McConnell: For students with allergies, peanuts scare all year long

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By Cara McConnell

Thursday, February 5, 2009

When the news broke that peanut butter was linked to salmonella, I felt a sick sense of glee. Not because, according to Scientific American, hundreds of people were sick with the vomiting and diarrhea that comes with poisoned food, or because I think a handful of deaths is funny. It’s because for the first time, people were beginning to see peanuts the way I see them every day: as the enemy.

According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 2 percent of the population is allergic to peanuts. In most cases, it’s a lifelong allergy that only worsens with each exposure.

And by exposure, I don’t mean eating a Snickers bar, or even a whole peanut, although that’ll definitely do it. I mean eating something that was “processed on the same equipment as peanuts,” or a dish that came in contact with the same spoon used to stir something with peanuts. I mean being kissed on the cheek by someone who ate a handful of mixed nuts and having a rash break out in the shape of puckered lips.

Perhaps part of the reason I became so interested in food and nutrition is because I was trained at an early age to read label after label of every product I ate. My allergy is the reason I own so many Asian cookbooks. I haven’t ordered Chinese takeout for more than 10 years because it’s too high of a risk.

In the last few years, there have been quite a few stories about elementary schools banning peanuts from lunchrooms or establishing allergen-free tables where kids are sequestered to eat in safety.

But tactics such as these do more harm than good. Sure, it educates parents that it’s not okay to tell a kid to “pick the peanuts out” of a snack, and it’s probably prevented quite a few accidental allergy attacks. But it also takes the pressure to be careful off the kid with the allergy. This kind of training is dangerous because in the real world the only allergy-free zones are a couple of shelves in a health supermarket stocked with special cookies and energy bars.

The last time I got sick was a few years ago on vacation, when I asked a waiter three times if there were any peanuts in any of the dishes I had ordered. The second time I asked was when I took one bite of my salad. I don’t really know what peanuts taste like exactly, I just know their presence by the terror that accompanies that smell, that taste. I laid my fork down, turned to my mom, and said, “Get the waiter — I know something’s up.”

By the third time I asked, I could feel my mouth swelling up, my throat itching, and my stomach tense with the fear of what might be to come. It was only then that the embarrassed but rather nonchalant waiter reported that occasionally they substituted peanut vinaigrette on the salad.

An hour later, I was in the hospital with an IV in my arm, luckily more scared than sick. But even then, I knew my reaction had gotten worse, and that I was edging towards anaphylactic shock, the symptom that makes peanut allergies the most common cause of food-related death.

Eventually the salmonella recall will be lifted, and peanuts will once again be safe to spread between two slices of bread or to munch between classes. But right now, I’ll relish each bite knowing there are fewer peanuts contaminating my world.

— McConnell is a Dallas junior in journalism.

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