Unpacking Peanuts
You can’t swing a fourth-grader these days without being warned about peanut allergies in schools, and I wanted to share a brief thought on the situation.
First, an overview:
New research indicates that early exposure to peanuts—most commonly peanut butter—and increasing consumption of it may be contributing to the prevalence of the allergy. Although there are no hard statistics in Canada, most agree the allergy is on the rise. – calgaryallergy.ca
Now, I don’t mean to be morbid, and I certainly don’t have any hard data to back the wild postulation I’m about to make, but, consider this:
There were 112 deaths associated with the construction of the [Hoover] dam. Included in that total was J. G. Tierney, a surveyor who drowned on December 20, 1922, while looking for an ideal spot for the dam. He is generally counted as the first man to die in the construction of Hoover Dam. His son, Patrick W. Tierney, was the last man to die working on the dam’s construction, 13 years to the day later. – wikipedia
That factoid may seem unrelated to peanuts, but I mention it as an example – one of thousands – regarding how cheaply death came, even just 90 years ago.
(These days any construction project that cost the lives of over a hundred workers would be easily spotted from the air, as the lines of approaching lawyers would stretch well over the surrounding horizon.)
What if it’s not the case that peanut allergies are on the rise, but, instead, that better care taking, and science, are simply keeping those at risk alive long enough for us to notice the need to take precautions?