I don't know if this is the correct section, but what the hell, why not?

I was watching ABC News this evening when they had a segment on schools in many parts of the country banning more and more foods because children are allergic to so many kinds--peanuts, eggs, dairy products, you name it. In fact, more schools are permitting kids to now carry epinephrine and inject themselves if they have an allergic reaction.

I keep wondering how and why there seem to be SO many food allergies out there. I have never had a food allergy, and no one I know when I was a kid had a food allergy. Now it seems every other kid has a peanut allergy of some kind, and other kids have additional food allergies.

Why do there seem to be so damn many? :confused:

This is an issue that a friend of mine and I were discussing a while ago. He has severe nut allergies and has gone into near anaphylactic shock from eating pastries that had nuts in them, but I've seen him throw up just from the dust of ground nuts, so I don't think it's hypochondria.

One piece that I read suggests that while some allergies inherited, more children may be suffering from allergies like this because they are not nursing on their mothers' breastmilk long enough or at all but getting formula from an early age, and are thus deprived of a range of antibodies that would mitigate some of these immunologic responses to glycoproteins, which are found in milk, nuts, some shellfish, etc. I'm not a scientist, though, so I don't know how true this is, or if it's just pure bunk.

Interestingly enough, I also read that increased sheltering of children from common outdoor allergens and bacteria, which most children in the past came into contact with or ingested (and only rarely got ill from) during regular outdoor play, may be behind the increase in Crohn's Disease, once a fairly rare disease of the intestinal tract that affected upper-middle-class Europeans. I'm not a biologist or physician, but this explanation fascinated me. Could parents be sheltering their children to illness?

[ September 19, 2005, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

So maybe we can feed kids Reese's peanut butter cups when they're newborns. Maybe this will work--I don't know.

I am not implying that these allergies aren't real. I just can't understand how prevalent they are, considering that I can't remember anyone having such allergies when I was a kid.

MIB, I agree...it seems like it has all gone overboard, until I remembered something. I was entirely breast fed as an infant, my younger brother was never breast fed. I have no allergies whatsoever, while my brother has more allergies than I can count. Hooray for breasts! Oops, did I say that? I think it has a lot to do with the lack of breast feeding these days. I blame Bush. (tee-hee-hee).

A friend i went through elementary school with had the peanut allergy. (We're 43) I used to taunt him with peanut butter cups. (yes, I know better now.) About ten years ago, I saw him order the cappucino cheesecake, (got something with peanut in it) take one bite, spit it out, run to the washroom to throw up, and we just got him to the Emergency before he couldn't breathe.

The peanut one and the shellfish one are no joke. There's a reason peanuts aren't served on airplanes anymore.

Well, I don't remember if I was breast fed as an infant. I just remember that I stopped when I got to 2nd grade. eek!

MIB...ewwww!

What? did I say something wrong? :confused:

I have two kids. One of them was only breast fed for a week before she was put on 100% formula. The second was 100% formula since birth. Neither of my kids has a single allergy. As a father, I, too, am shocked when I hear of all the nut allergies kids have these days. Like MIB, I don't recall that anyone had allergies like this when I was a kid.

I think the culprit is environmental. Kids nowadays are raised in hermetically-sealed bubbles, air conditioned cars, air conditioned homes, they don't play outside the same way we did, they only wash with anti-bacterial soaps...

I think the healthier approach to raising kids is what I call "the Rose Kennedy". According to legend, Rose Kennedy was having lunch with some of her grandkids one day and one of the kids' sandwiches fell on the ground. She barely dusted it off and made her grandchild eat it. When the kid protested, Rose said, "everyone has to eat a little dirt now and then."

I say give the kid a Big Mac, cigarette and a bottle of Vodka by the time they're 5, and that should help their exposure to all of life's poisons from then on.

I'm one of those people with a peanut allergy. However, I never realized until I was an adult that it actually was an allergy. All thru my childhood I just knew that I didn't like peanuts--even the smell was unpleasant. As a result I just rarely ever ate them--even picked them out of the cracker jacks to throw away. (and have never in my life had a peanut butter sandwich!) I could still eat a small amount or maybe something with a slight peanut flavor, but it wasn't until I was an adult and realized that eating a snickers bar caused my ears to ring and my throat to constrict that it was an allergy. It may very well have been a mild allergy that has intensifed over the years.

However, I also have one of those sensitive type bodies with a hyper-active immune system. I can have allergic reactions to pollen, dust, and the big one--animal dander. So I've always just classified myself as someone with lots of allergies. (the flip side to a hyper-active immune system is that I rarely ever get sick) I can't explain why people do or don't have allergies, but some have suggested that it could be the result of receiving lots of anti-biotics when they were kids. Maybe our immune systems are stronger, or more sensitive, or just out of whack due to a high influence of prescription drugs at a younger age.

Another theory is that kids are being given these hard-to-digest things - nuts, eggs, shellfish etc - too early, before their systems are able to cope, and their bodies become allergic as a reaction.

And this is a bad thing HOW??????

Well, I for one would be quite pissed if I couldn't eat my peanut butter cups!!! :mad: