Fears over the dangers of peanut allergy, a potentially deadly allergy for certain people, are becoming sensationalist and hysterical, according to a Harvard professor.
A level-headed approach is needed before the situation spirals out of control, wrote Professor Nicolas Christakis from Harvard Medical School in the British Medical Journal.
The food industry is already bound by certain regulations, depending on the country, to highlight possible allergens in a food product, such as the EU’s Labelling Directive 2000/13/EC.
But Professor Christakis said that such an approach, however well intentioned, may actually “fan the flames, since they signal to parents that nuts are a clear and present danger.
“This encourages more parents to worry, which fuels the epidemic. It also encourages more parents to have their children tested, thus detecting mild and meaningless ‘allergies’ to nuts. And this encourages still more avoidance of nuts, leading to still more sensitization.
“The cycle of increasing anxiety, draconian measures, and an increasing prevalence of nut allergies must be broken,” he said.
Peanut allergies are rising in humans, with an estimated 2.5 million people in Europe and the U.S. now vulnerable to the food allergy.
There is no current cure for food allergy and vigilance by an allergic individual is the only way to prevent a reaction but a peanut allergy can be so severe that only very tiny amounts can be enough to trigger a response.
Current recommendations in many countries, such as the UK and the U.S., for would-be mothers are to avoid peanuts during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and infancy.
However, a recent study comparing incidence of peanut allergy in Jewish children in the UK and Israel (where no such recommendations exist) showed that children in the UK were 10 times more likely to suffer from peanut allergy than their Israeli counterparts.
Findings in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology showed that 69 per cent of Israeli children were consuming peanut, while only ten per cent of the children in the UK were eating peanuts.
Source: FoodNavigator-USA.com