A welcome message to food-distressed parents appeared in the New York Times yesterday, dismissing the myth that food allergies in children are the rule, not the exception. It’s a topic worth investigating, what with school districts banning home-baked goods due to fears they may contain allergens or even meth.
A common blood test has been the norm for detecting antibodies that signal a reaction to a suspect allergen. But the medical world is now acknowledging that the proteins that cause the reaction may be in multiple foods that the child may or may not be allergic to, thus giving false results. The Times writes: “A child who is allergic to peanuts, for instance, might test positive for allergies to soy, green beans, peas, and kidney beans. Children with milk allergies may test positive for beef allergy.”
To make a complicated issue even more so, parents have been warned by their pediatricians to not feed their children certain foods such as eggs and nuts too early, some abstaining until the child is two or three years old. But now, says the Times, the “committee for the American Academy of Asthma Allergy and Immunology is considering revised guidelines recommending earlier introduction of foods like eggs, peanuts, and shellfish … A 2008 study of 10,000 British children, reported in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that early exposure to peanuts lowered allergy risk.”
It would seem a child’s natural instinct to discover their world by putting everything in their mouth is not so bizarre after all.
And they’ve also discovered that kids who grow up in the filth and muck of dairy farms have far fewer allergies. No kidding!
Thank God. I’ve been getting tired of working in a school and having to listen to 7 year olds talk about their nut allergies or get looked at funny by my co-workers for bringing in trail mix for myself to eat “in an environment with children.”
While I am only 27, and not yet near the “get off my lawn” stage of life, I think kid’s really don’t play outside as much as they used to. Maybe I just have a really strong immune system naturally, but I figured that going outside, being in the dirt, and all sorts of other places built up the immune system. We already know that continual use of anti-bacterial hand sanitizer kills the good stuff to, and lowers people immunities.
What’s funny is for years in grade school, my mom gave me money for juice instead of milk at lunch- convinced I was allergic. Turned out I just don’t like white milk- still dont 20 years later. Got tested and I have absolutely no common allergies. Here here for playing in the dirt and being a kid. Purell has no place in my home.
I know that parents can be really pushy with their demands for a school environment, but I think the thing about home-baked goods is totally justified. I have a little nephew who is so severely allergic to peanut that basically just being in contact with an item containing peanut could be fatal. You can give the kid an alternate snack if everyone else has cupcakes, but it’s just not the same. If you ask me it’s better for everyone to skip the extra snack anyway. We wanna talk about social problems, let’s talk about childhood obesity.