Nuts...why are they so bad

[NotAnotherScarf]

Nut allergy

Can someone please explain the fact that 54 years ago I started school and did 14 years without meeting anyone allergic to nuts...now everyone is and I can't enjoy a snickers without feeling guilty.

It is actually a serious question how we have got to the situation where so many people are in trouble if I open a packet of dry roasted.

I have good allergies that are miserable. Resulting in face swelling, nausea and terrible diarrhoea. Most people I meet are sceptical. It genuinely baffles me that anyone would think I would go to a restaurant or live a life and deliberately not eat most lovely things. That I would choose this way of life that is endlessly debilitating, boring and tedious. In some respects it’s a good question why are there so many nut allergies etc, and there is some interesting points above. But I suspect that your question isn’t really born from curiosity and empathy. It’s comes from your own inability to accept that with 8 billion people in the world many of them have vastly different lives to you. It’s your own intolerance and lack of empathy that motivates your question, I meet your tedious and nasty irritation every single day. So here’s a question for you how did you come to a point in your life where you couldn’t see past the end of your own nose? Were you always selfish or is it a new thing?

You can develop allergies as you age. My mother wasn’t allergic to nuts. In her mid 50’s she ate a piece of cheesecake that had almonds in the crust and she went into anaphylactic shock and nearly died. Now she has to carry an epi pen.

I have anaphylaxis with penicillin, I'm not sure that my parents could have done anything differently to avoid it, so I'm not convinced that all children with a food allergy were just kept too clean or not introduced to the food enough etc.. maybe for an intolerance but not severe anaphylaxis.
I have heard that summer babies are less likely to get hay-fever which is interesting if true.

I don’t think your parents specifically would have done anything “wrong” I mean just everyone in the west is too clean for our evolved immune systems.

Third world countries have way less allergies, but much higher infant mortality!

I vote we keep the cleanliness but use that knowledge to treat the allergies. Immunotherapies for example are showing a lot of promise in improving the lives of people with severe allergies!

This is interesting as I am a beekeeper and we once had a talk from an immunologist who said beesuits can cause bee sting allergies- because they have trace venom on them- if you hang them with other clothes or wash them with other clothes other family members could develop an allergy.

There was some research that countries with higher nut exposure in kids generally had a population with less nut allergies.

Kids in Israel eat a snack called Bamba (like wotsits) made of peanuts and they seem to have a lower rate of peanut allergy according to research.

Maybe midwifes at pregnancy check ups should encourage nut consumption as well as other perinatal vitamins as part of a wider health programme for community health.

too much peanut oil

The advice on seafood is related to food poisoning. I love it, but it made me heave whilst pregnant! I did occasionally eat nuts without thinking because I love them and did introduce peanut butter early to ensure exposure. I have terrible hayfever so was told to avoid nuts in pregnancy.

I think it’s more complicated that “they all died” although that will explain some.

Summer baby with hayfever here! Funnily enough (although not at all funny), my throat swells with penicillin too. Apparently they have proven that most who think they are allergic to penicillin aren’t (I used to work in pharmacy) - not those of us who swell up though!

I don’t think either of my daughters’ schools were/are completely nut free. Have never sent them with nuts.

i didnt avoid nuts in pregnancy in the 1990s

I ate nuts like people eat crisps. When I was 43 I was strolling in Bluewater eating a bag of hazelnuts when my lips began to tingle and I vomited lavishly like the Exorcist. This has subsequently extended to almonds, walnuts and Brazil nuts. Tree nuts essentially. But not peanuts or cashews.

I was 22 when I first developed hay fever. In Kavos of all places!

Yes definitely nothing peanut based in vaccines. But some vaccines are cultivated on hens eggs - the BCG used to be, don’t know if it still is, son couldn’t have It at school and had to go to a medical centre with a crash team in attendance. He also has severe peanut allergy which was only picked up after testing due to his anaphylactic reaction to raw egg white.
we were told to avoid all nuts so we did for years and avoided even cooked egg.
eventually at 11 he had an oral challenge test at a specialist centre and he’s fine with everything except peanuts. He can now eat cooked egg in cakes. The key thing is the temp and time it’s cooked at as it changes the structure of the protein.
it’s an absolute pain in the arse. He is also autistic with LD and frankly the allergies were far harder to manage outside the home.

i strongly suspect there is a relation to gut microbiome in
terms of the initial and subsequent exposures that set up the allergic response as quality of diet is the one thing that’s changed dramatically over the years. Maybe the improvements are related to better weaning practises ?
allergic response is poorly understood by most people and there should be better education before it gets to the specialist intervention stage.

When I was a kid (60’s/70’s) folk didn’t tend to eat nuts like we do now. Peanuts were typically salted, KP, style. The rest came out in shells at Christmas time.

My guess is the law of big numbers means the more prevalent a thing is, the higher number of people will be effected.

Also, when I was a child it was uncommon to see people eating unless they were at home or it was mealtime. Sweets and crisps were infrequent treats. Of course, I’m not saying people didn’t, but it wasn’t commonplace to have snack food readily available as it is now.

Having seen anaphylaxis in action, no way would I deliberately eat nuts outside my house anymore.

Without anyone seeing them have an allergic reaction first? I don't think its' this. There's an actual increase in allergies.

Having said that, most of the cafes I go to give me nuts and I didn't know people felt they had to avoid them except in schools and on planes. Colleagues eat them at work with no problem and we'd have no hesitation to have them at picnics unless someone had said they were allergic. OP's reaction seems a bit over the top.

"Also, when I was a child it was uncommon to see people eating unless they were at home or it was mealtime. Sweets and crisps were infrequent treats. Of course, I’m not saying people didn’t, but it wasn’t commonplace to have snack food readily available as it is now."

I suppose eating while walking around wasn't considered polite.
In the 80s snacking was seen as destroying your appetite, but then it started to be promoted, not only by chocolate bar companies but even by health experts who said things like eat fewer and smaller meals. I think that's partly to blame for the obesity crisis we have now.

"It genuinely baffles me that anyone would think I would go to a restaurant or live a life and deliberately not eat most lovely things. "

I know someone who used to say she was allergic just to make sure she didn't get something she really didn't like.

I know someone who became dairy intolerance in later life, potentially as a consequence of having Covid.

Nuts are only bad if you have a nut allergy op. If everyone you know has a nut allergy except you, then it's normal that you feel guilty for eating a snickers when you're with them!

But surely the reason for telling women to avoid nuts in pregnancy at that time was because there were already many people with nut allergies around so they were trying to do something to prevent it, unlike in earlier decades.

Yes, my brother had a violent allergy to cows milk, back in the early 1960s. The school knew about it, but one dinner lady thought she knew better and forced him to eat custard. He was in hospital for a week in an oxygen tent after that one.

Allergies were 'just fussy eating' to many people back then

I never had any allergies as a kid, now at the age of 39 I have a list of them.
Fruit, baths products, perfume, polystyrene, dust, pollen ,cardboard, bake beans spaghetti, pork bacon milkshake.
And the sun.
And many more.

It's another school day....in fact I believe I've become gluten intolerant in the last couple of years, or perhaps always have been and it's got worse

Absolutely tonnes of evidence for it unfortunately.

I ate nuts in all my pregnancies (2006, 2007 and 2010).. and the first 2 had nut butter stirred into porridge. Eldest has a brazil nut allergy.
Despite having eaten prawns and shellfish for years with no issue, I developed an allergy during my last pregnancy, and now have to carry epipens as the result of an anaphylactic reaction.