Food Allergies and Food Bans: Are They too Much?
Are our fears of peanut allergies overblown? As a mom allergic to nuts, I've often wondered about this.
A panel of experts at The National Institute of Allergies and Infection Disease has released new guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of food allergies. What do the experts say? Banning foods like peanuts and peanut butter is an overreaction to a medical condition that too often goes self-diagnosed.
The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease puts the rate of allergies in kids at 6 to 8 percent. It's about 4 percent in adults. But those are the numbers of people diagnosed with food allergies, which is probably not the same as the number of people who thin they, or their kids, have food allergies. In an NPR story on the new food allergy guidelines, Sami Bahna, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, says, "Many patients claim food allergy without having them." Why? People can have physical reactions to foods that demonstrate a food intolerance - such as lactose intolerance - but that's not the same as a food allergy.
More on Strollerderby: Do Fussy Babies Grow up to Be Troubled Kids?
To diagnose an allergy, a patient would have a pin-prick or blood test. This tells you if the body is developing an anti-body to a food, not whether a person would have a physical reaction to that antibody. To test for a physical reaction, you would have to have a food challenge test in which the patient would have to eat some of the food in question in a doctor's office and then you see what happens.
Sounds like fun, right? No wonder people don't have that test. But not having it means a lot of people over estimate their risk, hence the food bans.
More on Strollerderby: Eating Peanuts While Pregnant Could Lead to Allergies!
How do we know people think they're more allergic than they are? The NPR story gives an example:
"A couple of years ago, researchers at National Jewish Health in Denver conducted "food challenge" tests on 125 children with allergies and eczema and found that more than 50 percent of the kids could actually tolerate foods they were told to avoid…."
So how much is too much when it comes to banning foods in schools and classrooms?
What do you think? Should peanut butter and jelly just be banned from schools no matter what? Should food bans be case by case?
To read what our allergic Strollerderby blogger has to say, visit Babble.
MORE ON BABBLE:
Are Kids with Allergies Bullied at School?
