It’s almost impossible to find a preschool classroom without a list of allergies and their sufferers stapled to the wall. Peanut allergies are at the top of that list with more than 3.3 million Americans allergic to peanuts or tree nuts.
It’s really one those areas where you know something odd has been happening in the last couple of decades. When I was in elementary school, pretty much every kid was downing PB&Js and there was never a mention of anything bad related to peanuts. Today, avoiding peanuts is right up there with looking both ways. What gives?
Now it turns out doctors may have figured out a way to ease and even eliminate peanut allergies for some children. What’s the trick? Eating peanuts.
Kids in an American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology study were given tiny doses of peanuts that were built up over time and the results have been very promising. The peanuts were doled out to kids in the form of a sprinkled powder made up of as little as one-thousandth of a peanut. Based on those numbers, I may be the least peanut-allergic person on the planet.
It’s also worth noting that some studies suggest that kids are often misdiagnosed with food allergies.
We close this optimistic post with a classic (if only loosely related) exchange between Vissini (Wallace Shawn) and Fezzik (Andre the Giant) in the movie, The Princess Bride .
Vizzini: No more rhyming now, I mean it.
Fezzik: Anybody want a peanut?
