FOUND A PEANUT

Well, if anyone is clinging to the belief that we have NOT turned into a nation of complete jackasses, this should set you straight. Last year in Massachusetts, a lone peanut was discovered on the floor of a school bus full of ten-year-olds. The bus was immediately halted, the students removed, and the bus sent back to the depot for decontamination. This was not anthrax, it was not a dangerous chemical, it was not a BOMB, for crying out loud - it was one lonely, lousy little peanut.

Not that I blame the bus company - there are just too many litigation-happy nutbars (no pun intended) out there to take a chance. But it flies in the face of common sense - I doubt the kids on the bus were scrambling and fighting each other for the chance to eat a dirty old peanut off the floor, even with the two-second rule.

In this age of hysteria, fear-mongering, and catering to the minority, it seems that rationality and reason have flown out the window. Probably cowering in a tree somewhere, alongside freedom of choice and having the wrong opinion.

Food allergies in kids under 18 have increased by 17% between 1997 and 2007, according to the CDC. Are these actual cases? Diagnosed by specialists? Suspected? Self-diagnosed? Invented by some parents afflicted with a strange form of Munchausen's by proxy, in which they enjoy the extra attention?

Or are they real, perhaps due to the recent practice of not exposing kids to various foods in early childhood. Interestingly,  the incidence of children's nut allergies in the UK is about 2%, while in Israel, where kids are fed nuts from infancy, it is only .17%. Allergies in general are on the rise, possibly due to the current obsession with having a germ-free home environment.

I'm not saying there aren't cases of severe peanut allergies, just like shellfish allergies or bee-stings, where the person is in actual danger of dying. I'm just saying that with any allergy, many people claim allergic status when it isn't really there. It's a lot easier to get people to stop wearing perfume in the office if it affects your health than it is to just say you don't like it, right?

The problem is, everyone wants their own issues to be paramount. In the US, only 2,000 hospitalizations per year are due to food allergies of any kind - with only 150 resulting in death, and not all of those death by peanut. So how did such a tiny percentage of actual risk end up justifying such extreme measures?

How did it get so ridiculous that the overwhelming majority of students can't take a perfectly nutritious, affordable sandwich to school because a handful of kids have (or may have) an allergy? How did it escalate to the point where some people now believe that molecules of peanut in the air can harm their kids? Where people are cutting down nut trees in their yards, even though peanuts don't even grow on trees. They're a LEGUME, like a pea, for God's sake!

This trend cannot possibly sustain itself. The me-first attitude that says everyone around you must change their behavior to accommodate your wishes is not viable in the long run, because more and more people want to push their own agenda. If the peanut thing flies, how far behind is the no-tuna rule? Look at all the problems just in the allergy sector. Shellfish, eggs, milk products, dust, pet hair, feathers, cosmetics: everyone brings something with them or on them to school. 

What happens when, inevitably, the "rights" clash? If one kid has an allergy to sunscreen, then what? Do all the kids stop using it at school to accommodate the one? How would that scenario play out, since sunscreen use is even more promoted than peanut awareness? That one should be interesting.

I guess the answer would be to issue all the kids HAZMAT suits instead of school uniforms. Or, better yet, home-school them. At least they'd be safe from the latest communicable disease: media-induced paranoia.