Chiropractic and Health Books
The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic by Heather Fraser
This far-reaching history of the current epidemic of peanut allergy provides compelling answers to why this condition develops primarily in children and how its prevalence has ballooned to over 4 million people in the US alone. Heather Fraser, an historian and mother of a peanut allergy child, pinpoints the precise moment of this allergy's appearance and describes the perfect storm of social, medical, political and economic factors from which it has grown.
With an international overview-more than sixteen geographical locations are analyzed-and thirty pages of endnotes and appendices, Fraser has delivered a meticulously documented and illuminating account of a growing epidemic. Heather Fraser, MA, BA, B.Ed is a Toronto-based writer, a student of alternative medicine, and the mother of a child who has a peanut allergy.
Available at Amazon: The History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic
How and why has the epidemic developed?
Peanut allergy in children has grown exponentially since around 1990 doubling, by all accounts, every few years. In 2009, an estimated 1.5% of the US population about 4.5 million people were peanut allergic. The allergy has impacted education systems and social norms, provoked legal reform and made billions of dollars for the Food Allergy Industry.
Neither coincidence nor genetic fluke can explain the speed at which this allergy has spread in children or its peculiar features. The allergy appears primarily in western countries including the US, Canada, Australia and the UK and in boys more often than girls in a 2:1 ratio.
Still questions
The epidemic proportions of the allergy has spawned intense research into risk factors like head size, birth month, hygiene and parasite levels. And yet, no one has been able to explain the specifics of this surprising epidemic including the moment of its accelerated prevalence. Around 1990 hundreds of thousands of toddlers in western countries became anaphylactic to peanut – it is a moment confirmed by eyewitness accounts, ER records and cohort studies.
In this first ever historical account of the rise of peanut allergy in western society, Heather Fraser traces the allergy to 1944 when it first appeared in a cluster of children and from there to the specific events that laid its foundations.
Ms. Fraser’s thoroughly researched account of the peanut allergy epidemic is a significant and timely contribution to the body of literature on food anaphylaxis.
A peanut allergy story
In 1995, my 13 month old son had an anaphylactic reaction to peanut butter.
He wasn’t crying, in fact he was quite cheerful as he slowly fused with colour. Intense red and white blotches quickly formed on his face and arms. His eye lids thickened. I'd never seen anything like it.
I snatched him from his high chair and we ran.
Perhaps we were both too stunned, too gobsmacked with disbelief to cry or worry. It was just so unexpected. Even when we arrived at the ER and I announced that my son had eaten peanut butter I could not fathom the response of the nurses. They leapt across desks, caps flying, yelling, wheeling, snatching up the boy, jabbing his little arm with needles, stabbing an IV into the back of his hand. Screaming now with fear and confusion, he was strapped down so he couldn’t move, pumped with drugs, hooked to monitors and drips.
I stood behind the team of four or six or there might have been 10 doctors and nurses, whatever the exact number it seemed totally out of proportion to my announcement that we had just eaten peanut butter. How could a food I had eaten for years cause such a reaction?
They fussed for what seemed like hours until they finally unstrapped him....
After a round of blood and scratch tests, the doctor diagnosed our toddler with allergies to peanuts and nuts. He confirmed that our son was highly reactive perhaps even to just the odour of peanuts. With drugs we had managed to contain and recover from the reaction -- the next time we may not be so lucky. And there seemed not way to correct the condition. We were given a life long script for an Epipen and began adjusting to the idea that these foods could kill him.
On constant alert
Like other families with food allergic children we lived in a state of constant tension. I stopped buying processed foods and made all our meals from scratch. We stopped going to restaurants. Wherever we went, I was vigilant for smears of peanut butter left on tables, playground equipment or on grocery cart handles. Trace amounts on the skin or lip, we were warned, could trigger a deadly reaction. The allergy also posed social concerns -- he was often left out of play because friends had peanut butter in the house. He took his own food to parties and was taught not to share. It was just too dangerous.
When he started kindergarten in 1999, there were no allergy policies or any true understanding of the condition. The kindergarten teacher kept giving him candy rewards until one day, my fearful rebuke for this kindly habit finally sunk in. She turned white. Given this general lack of understanding at the schools at this time, I refused to let him attend many field trips envisioning him trapped on a bus with a peanut butter sandwich. I laminated home-made posters with his allergy profile and a photo -- two for the classroom, and more for the staffroom and the main office. I insisted that his class be peanut free. Every morning we strapped an Epi-belt containing two pens around his waist.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I was shadow-boxing my own paranoia, and not surprisingly I was accused of going overboard. But, as it turned out, I wasn't the only mother dealing with this problem in exactly the same way. A steady increase of peanut allergic children and concerned parents joined school communities across the province, the country. Lunch bag inspections became common. Any peanut related food, granola bar or sandwich was confiscated and sent home with a cautionary note. Initially, parents insisted that the peanut butter ban had violated their rights. Soon, however, everyone was forced to accommodate this new generation of allergic children. There were just too many of them.
At this point, at last, I started to think. What was going on? This allergy had developed in hundreds of thousands of children, not just mine – it had grown from an infrequent occurrence in 1990 to 1.5% of the US population, 4.5 million people by 2009. Neither coincidence nor genetic fluke could explain these numbers.
I started to dig. I wondered if the epidemic had grown from some unfortunate but perfect constellation of conditions and events. And in these circumstances, perhaps I too played a part.
My inquiries became the first book on the History of the Peanut Allergy Epidemic.
Biography
Heather Fraser, MA, BA, B.Ed is a Toronto-based writer. In addition to studies in alternative medicine, she has two university degrees in history and a third in education.