Eating nuts on train?

[Watdidusay]

I need a sense check. I was eating a biscuit on a national rail train yesterday. It had a peanut butter filling.
I was standing in the gangway as the train had almost no seats.
At one stop, a woman and 2 young children were getting off. As they were waiting for the train to stop the woman said to me you can't eat peanuts on the train as it's a confined space. I didn't immediately understand and didn't really respond properly. She then got off.

I feel humiliated and stupid. I knew sometimes on planes this wasn't allowed if someone was allergic but didn't know this was the case on trains.

AIBU for not understanding?

She was being unreasonable.

The best thing you can do to help people with allergies is be clean and tidy. If you have food residue on your hands, wash them or use hand sanitiser. Try not to make a mess with your food or leave wrappers or crumbs.

If you have a child with allergies, you will wipe down seats and tables anyway but it is helpful if people don't make a mess in the first place.

And it's not specific to nuts. There are many allergens.

My DDs best friend is allergic to blue disperse dye. She had a reaction if clothing etc containing blue disperse dye comes into contact with her skin. So is it selfish for everyone to wear clothing containing blue dye in public?
And to wear down jackets since Pp is allergic?
or all dairy products?

where do we draw the line?

Being kind is great but you can't expect everyone to consider every single possible need. Nuts are a legal food, it's up to the owner of a place to ban them, not other members of the public.

Also a child had DD’s high school has a bad reaction to fragranced products. The school sent a very polite email saying they know it’s important for teens to be hygienic after PE etc but kindly asked pupils to consider roll on deodorants for the changing rooms and not to bring body spray/perfume. This won’t prevent the reaction, the girl impacted needs to get changed in the staff changing rooms to avoid it but it helps in terms of her sitting next to her classmates etc after PE

What will happen when she leaves school? If it’s selfish to eat nuts, would it also be selfish to apply aerosol deodorant or applying perfume in the morning before commuting to work? There’s no way we can cater for all allergies

YANBU
People with severe allergies manage it themselves. They can't expect to rest of the world to manage it for them,

Also, peanuts are not actually nuts.

I’ve always read the advice on a packet of nuts “Remember Small Children Can Choke On Peanuts” as advice as to what to do if there are any small children near you in the pub!

Is this yet more click bait? OP posted this, apparently in a flap, and yet has disappeared.

I feel humiliated and stupid

I mean, thats a bit of an overreaction to a random comment isn't it?

What do you mean flap?

What would be a normal reaction? The mum came across as quite angry herself.

I understand it must be scary for those with allergies, but in most public spaces it's simply allowed to eat (a snack containing) (pea)nuts 🤷🏼‍♀️ There are plenty people eating peanutbutter sandwiches while on the Tube or a Snickers while leaving the sportshall 🤷🏼‍♀️

She's batshit. Eat nuts on a train and enjoy them. I was on Eurostar on Wednesday back to London eating almonds with rosemary sold at the train cafe. They were delicious, highly recommend.

They serve them in GWR first class 🤷‍♂️

Thinking for a minute about whether she had a point, and then forgetting about it and getting on with my day.

Complete strangers opinions of me don't tend to have much effect on me. They certainly wouldn't make me feel stupid or humiliated.

In first class on some providers you still get peanuts. There are no rules saying you can't eat nuts on public transport. Personally I choose not to eat them on public transport, just because I'd feel awful if I had contributed to someone having an allergic reaction, but I've probably also eaten things like Nutella or something that contains nuts without even thinking about it.

I work on the railway. There is no rules on what you can and can’t eat. The only time I’ve seen it happen is when the member of staff has had allergy and they have to clean up tables but even then it’s a nicety from the passengers when they announce it but you can’t make anyone.

My DC has a severe peanut & nut allergy. Tbh it has never occurred to me to worry about people having nuts on trains. If they were, we would just move down to a different place. Definitely YANBU, OP.

There are some misconceptions though in the thread above that I think would be good to know about (I didn't know much about this at all until I had a child with allergies, so I don't expect anyone else to either).

• There might not be evidence that airborne allergens cause allergic reactions, but that doesn't make a physical reaction to the smell of nuts any less real. My daughter will smell it from far away and become very nauseous very quickly to the point of throwing up (you'd really not want to be sitting next to her eating nuts on a plane 😅!). In most cases that's easily solved by her moving away, as in the train example.
• Epipens aren't like popping a painkiller for a bit of a headache. It is certainly not a case of: oh don't worry I've had some nuts, I'll just whip out my epipen and get on with my day (if only...). It's painful, and temporary: you still need to call an ambulance when you use them.
• Nuts are everywhere, and there is never a guarantee that any food is nut-free. It seems easy to say, just take precautions and adapt your lifestyle, but it's basically like a continuous risk assessment, and there would be no quality of life for an allergy sufferer if they stayed away from every single situation that might have allergens exposure. So sometimes, when we can't easily move away, I would ask someone nicely if they wouldn't mind saving the nuts for later. For example, when you are at the theatre in the middle of a row and someone nearby opens a packet. The choice becomes: (a) let the child throw up then and there and ruin the experience for quite a few people and herself; (b) get up mid-show, cause a disturbance, and ruin the experience for her; (c) explain the situation and ask if someone could avoid having some nuts for the duration of a show. That is probably the option with the least negative effect overall... It can be quite worrying as a parent just after the interval in a theatre where bags of peanuts are sold, wondering which option to take if someone does open the nuts nearby...

I hope you can see I would certainly not expect people to pro-actively avoid all allergens out in public, that seems ridiculously difficult to do. But I do hope people would be kind about it if they do find themselves in a situation where they can easily make a difference.

Presumably some people have medical conditions meaning they need to eat at some point if it's a long journey, too?

@ItsJustMe88 ”My daughter will smell it from far away and become very nauseous very quickly to the point of throwing up” that’s precisely the issue , when I said that comments in research studies about symptoms in those with peanut allergies can be down to an ( understandable) anxiety response to a perceived airborne threat. Thankfully ideas about managing peanut allergies are changing and hopefully more children in the future will have access to immunotherapy and the like, rather then the total avoidance of previous management strategies…but CBT is also helpful for some to deal with the anxiety aspect.

Yes it would be great to generally not have to worry much about effects of exposure anymore. It could be anxiety, but it could also easily be a physical association (when eating peanuts she will start throwing up violently, so the smell could easily trigger the same physical sensation by association). I am going to look into whether it is possible to dissociate, that would be a very positive step!