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Peanut allergies were exceptionally rare decades ago when nobody worried about peanut allergies in the first place. In the 20th century everybody in America s

Peanut allergies were exceptionally rare decades ago when nobody worried about peanut allergies in the first place. In the 20th century everybody in America sent their kids to school with peanut butter sandwiches and virtually everybody was fine. I didn't even know people could be allergic to peanuts until I was an adult. Now schools ban peanut butter sandwiches and it seems like every other family claims their child is allergic to peanuts. Common sense says that we need to give kids more peanut butter sandwiches, like we used to, and it would stop being a problem. Also, we should stop testing for allergies unless there is a good reason to test a specific person for a specific allergy (e.g. they already had a bad reaction to something, and need to figure out what.) Those allergen tests have many false positives, people that could have gone their whole lives eating peanuts without thinking twice about it will instead spend their whole lives avoiding peanuts because a precautionary allergen test came back sliightly positive and they "don't want to take the risk". More medical testing is not always a good thing.

kens 4y ago
This history seemed dubious, so I looked up a random 1989 allergy journal: "Peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies and probably the most common cause of death by food anaphylaxis in the United States." https://www.google.com/books/edition/Allergy_Proceedings/ecUTAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=peanut+allergy&dq=peanut+allergy&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Allergy_Proceedings/ecU...
- conductr 4y ago
  Just because it was the "most common" doesn't mean much. It was still more rare in the past. Food allergies in general were more rare. It also says nothing as to how much it has grown if it is still the most common, eg. maybe it was most common being 20% of total food allergies where as now maybe that number is 50%. IDK just saying on surface this isn't much of a counter-argument.
  - fingerlocks 4y ago
    This could easily be attributed to a lack of diagnosis. Less than 70 years ago it was common for the official cause death to be “natural causes”, which was the default catch-all when the cause couldn’t be attributed to anything else. Not for lack of trying, we just didn’t have the technology and wealth of research and knowledge until fairly recently. Go read the obituaries in the historic New York Times archives, it’s insane. Infants and children would die and best we could do was shrug it off and say “god works in mysterious ways” or some such bullshit.
makeitdouble 4y ago
The narrative you are presenting is also based on common sense though. We have observations that populations of kids eating peanuts early have lower allergy rate, but it´s not like we isolated 300 babies and experimented on them for 30 years, we just can´t. Short of other stronger evidence we assume it´s true, but if tomorrow we found that there were other causes specific to the US, independent from peanuts themselves, we´d have the same reaction: we didn´t know so we did our best.
- stametseater 4y ago
  > The narrative you are presenting is also based on common sense though. Yes that's my point. Common sense was never with the peanut bans. Common sense was with peanut eating the entire time.
conductr 4y ago
> Now schools ban peanut butter sandwiches My kid's school bans anything that has those warnings about "not produced in a nut free factory". It's insane actually how limiting it is for a family with no allergies like ours. > Common sense says that we need to give kids more peanut butter sandwiches, like we used to, and it would stop being a problem Not sure if it was medically wise, but this was my common sense thinking too. Around 3-6 months, I figured we consume enough peanut butter in the house that if he had a severe allergy we'd have known by then (eg. accidental cross contamination). I also figured at this point he could survive the quick trip to the ER if needed. So I gave it to him and closely monitored his condition. First, just put a little on inside of forearm to see if any signs of irritation. Thinking perhaps a mild allergy may show itself this way, also thinking maybe his airway wouldn't swell up as initial symptom as it might with ingestion (would like to avoid that). It went well so shortly after let him eat a little. No problems. We did this similar approach with all of the common allergy stuff, no issues for us, although I don't know if I was fully informed of how allergies work or naively being cavalier with risk or something (I obviously didn't think so).

kens 4y ago

This history seemed dubious, so I looked up a random 1989 allergy journal: "Peanut allergy is one of the most common food allergies and probably the most common cause of death by food anaphylaxis in the United States." https://www.google.com/books/edition/Allergy_Proceedings/ecUTAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=peanut+allergy&dq=peanut+allergy&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/Allergy_Proceedings/ecU...

conductr 4y ago
Just because it was the "most common" doesn't mean much. It was still more rare in the past. Food allergies in general were more rare. It also says nothing as to how much it has grown if it is still the most common, eg. maybe it was most common being 20% of total food allergies where as now maybe that number is 50%. IDK just saying on surface this isn't much of a counter-argument.
- fingerlocks 4y ago
  This could easily be attributed to a lack of diagnosis. Less than 70 years ago it was common for the official cause death to be “natural causes”, which was the default catch-all when the cause couldn’t be attributed to anything else. Not for lack of trying, we just didn’t have the technology and wealth of research and knowledge until fairly recently. Go read the obituaries in the historic New York Times archives, it’s insane. Infants and children would die and best we could do was shrug it off and say “god works in mysterious ways” or some such bullshit.

makeitdouble 4y ago

The narrative you are presenting is also based on common sense though. We have observations that populations of kids eating peanuts early have lower allergy rate, but it´s not like we isolated 300 babies and experimented on them for 30 years, we just can´t. Short of other stronger evidence we assume it´s true, but if tomorrow we found that there were other causes specific to the US, independent from peanuts themselves, we´d have the same reaction: we didn´t know so we did our best.

stametseater 4y ago
> The narrative you are presenting is also based on common sense though. Yes that's my point. Common sense was never with the peanut bans. Common sense was with peanut eating the entire time.

conductr 4y ago

> Now schools ban peanut butter sandwiches My kid's school bans anything that has those warnings about "not produced in a nut free factory". It's insane actually how limiting it is for a family with no allergies like ours. > Common sense says that we need to give kids more peanut butter sandwiches, like we used to, and it would stop being a problem Not sure if it was medically wise, but this was my common sense thinking too. Around 3-6 months, I figured we consume enough peanut butter in the house that if he had a severe allergy we'd have known by then (eg. accidental cross contamination). I also figured at this point he could survive the quick trip to the ER if needed. So I gave it to him and closely monitored his condition. First, just put a little on inside of forearm to see if any signs of irritation. Thinking perhaps a mild allergy may show itself this way, also thinking maybe his airway wouldn't swell up as initial symptom as it might with ingestion (would like to avoid that). It went well so shortly after let him eat a little. No problems. We did this similar approach with all of the common allergy stuff, no issues for us, although I don't know if I was fully informed of how allergies work or naively being cavalier with risk or something (I obviously didn't think so).