Americans Support Bans On Food Allergens In Public Places

[The Straight Story]

Americans Support Bans On Food Allergens In Public Places

If some foods really don't agree with you or someone you live with, you've got plenty of company.

In the latest NPR-Thomson Reuters Health Poll, we asked people across the country about food allergies and intolerance. The bottom line: 1 in 5 households across the country has at least one person who is allergic or intolerant to at least one food.

How do they know? Well, there are the obvious symptoms, such as itching, swelling of the tongue and wheezing in some cases. Nearly two-thirds of households — 64 percent — that reported a food issue said the allergy or intolerance had been diagnosed by a doctor.


Still, just what constitutes a food allergy can be hard to pin down. "Food allergy has no universally accepted definition," according to a review of the medical literature that was published last year in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. That has complicated the task of coming up with precise figures on of the prevalence of food allergies.

...

We also asked people if they believe bans on certain foods, such as nuts, from public places (think airplane cabins and lunchrooms) are an important safety measure. A majority — 59 percent — said the bans are OK by them.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/05/139019495/americans-supports-bans-on-food-allergens-in-public-places?ps=sh_sthdl

Ban them in parks too - and cars (you might eat some peanuts and then give a neighbor kid a ride home, so ban them in any car that might ever have a kid in it), most certainly ban peanuts in bars (one could suggest we leave that up to adults to choose, but choice is passe').

[littlewolf]

1. heh :D nt

[NightWatcher]

2. I'm allergic to wheat and I'm going to Disney World and a baseball game

So Disney cannot have any bread in any of their properties, nor can there be hotdog or hamburger buns at the baseball stadium. In fact I'm also allergic to yeast in bread too, so no beer at Wrigley Field either.

Or, I take personal responsibility and don't have a beer or a hotdog on a bun?


I'm not really allergic, but someone is. Do we alter everything for them or should they take some of the burden and carry an epi-pen?

[Drale]

3. First of all those are not public places

they are privately owned places and second I agree this would open a far bigger bad of worms then anyone realizes.

[frazzled]

4. Peanuts aren't nuts (they're legumes)

Which shows how stupid this article was.

And BTW, I've had an allergy/intolerance to peanuts since 1977. You can serve all the peanuts you want on planes. I have to actually ingest one to be affected. Just have something else on hand, like a little bag of pretzels, for those of us who can't eat peanuts, which are not nuts.

Oh, I forgot, they don't even hand out little snacks anymore. This whole article is stupid and outdated.

[Trillo]

5. No more coffee in public?

http://xwww.springboard4health.com/notebook/health_food_addiction.html
"The primary food allergens are coffee, dairy products, wheat, eggs and
corn. In Oriental countries, rice is a prominent allergen. Among
vegetables, white potatoes and lettuce are potent allergens. Marshall
Mandell, M.D. of Norwalk, Connecticut and author of "Dr. Mandell’s 5 Day
Allergy Relief System", found that 92.2 percent of hospitalized
schizophrenic patients were allergic to one or more common substances.
When Dr. Mandell tested a group of patients diagnosed as hard-to-treat
neurotics, he found that 88 percent of them were allergic go wheat, 50
percent to corn and 60 percent to milk.

[Travis_0004]

6. Even if 1/5 have an allergy, how many have a severe allergy.

I think the 1/5 figure is correct, but why did they use that stat. If somebody has a food allergy, it doesn't automatically mean they can't be around it, it just means they can't eat it.

What percent of people can not even be around the food they are allergic to, that is a more important statistic.

I'm allergic to strawberries, but I could care less if somebody (or 1,000 people) are around me eating them, as long as I don't eat one.

[dawg]

7. Let the battle be joined ....

[in_cog_ni_to]

8. YAY!

:thumbsup: I'm all for this. If my neighbor is allergic to nuts or coffee, I would be remiss if I consumed either anywhere near her.

[Exultant Democracy]

9. No one is allergic to soy-lent green and it solves the SS "crisis"... 2 birds meet my stone.

[Erose999]

10. I like my thai peanut shrimp too much to support bans of allergenic foods. Not to mention gluten is

in just about everything we eat. I'm all for concessions being made in confined spaces like airplane cabins, but theres definitely a line.