.

I would hope that in the future you can research your topic a bit further before making the comments that you do. I hope that you take this matter more serious and issue an apology to me and all of the other parents that have children with allergies. Everyday we have to worry about our children because of uninformed people like yourself. While our numbers are growing (unfortunately), we are still against the world and that is a hard place to be.

MattS 12-15-2008 @ 5:11PM

Researchers do not know why there has been such an increase in food allergies amoung children - there are many theories.

All I know is that the peanut on the bus is the equivalent of poison being on the bus for my son. If poison were to be spilled on the bus, I'm quite sure they would be scrubbing it down.

Folks like Kevin and I just want our kids be safe and lead normal lives. The threat that resistant parents and/or malicious children could send our son to the hospital or morgue is something we have to live with every day.