The other day New Wife and I were talking about something that affects her school greatly: peanut allergies among the kiddies — allergies which can be life-threatening.
I said to her: “When we were kids, nobody had a peanut allergy. Now it seems to be all over the place. When did this become so much of a problem, and why?”
Turns out the answer is quite simple: fucked-up science. Here’s the story:
The roots of this particular example of expert-inflicted mass suffering can be found in the early 1990s, when the existence of peanut allergies — still a very rare and mostly low-risk phenomenon at the time — first came to public notice. Their entry into public consciousness began with studies published by medical researchers. By the mid-1990s, however, major media outlets were running attention-grabbing stories of hospitalized children and terrified parents. The Great Parental Peanut Panic was on.
As fear and dread mounted, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a professional association of tens of thousands of US pediatricians, felt compelled to tell parents how to prevent their children from becoming the latest victims. “There was just one problem: They didn’t know what precautions, if any, parents should take,” wrote then-Johns Hopkins surgeon and now-FDA Commissioner Marty Makary in his 2024 book, Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.
Ignorance proved no obstacle. Lacking humility and seeking to bolster its reputation as an authoritative organization, the AAP in 2000 handed down definitive instructions: Parents should avoid feeding any peanut product to children under 3 years old who were believed to have a high risk of developing a peanut allergy; pregnant and lactating mothers were likewise cautioned against consuming peanuts.
The AAP noted that “the ability to determine which infants are at high risk is imperfect.” Indeed, simply having a relative with any kind of allergy could land a child or mother in the “high risk” category. Believing they were erring on the side of caution, pediatricians across the country started giving blanket instructions that children shouldn’t be fed any peanut food until age 3; pregnant and breastfeeding mothers were told to steer clear too.
So now we know when, and how. But what was this based upon?
What was the basis of the AAP’s pronouncement? The organization was simply parroting guidance that the UK Department of Health had put forth in 1998. Makary scoured that guidance for a scientific rationale, and found a declaration that mothers who eat peanuts were more likely to have children with allergies, with the claim attributed to a 1996 study. When he checked the study, however, he was shocked to find the data demonstrated no such correlation.
In fact, the way to prevent your kids from getting a peanut allergy is precisely the opposite to what these assholes insisted upon:
- when you’re pregnant, eat peanuts
- after the kid is born, feed it peanut butter (in small quantities, of course)
- so its physiology can learn to deal with peanuts, like it does with all foods and illnesses.
Fucking hell.
The next time someone suggests that we “trust the experts”, we should tell them to go and fuck themselves. And if bodies such as the AAP can’t be trusted to do the proper due diligence with the scientific data in hand, they need to be fired, sued and all the other ways that such negligence and outright error can be punished.
I was thinking “mass floggings”, but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.
And if you’re wondering how we can ascertain such incompetence for ourselves, look askance at any suggestion which “errs on the side of caution“. (See: Covid-19, reaction to.)
Ditto anything that comes from the UK Department of Health (i.e. those fine folks who brought you today’s NHS).
That’s a red flag, if ever there was one.
questioning science is how you do science was a popular refrain during the ChiCom Flu invasion
Peanut allergies are real. I’m almost 70 and have had to deal with it my whole life. I’ve been hospitalized twice.
I don’t know that it’s more common but maybe more publicized and schools are taking a more proactive position. That wasn’t the case when I was in scool.
Anything to keep the herd terrified and pussified, anxious to self employ the yoke.
I think there was one kid in my elementary school, early 70’s, who had a peanut allergy. He was simply instructed not to eat other kids’ lunches. He brought his own lunch everyday and that was that. Life was normal for everyone else. Now? Now the entire school is forced to be peanut free or else! Just in case he takes a bite of something he shouldn’t. So not PB&J sandwiches, most snacks and candies outlawed, everyone suffers, etc. Apparently just telling the little shit not to eat anything but his own lunch no longer works.
I do think it’s more prevalent today, but also I think people go fucking overboard trying to accommodate every single person and their every single little issue. I’ve heard about the deal with not feeding infants anything with peanuts a long time back and had the same basic response as you. And don’t get me started on the gluten nonsense.
There are lots of anoying people who jumped on the gluten free band wagon, but celiac disease itself is quite real.
I’m assuming that the parallel panic over the need gluten free anything has roots in the same sort of hysteria. Gluten is part of what makes flour rise and “Gluten-Free” turns everything into cardboard.
So this is why you can’t get peanuts on an airplane anymore?
And we’re taking direction form one of the politically motivated medical associations?
Then there’s this: at some point years ago in my career in the retail grocery business, some enterprising businessman came out with peanut powder. No, I don’t know why, but he figured the world needed it.
The thought came to me at the time (and I’m certainly NOT suggesting this to anyone,) that if I ever wanted to do away with someone who had a peanut allergy, the best way would be to sprinkle peanut powder in their car or on their bed sheets. Not that I ever would, but it was one of those thoughts I filed away, just in case.
The grocery store has a nut mill. I put 75% peanuts and 25% almonds in it for my peanut butter. I go through a quart every 6 weeks. I love the stuff. My favorite snack is the nut butter on a celery stick. It is low carb and high protein.
So now we find out the NHS not only fucks up UK people, they’ve bridged the Atlantic to immiserate and shorten our lives?
This brings to mind our old field and factory engineers’ saying “An expert is someone more than 50 miles from his home who charges you money to borrow your watch to tell you what time it is.”
1984 is alive and not well in the formerly Great Britain.
Celiac disease is real, and a real pain in the tush.
In about 1993, well before living gluten free was popular, my 72 year old MIL was down to 85 lb and unable to keep most meals down. She was clearly on her way out of the party when she was diagnosed as having celiac disease, got gluten out of her diet, and began to regain weight, strength, and a future. She lived another productive 24 years.
My son traveled a parallel path in about 1997 at only 22. His diagnosis was triggered by his comment to his doctor that his grandmother had celiac disease. Back then, there was no test for the disease; if you had symptoms, eliminated gluten from your diet, and got better, you were assumed to have it. Since gluten is in many foods, you’ll accidentally eat some and have recurring symptoms to remind you why you REALLY want to avoid it, sort of a reaffirmation of your diagnosis.
My wife became symptomatic in 2021 at 74. She recognized the symptoms, changed her diet, and avoided the drawn out problems our son and her mother had.
I’ve learned to prefer some brands of gluten free pasta over the wheat based varieties. GF bread and pastries, however, are vile.
We’ve all learned to make necessary adjustments. My MIL could and my wife occasionally can cheat and have a pinch of a roll or pastry without problem. My poor son is not so lucky.
Why did celiac disease become more prevalent in the nineties? I don’t think anyone knows. Wheat was first cultivated about 11,600 years ago (Wiki). That’s a long time to not notice the problem if it was always with us.
The Romans knew about Celiac, called it the Wheat Disease, though the wheat we eat now they wouldn’t recognize. Why it became more prevalent in the last 30 odd years I don’t know, perhaps they’ve done something even more bizarre with the wheat cultivars to make it even more problematic for those with gluten sensitivities? It does seem that even those without celiac, just with gluten issues (not the same thing, though with the same “cure”) are having more and more problems the last few years.
We figured out I had a gluten issue in the ’00s, and I’ve had to cut back all grains the last few years, or I get general intestinal unhappiness. Sadly for me and my waistline, some GF breads and pastries are quite tasty. (Personal vews: Udi’s products are generally good, as are Glutino and Canyon Farm. I avoid Scharr like the plague. Ancient Harvest pasta is good, especially the corn and quinoa without rice; my non-GF family will eat it in preference to regular pasta. Which reminds me, I should make mac and cheese tonight.)