[HN Gopher] Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: ...
___________________________________________________________________
Sesame allergen labeling law has unintended effect: sesame in more
foods
Author : 4ad
Score : 224 points
Date : 2022-12-24 12:26 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fox9.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fox9.com)
| AnonC wrote:
| After reading this report, it's not clear to me what the federal
| government ought to have done or should've done differently. Not
| regulate food labeling at all? Or not regulate food labeling if
| less than 1% of the population is impacted by an issue? Remove
| prior food labeling laws for other allergens? Provide incentives
| to prevent companies from simplifying their processes and keeping
| costs lower (especially during a time of high inflation and
| rising interest rates)? Punish companies that are bypassing the
| spirit of the law and compel them to create and maintain
| facilities and processes to prevent cross contamination (and make
| products that don't have allergens)?
| ghayes wrote:
| The best answer would be to absolve them of liability if they
| properly state the cross-contamination risk.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| This will just lead to another case of California's Prop 65
| savingsPossible wrote:
| I hazard a guess that, then, they would state the cross-
| contamination risk in everything.
|
| Laywers, optimization an all that...
| 323 wrote:
| > _Some companies include statements on labels that say a food
| "may contain" a certain product or that the food is "produced in
| a facility" that also uses certain allergens. However, such
| statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA, and
| they do not absolve the company of requirements to prevent cross-
| contamination._
|
| How did we end up in a place where you need to make food in
| pharma-grade cleanliness facilities unless you want to be sued
| into bankruptcy.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Because people have food allergies, and should have a right to
| know whether or not the food they're consuming has been cross-
| contaminated by allergens?
|
| How did we end up in a place where the companies aren't putting
| the cross-contamination ingredients in the ingredients list,
| and instead put them in a non-standard warning label.
| mynegation wrote:
| To me, the most important question is: how did we end up in a
| place where there are so many food allergies and we still do
| not understand the reason for the increase? Is it better
| diagnosis? Early exposure to allergens? Lack of early
| exposure to allergens? Some evolutionary advantage to having
| an allergy? (I doubt that, but it is plausible).
| wtvanhest wrote:
| My son has multiple severe nut allergies so I've gone from
| having zero awareness to having too much.
|
| Allergies are fascinating bc they are a continuum and
| random.
|
| Continuum from...
|
| zero symptoms if you eat the protein in the nut and just a
| positive blood test...
|
| all the way to...
|
| cannot be in same room as nuts if they will have a reaction
| that constricts their ability to breath.
|
| They are also random in that your outcome can be wildly
| different each time.
|
| The result imo is that drs who detect any food allergy,
| let's say the child has a slightly swollen lip after eating
| sesame will run labs on blood and skin and get some real
| positives and some false positives.
|
| Next they say not to eat anything the person is allergic to
| in order to prevent a life threatening allergy.
|
| If no blood or skin tests existed this person may go
| through life mainly avoiding the food bc it's
| uncomfortable, but never think of themselves as allergic to
| X.
|
| Net result is that people with allergies are safer now, but
| the % of people we know have allergies has increased.
|
| As a side note, if you are reading this as a parent with a
| kid with a recently discovered food allergy, please note...
| it totally sucks, but... you will adjust over time to the
| higher workload and constant label reading, hang in there.
| mynegation wrote:
| Thank you for your reply and best wishes to your family!
| I know it can be a bit of an intrusive question, but how
| do people discover that children have a particular
| allergy? Do you get an epipen the same moment you have a
| newborn, just in case? Do you try some small amount or
| potentially cross contaminated food just to test? Do you
| discover it randomly and hope there is going to be enough
| time to get to ER? I have been lucky not to have it for
| myself, or a child, but how did you know?
| viraptor wrote:
| Depends on the country, but some have a recommended list
| of foods to expose your kid to when they start eating
| solids. For example
| https://www.allergy.org.au/patients/allergy-
| prevention/ascia...
|
| Epipen? No. But if I didn't live around the corner from
| the hospital, I'd probably test peanuts and shellfish
| while parked next to one : - )
|
| That wasn't common when/where I was born, but then again,
| the cuisine there/then was more limited so I'd be exposed
| to most allergens naturally within the first year. (And
| face "I've never seen a prawn and I'm 20 - am I allergic
| to them?" later)
| wtvanhest wrote:
| Our son had skin issues (eczema) before he was old enough
| to eat solid foods. Eczema and food allergies are
| correlated so we fed him small amounts of peanuts and he
| had a crazy reaction. We were lucky he didn't end up in
| er first time, but swollen lips, changed "voice" for
| weeks etc.
| whatshisface wrote:
| For anyone reading this, there are safer ways to test for
| peanut allergies than feeding someone peanuts, especially
| because peanut allergies can kill. I'm reminded of this:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Net result is that people with allergies are safer now,
| but the % of people we know have allergies has increased
|
| Percentage of kods who are left handed has increased
| after we stopped beating them at school into being right
| handed.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| It is not settled science, but one hypothesis is the
| hygiene hypothesis, which proposes that exposure to certain
| microbes at a young age is important for the development of
| a healthy immune system. By over sanatozing our
| environment, we prevent exposure of young children to those
| microbes, leading to the increased prevelence of allergies.
| graeme wrote:
| Note that the most important of these are intestinal
| worms, helminths. The other would be bacteria.
|
| Respiratory viruses, by contrast, are not on the list. It
| is instead _chronic_ presences in the body which may
| modulate immune response and avoid allergies.
|
| (You said nothing wrong but the name itself is confusing)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
| hgomersall wrote:
| Interestingly, age of introduction is also important. For
| a long time the advice was to delay introducing
| allergens. It turns out that that increased the chance of
| being allergic to the thing.
| adrr wrote:
| Correlation to having a dishwasher to food allergies.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25713281/
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > The risk was further reduced in a dose-response pattern
| if ... the family bought food directly from farms.
|
| This kind of content is not acceptable on HN.
| wink wrote:
| Anecdata and all but my food allergies as a kid were a
| lot more severe than after puberty. On the other hand I'm
| pretty sure I could eat a few things as a toddler that I
| couldn't anymore in/after elementary school. It's really
| weird.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Fun fact: This latest round of medical hijinx got me 5 new
| food allergies!
| metiscus wrote:
| My youngest child is allergic to soy. The upside is that
| we're eating better food at home, the downside is that we
| basically can't eat anything but home cooked food, and then
| you must be careful because they shove soy into everything
| anymore. If it isn't allergen labeled, I just assume it has
| soy in it these days.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Well now they are clearly labeled as containing the allergen,
| people can steer clear of these products! Seems like a win.
| xvector wrote:
| This sucks. As someone with a mild to moderate peanut
| allergy, I've been able to gladly eat whatever "may contain
| peanuts" food that I want, but with laws like this, it'll
| cut off a huge portion of what I can enjoy. All my friends
| with severe peanut allergy never ate these foods to begin
| with, so it's not helping them either.
|
| Why can't the government just let us decide what risks we
| want to take? I'm sick of this shit. I don't need the
| government to regulate which port is on my phone or the
| direction I wipe my ass or the snacks I can eat. Just let
| me freely live in peace goddamnit.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| The problem is that there is a (sadly) large group of
| people who believe that its the governments job to right
| every wrong that there ever was, fix any and every
| inequality that exists, and smooth out any randomness
| that exists.
|
| In other words - control, control, control.
| danaris wrote:
| But you _do_ need the government to mandate that
| allergens are _accurately reported_ on packaging. Without
| government regulations on food packaging, some of your
| friends with severe peanut allergies would be dead now,
| because most manufacturers would not label trace amounts
| of peanut contamination.
|
| It sounds like this law was very poorly written, in that
| rather than pushing manufacturers to a) be more careful
| about cross-contamination and b) accurately label, it
| pushes them to _deliberately_ add sesame to the foods.
|
| This is not because government "interference" in food is
| fundamentally bad; it's because _this law_ is very poorly
| written.
| Jiro wrote:
| The problem is that "may contain sesame" is not a legally
| valid excuse for containing sesame, but "does contain
| sesame" is. And the part about "may contain X" not being
| an excuse comes from existing precedent, not from the new
| law.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Right, in fact I'm not sure why the new law is even
| causing this. The interpretation of the labeling law
| which now includes sesame is that it only applies to
| intentional ingredients. As far as that's concerned, no
| label at all is fine.
|
| Separately, the good manufacturing practices rules say
| that cross contact risks should be limited. But the FDA
| mentions there may be some cases where this is
| impractical and a may contain label "might" be
| acceptable. They don't say what those are, and they don't
| explicitly require a label either, because that is not a
| labeling law.
|
| So consumers can't really be sure if cross contact is a
| risk or not.
| danaris wrote:
| The new law could presumably have _changed_ that, though.
| (And it does seem like something of an absurd precedent
| to me.)
| Aperocky wrote:
| Exactly, I was sarcastically replying to the parent
| comment who still defended this change. I feel your
| plight and I hope this can be reverted to some degree.
| r_klancer wrote:
| Plus, so many foods list what they "may contain" traces
| of X, but never really quantify _how much_ of a trace.
| Which actually may be a good thing about intentionally
| adding sesame, because at least it makes the amount
| consistent.
|
| I was allergic to peanuts as a kid, way back before it
| was cool, and didn't know why M&Ms gave me a mild version
| of the burning sensation and nausea I would get from
| eating peanuts. Later it turned out, famously, that non-
| peanut M&M shells contain some "reprocessed" material
| from the peanut M&M line. (And still do as far as I can
| tell.)
|
| Nothing else with the "may contain" label has ever given
| me trouble! But I still get nervous that I'll find out 2
| hours into a bike ride that I just fueled up on an extra
| peanutty "may contain" Clif bar.
|
| Now I'm concerned about sesame. I can eat hamburger buns
| just fine but I discovered sometime in my 20s that sesame
| noodles make me sick, and the last time I was at a Korean
| restaurant my face puffed up just from the air.
|
| So, oddly, one positive of the trend described in the
| story is that if processed food X lists sesame as an
| ingredient, and I can nibble on it and then eat the whole
| thing without getting sick, then I know whether or not I
| can eat that food, because it's presumably made with a
| consistent amount of sesame every time. Whereas with a
| "may contain" label, I'm never really sure if some batch
| might have lots of sesame and I just tested a non-sesame
| batch.
| derefr wrote:
| > Plus, so many foods list what they "may contain" traces
| of X, but never really quantify how much of a trace.
| Which actually may be a good thing about intentionally
| adding sesame, because at least it makes the amount
| consistent.
|
| I mean, they don't usually... know? They know that the
| assembly line for product X is physically near an
| assembly line for product Y that contains peanuts, and so
| X may have some peanut particulate floating through the
| air and landing on it. It would be a different amount of
| particulate at different times of day, different
| humidity, etc; and so different individual bars of
| product X could end up with different amounts of trace
| contaminants. (Almost always none, since they do _try_ to
| avoid these effects; they just can't _guarantee_ that
| they've been successful, or that they'll be successful in
| perpetuity.)
|
| Or alternately, if the manufacturer is a job-shop
| (produces different things for different customers,
| retooling between each job) then they can't guarantee
| that they've cleaned out a perfect 100% of traces of
| previous job materials out of their assembly line when
| they start up a new production run. (The theoretically
| perfect way to solve this is to have separate job-shops
| that only deal with jobs containing allergen X -- but
| with the combinatorial number of allergens, and a shop
| having to dedicate itself to only processing a particular
| combination [A, B, not-C, not-D], that's mostly
| impractical.)
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| They don't know, but we can be pretty confident that it's
| no more than a trace.
|
| If eating the wrong thing can kill it makes no
| difference, "may contain" is the same as "contains".
| However, if eating the wrong thing will simply mess up
| your day "may contain" is a very different thing than
| "contains".
|
| And if I learn I react to product X so be it, I simply
| don't eat X.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| It is not socially efficient to spend massive amounts of
| resources accommodating a small number of people with
| allergies.
| rewgs wrote:
| Cool, guess I'll die then.
|
| Signed: someone with a shit load of food allergies.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| Are you interested in turning a question involving >300M
| people into a personal question? I'm not.
| rewgs wrote:
| I am, because it's fucking personal, asshole. This is a
| literal question of life or death for me, and upended my
| life so totally and completely that I nearly killed
| myself trying to adapt to it.
|
| You're the one going out of your way over multiple
| comments in this thread to show us that you couldn't give
| a single fuck about accommodating those >300M people.
| You're not the good guy here.
|
| Edit: good lord, you literally said elsewhere that
| accommodating most disabilities in general isn't worth
| it. Go fuck yourself, you absolute sack of shit.
| danaris wrote:
| By that argument, it is not "socially efficient" to make
| _any_ accommodations to disability.
|
| It would be "socially efficient" to euthanize our elderly
| once they pass the age at which they can work optimally.
|
| We have, as a society, decided that we value human life and
| dignity more than any of that kind of "social efficiency".
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > it is not "socially efficient" to make any
| accommodations to disability
|
| More or less. The overwhelming majority of legally
| mandated disability subsidies in the US are
| _horrendously_ anti-utilitarian.
|
| > It would be "socially efficient" to euthanize our
| elderly
|
| This type of absurd claim is a crystal clear indicator of
| someone who's stuck on a zeroth-order approximation of
| utilitarianism and isn't factoring in any higher-order
| terms like people's responses to incentives.
|
| If we started killing old people, would that result in a
| net decrease in pro-social behavior? Obviously.
|
| If we stopped wasting huge quantities of marginal
| resources on infrastructure due to e.g. ADA requirements,
| would that result in a net decrease in pro-social
| behavior? It would not.
|
| > We have, as a society, decided that we value human life
| and dignity more than any of that kind of "social
| efficiency"
|
| Another common refrain of the economically illiterate -
| claiming to "value human life" while simultaneously
| working against policies that would actually improve
| human flourishing. It's also very generous to describe
| the outcome of selectorate mechanics and lobbying as "we,
| as a society, decided..."
| danaris wrote:
| Spoken like someone who neither knows anyone with
| disabilities, nor realizes that they, themselves will
| likely be disabled at some point in their lives, and will
| both want and need accommodation at that point.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| You're making things up about me (all untrue,
| incidentally) so you can write off my argument as
| heartless or something instead of actually addressing it.
| avianlyric wrote:
| I assume based on this comment that you would be happy to
| personally explain to parents of someone killed due to an
| allergic reaction, why their death was an acceptable trade-
| off for "social efficiency"? I assume that you would also
| be personally happy with inflicting an allergy based death,
| or serious injury, on those that you love?
|
| One of the frustrating aspects of arguments like this, is
| that proponents of "social efficiency" aren't personally
| impacted their proposed policies. They're quite happy to
| push for policies that negatively impact others, but it
| seems unlikely they would pursue a utilitarian policy with
| such zeal if it personally impacted themselves, or those
| they love. The impacts of utilitarianism are for others to
| deal with, proponents almost universally only benefit from
| their policies.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| Why would I want to talk to someone about an issue I
| couldn't possibly expect them to have a rational opinion
| on?
|
| > One of the frustrating aspects of arguments like this
|
| Is people insisting on making a society-scale issue into
| a personal, emotional issue?
|
| > is that proponents of "social efficiency" aren't
| personally impacted their proposed policies
|
| Oh. Well funny enough, I actually do have a couple
| serious dietary intolerances - but I don't insist on
| externalizing my costs onto others against their will.
|
| It may be alien to you, but in fact I am perfectly
| capable of considering policy decisions that are bad for
| me but good for society. Some people can't do it, I
| guess.
| 323 wrote:
| > _I assume based on this comment that you would be happy
| to personally explain to parents of someone killed due to
| an allergic reaction, why their death was an acceptable
| trade-off for "social efficiency"_
|
| What would you say to the parent of a child killed by a
| drunk driver? According to this line of thinking alchool
| should be banned because some drink and drive and kill
| innocent people.
|
| Or driving cars should be banned because sometimes people
| fall asleep at the wheel.
|
| Said otherwise: accidents do happen, trying to make them
| illegal will have massive "social efficiency" costs,
| which will affect the ones the banning tried to protect.
|
| Just like here - introduce strong anti-allergy laws and
| now you get even more allergenic food.
| [deleted]
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Soylent Green is "socially efficient."
|
| Anecdotally, it's not a small number of people. Ask a
| parent of school-age children in the past ten years. It's
| increasing, for some reason.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > Soylent Green is "socially efficient."
|
| No it's not, but it's a good sniff test for people who
| have a zeroth-order model of utilitarianism and aren't
| thinking about things like incentives.
|
| > It's increasing, for some reason.
|
| I agree - my suspicion is that accommodating the 0.1% of
| kids with peanut allergies means that another 0.5% of
| kids (or whatever, made up fractions) never get enough
| exposure to peanut allergens to develop a tolerance, so
| the problem is self-reinforcing.
| tssva wrote:
| I'm the parent of a school aged child. Due to the high
| occurrence of nut allergies they have eliminated nuts
| from all school lunch items. For example instead of
| peanut butter sandwiches they now offer sunflower butter
| sandwiches. My child is allergic to sunflowers.
| kaibee wrote:
| > It is not socially efficient to spend massive amounts of
| resources accommodating a small number of people with
| allergies.
|
| It is also not socially efficient to have a society where
| you have to worry about if your particular issue will be
| "efficient" enough for other people to care about. That
| basically sounds like a very low-trust society. And the
| economic consequences of having a low-trust society are so
| much worse.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| Federal laws mandating absurdly costly subsidies of very
| small minorities is not what "high-trust society" means.
|
| You're right in one sense - living in a low-trust society
| is very socially inefficient. I just don't think you have
| a working model of why we're becoming low-trust. It
| certainly has nothing to do with accommodating rare
| allergies.
| drewrv wrote:
| What is the point of society if we're not going to protect
| vulnerable people? You're talking about "efficiency" as
| though society has one goal to maximize. I would argue that
| there's multiple goals that need to be balanced but at the
| top of the list would be "protect children".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Maybe if we examine your life situation, we will find some
| social efficiencies too - maybe its not socially efficient
| to spend police resources protecting your neighbourhood and
| your in particular from robbery and violence.
| 323 wrote:
| But article states something else - a company can't say "this
| product might not be safe for people with food allergies",
| they can still be sued. So the only thing left for the
| company is to actually intentionally put the alergen in and
| they say "this product is 100% not safe for people with food
| allergies". The end result is the decrease of alergen free
| food.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Because if I can just right "this product might not be safe
| for people with food allergies" on a package and not have
| to worry about legal consequences, why wouldn't I? Magic
| anti-lawsuit boilerplate on every box!
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't understand why they can't just label the product as
| "might contain sesame"? Why do they need to change the
| recipe when it sounds like a labelling change would do the
| job?
| cortesoft wrote:
| Because that label doesn't meet the requirement for the
| law.
| Thorrez wrote:
| According to the article, that's not good enough for the
| FDA. As for why the FDA says it's not good enough, I
| don't know.
|
| >Some companies include statements on labels that say a
| food "may contain" a certain product or that the food is
| "produced in a facility" that also uses certain
| allergens. However, such statements are voluntary, not
| required, according to the FDA, and they do not absolve
| the company of requirements to prevent cross-
| contamination.
| rewgs wrote:
| When you have life-threatening food allergies, "may
| contain" is the same as "does contain."
|
| I suddenly developed two dozen food allergies at age 30
| after a lifetime of eating whatever I wanted. I wouldn't
| wish this on my worst enemy. Out of all the numerous ways
| in which it's horrible, seeing "may contain" on the
| ingredients list of a food that, based on the ingredients
| I can _confirm_ it has would otherwise be fine, is one of
| the most soul-killing.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yeah, I've been seeing "this product was manufactured in
| a facility that processes food containing tree nuts" for
| over a decade now.
| rewgs wrote:
| That doesn't bother me, even with a severe almond allergy
| I've rolled that dice many a time and it's been fine. The
| problem is "may contain tree nuts." Like, okay, does it
| or doesn't it?
|
| What's even worse is the ingredient "spices." Which
| spices? Even _smelling_ mustard can send me to the ER,
| but basil is one of my favorite foods.
|
| How these kinds of not-even-half measures are legal is
| beyond me.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| "spices" is the _worst_. are they worried that someone is
| going to steal their recipe if they happen to list all
| the ingredients?
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| But there are also those of us whose issues aren't life
| threatening.
|
| Something like sesame should be labeled, but they should
| permit the "made in a facility that uses <x>" type
| labeling. I'll take a chance on such things because I
| know that at worst I'm in for an unpleasant day and it's
| very unlikely to even do that--my reactions are dependent
| both on dose and frequency. "Contains sesame"--I'm not
| touching it. "Made in a facility that uses sesame"--I
| wouldn't care.
|
| Besides, their definition of "contains" is flawed,
| anyway. They're obsessed about what the manufacturer puts
| in, but as far as I can tell there are no rules at all
| about listing what they fail to take out. Occasionally
| you see the origin of certain materials listed but that's
| rare. I've had several encounters with situations where
| the failed-to-remove ingredient has been an issue for me,
| but the only cross-contamination I've ever had an issue
| with was pretty blatant (Chinese wok cooking typically
| does not wash between dishes. It's hot enough that this
| isn't a disease threat and such cooking is active enough
| that there will be no issue of stuck-on food--thus for
| most purposes this is fine. However, it's just asking for
| cross contamination between dishes.)
|
| They also permit my #1 nemesis: "artificial flavors". I
| have no idea which ones I'm sensitive to because they're
| not individually listed. (Lest you think I'm one of the
| chemical-phobic nuts, my #2 nemesis is "natural
| flavors".)
| janalsncm wrote:
| What we're talking about is erasing the granularity
| between "sometimes contains" and "does contain".
| "Sometimes" doesn't necessarily tell you anything about
| dosage or frequency. It just means sometimes.
| rewgs wrote:
| > But there are also those of us whose issues aren't life
| threatening.
|
| ...yet.
|
| My allergy to mustard used to barely register. It still
| scores near the bottom on my skin prick and IgE blood
| tests. And yet, over the past few months, it's evolved
| where if I'm even in the same _room_ as someone eating
| mustard, I begin to go into anaphylaxis. Food allergies
| are absolutely absurd and you can 't trust them to stay
| the same.
| Thorrez wrote:
| What do you mean you can confirm it? What if it's made in
| a factory with various conveyor belts, and some dust from
| one could get into another?
| rewgs wrote:
| I just mean that the ingredient list is otherwise fine.
| It's completely ruined by "may contain something that
| you're allergic to."
| janalsncm wrote:
| Let's say a bottle of water had the following label:
|
| "This product might not be safe for people sensitive to
| dysentery or cholera."
|
| Would you drink the water? It might not give you cholera.
| Of course not, no one should drink that water.
|
| The label feels like a cop-out on the part of the food
| manufacturer. Either it's safe or it's not. If someone
| takes their chances and gets cholera, the statement has
| passed responsibility on to the consumer.
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| This is a silly analogy, cholera or dysentery aren't safe
| for anyone. But the vast majority of people handle sesame
| just fine.
|
| There is a big difference. Sometimes trace cross-
| contamination occurs, just how it goes.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| They can still say it, but it's vague enough to have
| essentially no meaning. So it makes sense that this
| meaningless statement wouldn't somehow absolve them from
| all responsibility for only including the ingredients on
| the label.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Why was the disclaimer "this product might not be safe"
| added, though?
|
| And why did the courts decide it was not binding/not enough
| to protect from liability?
|
| It seems the kind of thing a lawyer would want on pretty
| much every product. Then the courts would respond by making
| it null.
|
| IDK if this is what happened, but then the problem would be
| harder...
| willnonya wrote:
| This is it. The labeling isn't the problem it's the extra
| processes and cost required to eliminate the potential for
| any cross contamination. This problem, cost and liability
| goes away by just adding the ingredient.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Can't they just write "contains sesame" without actually
| adding any sesame? Then they will be sued by sesame lovers,
| I see.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > How did we end up in a place where the companies aren't
| putting the cross-contamination ingredients
|
| Isn't it because it's not an explicit ingredient but a risk
| of trace contamination? I'm not sure that an ingredients list
| with a bunch of "might also contain ____" items at the end.
|
| The warning is pretty easy to spot when it's supplied.
| willnonya wrote:
| The change in the law makes that insufficient to eliminate
| the liability. It isn't a matter of labeling but the cost
| of eliminating any possibility of cross contamination.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Right, I'm not saying it absolves the company, just that
| putting it in the ingredients list isn't helpful or
| honest, either.
|
| New labeling law doesn't fix anything here.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How is it not honest? It's not _helpful_ , but it seems
| perfectly _honest_ (assuming the product actually
| contains the ingredients listed.)
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| If I see sesame in an ingredients list, and I discover
| that really means "we don't deep clean the oven conveyer
| after cooking sesame products", I think I'd feel at least
| a little tricked.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's not what it means in this case. In this case, it
| means that "we intentionally added some otherwise-not-
| needed sesame to the product, in order to comply with
| this law and the truth-in-labeling laws."
| wtvanhest wrote:
| It also means they don't feel confident enough in their
| cleaning process and would prefer to add cost to their
| manufacturing process than to ensure clean machines
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Have you ever cleaned up sesame seeds? The article's
| "remove all the sand" analogy is exactly on point -
| they're tiny and get stuck tight in every available
| crack. No normal cleaning process is going to remove all
| of them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the producers involved understand their
| costs better than you or I and have concluded the optimal
| outcome is to add an epsilon of sesame cost than a
| multiple of that of additional decontamination cost.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| In this specific hypothetical, sure.
|
| Or it could mean the conveyor next to it uses lots of
| sesame oil and they can't guarantee every single particle
| stayed in that belt.
|
| Or it could mean the conveyor on the other side of the
| factory is and they don't want to risk it.
|
| Nobody knows the specific reasoning a company has for
| adding it in unless they had insider info from the
| company itself. Everything else is pure speculation.
| likpok wrote:
| Companies can't just put it in the ingredients list, that
| would also be illegal. They need to actually add it to
| the product.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| My 13 month old son is allergic to everything. Eggs, diary,
| tree nuts, lots of fruits including avocados. Obviously peas
| and peanuts.
|
| I don't need rules that encourage adding allergens to foods
| that previously "contained traces". My wife and I know how
| sensitive he is to every allergen and if we need to avoid
| traces (hazelnuts) or not (milk)
| mort96 wrote:
| But you do presumably need rules which tell you whether a
| given item contains traces of allergens, right?
| Thorrez wrote:
| Yes. But this new rule from the FDA says such labeling
| isn't sufficient.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Edit - Replied to the wrong comment
| azinman2 wrote:
| Curious - when did you introduce (or not) those foods to
| him? When/how did you discover the allergy? Could you walk
| us through this?
| sbaiddn wrote:
| I wasn't going to write it now because it's Christmas
| Eve; but I have a moment to type this.
|
| Back story:
|
| My wife and I are super old school when it comes to food.
| Organic as much as possible, processed very little. We
| spend a lot of time preparing meals. Our daughters pack
| home made meals to school.
|
| Our kids were all breast fed until 12 months, no formula.
| We introduce foods at six months, thereabouts, with
| "real" food. No baby food. No cereal. We make our own
| baby formula from a wide assortment of vegetables and
| meats. Each soup has at least five different vegetables,
| and there are three different soups so about 15 different
| veggies a week.
|
| We are also not shy introducing "dangerous" foods. Eggs,
| in particular, are one of our favorite foods and we
| introduce it at around six months. We "juice" (squash the
| fluids out) fillet mignon to give mix it into a squash
| puree as a starter food (for bioavailable iron, since we
| don't do cereal).
|
| We're not "real" Americans so peanut butter is not a
| staple. But we'll introduce it early on. We're careful,
| but not shy.
|
| My son:
|
| My son has never had a dangerous reaction like
| anaphylaxis. He reacted to eggs early on, around 7
| months. We noticed certain foods gave him hives and we'd
| avoid them.
|
| When he turned 12 we wanted to introduce milk so my wife
| could stop breast feeding. He reacted poorly and the
| nurse in the phone suggested we take him to the hospital.
| Therefore we did a test and he's allergic to everything.
|
| Causes:
|
| Who knows?
|
| Maybe because he's a COVID baby.
|
| Maybe its because my wife was super stressed while
| pregnant (we bought a house, moved, and figured out two
| day cares in the span of three months).
|
| Maybe because of a very stressful "vacation" when he was
| six months.
|
| Maybe its our city's industrial history.
|
| Maybe its genetic.
|
| Maybe its the luck of the draw.
|
| Solution:
|
| Deal with it, ultimately.
|
| Luckily we are pretty food obsessed and we dont mind
| spending time/money cooking. So far we're:
|
| Diary:
|
| - Since my son is not allergic to breast milk, my wife
| will breastfeed for another year at a rate of about seven
| times a day. She's also pumping.
|
| - We knew donkey's milk is similar to humans'. We tried
| it and he seems ok w/ it. Hard to find though. And pricey
| (with intl. shipping $100 for 2 L worth of powder)
|
| - I researched bioavailability of calcium and found out
| that bok choi has a lot of bioavailable Ca.
|
| Eggs:
|
| - Not much you can do here. 25% of kids allergic to hens'
| eggs are not to ducks, but the odds aren't great. I
| figured that eggs of birds furthest away from chicken
| would cause less problems. Therefore I have found out a
| research paper that proposes that Emu eggs should be ok
| since they lack the proteins that cause allergies.
|
| But where do you find emu eggs? There's a place in the US
| that grows emu and he's willing to sell us one to try
| out, but they wouldnt ship it and its a 10 hour drive.
|
| Fermented foods:
|
| My wife is Balkan and swears by yoghurt, I agree. We
| found coconut yoghurt without tree nuts.
|
| General nutrition:
|
| We're leaning heavily on fish and meats and making sure
| anything he eats doesn't bind to nutrients blocking their
| availability.
|
| Result:
|
| The pediatrician commented that: "he's growing pretty
| well for someone with so many allergies" so I guess thats
| a win.
|
| On the other hand, this week we're bouncing in and out of
| the ER with respiratory distress - Dr. figures, given all
| his allergies, he has asthma.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Wow. Thank you for taking the time to write all of this.
| I had seen studies that theorized the increase in
| allergies is due to introducing potential allergens much
| later in life, but it doesn't sound like that was the
| case for you. So sorry for your son; that sounds
| extremely stressful for all. Glad for him you're so on
| top of it. He's lucky to have such attentive parents.
| Merry Xmas.
| fundad wrote:
| Ooh I know! By cross-contaminating for a long time without
| consequences. People fight for these disclosures for a reason.
|
| If you convince people it makes you fat, you will see sesame-
| free products next to gluten-free products. Gluten-free is for
| hot thin people, allergens are for broken disposable people.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > How did we end up in a place where you need to make food in
| pharma-grade cleanliness facilities unless you want to be sued
| into bankruptcy.
|
| Wtf is this. The problem is the opposite.
|
| How did we end up in a place where one simple food 'may
| contain' one million ingriedients where its being made in a
| giant factory, not a kitchen.
|
| My mother has a lethal allergy to shrimp and crab. Do you have
| shrimp and crab in your kitchen or not? its a basic question.
| If we go to a coffe shop the anawer is no. We go to a british
| pub, answer is no. In fact for 90% pf establishments the answer
| is no, we have no shrimp on the menu at all.
|
| If you handle every ingredient under the sun in one giant
| factory, that's your fault. I you put weired additives like
| shrimp-derives food colorings, thats again your fault. If you
| put gluten into chocolate bars, even thought it's not suppose
| to be there, and you call something bread even though it cannot
| be legally called bread in france and you loose a lawsuit
| because your chicken nuggets contain less than 50% chicken,
| thats again on you.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is an underrated comment. This is a problem of ending up
| in a world where our food is mass-produced in factories. Food
| should be cooked in kitchens, not be manufactured in
| factories with contaminants blowing around. You should be
| easily able to know what's in your food because you wash it
| off and put it there when you cook it. There is a federal
| limit on how much rodent hair, feces, maggots, and mold can
| be in your food when it comes off the assembly line and it's
| non-zero[1].
|
| 1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-
| in...
| thrashh wrote:
| People buy mass produced because it's way cheaper
|
| I just watched a video of a candy cane assembly line that
| made thousands of canes per hour.
|
| If I had to pay a small shop to make that candy cane, I
| honestly wouldn't. I don't have the kind of money for the
| little things that I may want but not super bad
|
| Of course, you could argue for a lifestyle where you just
| appreciate a small set of things but it seems people like
| experiencing more things in life than fewer
| ilammy wrote:
| And when you live in a world with 8 billion people,
| that's a lot of food to sell.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| There is probably some middleground
|
| The beef is with ingridients, not automation per se.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| It's a chicken and egg problem.
|
| Does industrial production of cheap food make people
| choose cheap food, or would people rather cook but they
| only have time and funds to afford the cheap food?
|
| Similar to the agricultural revolution, material need
| outpaced free lifestyle choices. Nobody chose, either the
| workers or the factories, but it's where we are.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > If I had to pay a small shop to make that candy cane, I
| honestly wouldn't.
|
| Would that be such a bad thing, though? How many candy
| canes can someone reasonably eat in one holiday season?
| [deleted]
| crawsome wrote:
| [dead]
| namuol wrote:
| I dunno, maybe by respecting the rights and well-being of
| consumers?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| People dying
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| We're in this place because one factory can produce food that
| will reach millions of people. The odds that a homemade food
| stand accidentally gives a stray peanut to a consumer with a
| deadly allergy are low. But the odds of a mega factory with
| poor QC doing it are high.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > The odds that a homemade food stand accidentally gives a
| stray peanut to a consumer with a deadly allergy are low
|
| The odds per food item consumed are higher for small food
| businesses that aren't as easily forced into absurd clean-
| room manufacturing. This analysis makes no sense.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I'd be much more afraid of the homemade food stand.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > A former corporate CEO has been sentenced to 28 years in
| prison for selling food that made people sick. Two other
| executives face jail time as well. These jail terms are by far
| the harshest sentences the U.S. authorities have handed down in
| connection with an outbreak of foodborne illness.
|
| > The outbreak, in this case, happened seven years ago. More
| than 700 cases of salmonella poisoning were linked to
| contaminated peanut products. Nine people died.
|
| > Investigators traced the contaminated food to a factory in
| Georgia operated by the Peanut Corporation of America.
|
| > The outbreak, by itself, was not unprecedented. There have
| been bigger, and deadlier, outbreaks of foodborne illness.
|
| > But the emails that investigators found at the Peanut
| Corporation of America set this case apart. Some of the emails
| came from the company's CEO, Stewart Parnell.
|
| > "Stewart Parnell absolutely knew that they were shipping
| salmonella-tainted peanut butter. They knew it, and they
| covered it up," says Bill Marler, a food safety lawyer who
| represented some of the victims.
|
| > Before and during the outbreak, company executives assured
| customers that their products were free of salmonella when no
| tests had been carried out.
|
| > When tests did turn up salmonella, company executives
| sometimes just retested that batch, and when it came up clean,
| they sold it.
|
| > In one memorable email exchange, when Parnell was told that a
| shipment was delayed because results of salmonella tests
| weren't yet available, he wrote back, "Just ship it."
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/21/442335132/pe...
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/2009/peanut-butter-2008-2009....
| linuxftw wrote:
| > How did we end up in a place where you need to make food in
| pharma-grade cleanliness facilities unless you want to be sued
| into bankruptcy.
|
| One theory is there's a certain class of pharmaceuticals that
| induces autoimmunity disorders. These drugs aren't observed for
| medium or long term effects such as autoimmunity disorders,
| despite the fact they operate directly on the immune system and
| there's a growing body of evidence they do indeed induce
| autoimmunity.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| Authoritarianism.
| Drblessing wrote:
| bureaucracy strikes again!
| shkkmo wrote:
| > "At some point, someone is going to feed an allergic child
| sesame," Fitzgerald said. "It makes me think the laws need to
| change to show that this is not an acceptable practice."
|
| I don't see how you do this without overly burdensome regulation.
|
| It seems to me you in would have to either ban sesame altogether
| or at least tax it at levels significant enough to counter
| balance either the liability risk or cost of upgrading facilities
| to support the needed cleaning processes.
|
| Perhaps instead of another layer of regulation, concerned
| citizens should start a non-profit that provides grants to
| companies to upgrade their facilities?
| asah wrote:
| Prop 65 all over again.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=prop+65
| https://www.google.com/search?q=prop+65+unintended
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Seems somewhat par for the course. As the article notes, many
| other foods have intentionally added allergens as well,
| presumably to move the needle from 'may contain allergen X' to
| 'definitely contains allergen X' and shed some legal liability?
| [deleted]
| bikeformind wrote:
| Classic perverse incentive failure.
|
| Most famous example is called the "cobra effect." In the 1800's
| some towns in India had a problem with cobra infestation, so the
| governement offered a bounty for dead cobras.
|
| People started farming cobras to collect the bounty.
|
| Eventually too many dead snakes were being turned in, so the
| government stopped paying. As a result, the newly made "cobra
| farmers" just released all the cobras on to the streets, doubling
| the population.
| viscountchocula wrote:
| Is it, though? By making disclosure a requirement, the market
| for sesame-free items is highlighted and elevated. It may find
| a profitable niche or it may not, but consumers are now better
| able to choose.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Allergy labeling is likely a bit like support for people with
| disabilities: We regulate because the market doesn't work in
| these cases. The number of people who require accommodations
| are smaller than the value to make accommodating their needs
| profitable, so we use regulate because it's the right thing
| to do.
| coryrc wrote:
| The basis of the (edit: theoretical) free market is full
| information for all participants, which requiring more
| information on the label is helpful for. The problem here
| is they won't allow "may contain traces of X" as a valid
| acknowledgement, despite being easy to understand.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| ...because the warning was not valid.
|
| It was being slapped on everything to a)be lazy about not
| actually having allergens get into food because b)it
| fooled consumers into thinking that the disclaimer meant
| they weren't liable for allergens in food.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > The basis of the free market is full information for
| all participants,
|
| It's not, and in fact it is opposite of truth. The
| reason, for example, why free market economy works better
| than centrally planned one, is precisely that obtaining
| full knowledge is impossible, so it is impossible to
| effectively centrally plan, whereas in market economy,
| each individual contributes their own private knowledge
| that is unavailable to other people, through
| participating in market and communicating it through
| price mechanism.
|
| See, for example, Thomas Sowell's "Knowledge and
| Decisions", which is precisely about this point, or for
| more classic reference, Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in
| Society". Again, to reiterate, the entire point of market
| economy is that _nobody_ has full knowledge.
| coryrc wrote:
| Perhaps I'm sloppy with my terminology, but
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition seems
| to agree more with my statement than yours.
| adventured wrote:
| Perfect competition can never exist. There is no scenario
| where market participants (which make the market) will
| each have perfect knowledge and act perfectly upon that
| knowledge.
|
| Along with sometimes being smart or hard working, people
| are also sometimes lazy, dumb, irrational, careless,
| destructive, and so on. The point being, there is a wide
| variety and they bring their messy contributions to the
| market, which makes for a very messy market. There can
| never be perfect anything. It's not even a good theory,
| it's garbage, it would only work in a simplistic
| simulation with no chaos.
|
| Perfection competition theory is incorrect, badly flawed
| in a similar manner, as the efficient market hypothesis
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-
| market_hypothesis
| magicalist wrote:
| Neither this or the GGP is remotely an argument that less
| information makes for a better market, though.
| rayiner wrote:
| To be clear, we do it through the government because it's
| otherwise inefficient: it imposes a bigger collective cost
| on society than the benefit to the individuals. Whether
| "it's the right thing to do" is a moral construct. European
| countries, for example, have much narrower requirements for
| accommodation of people with disabilities than the ADA.
| magicalist wrote:
| Though maybe more pertinent, the EU has required sesame
| allergen labeling since 2003.
| magicalist wrote:
| And as usual with these nice simple narratives, there's no
| evidence this actually happened (and compelling evidence that
| it didn't):
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pmjrdg/is_th...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| That link is the neatest answer I have read in ages - this
| whole story could easily become a hour long tv show
| m000 wrote:
| Something very similar did happen though, during the "Great
| Hanoi Rat Massacre" [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanoi_Rat_Massacre#Hi
| rin...
| rcv wrote:
| Reminds me of that people who are 3D printing firearms and
| parts to sell off at gun buyback programs [1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/11/new-
| york-gun... [2]
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/akee4e/someone-made-
| dollar30...
| fragmede wrote:
| Reading your link, the bounty was real actual thing that
| happened, it's that the farming of snakes isn't something
| that was proven to be happening. The link actually says that
| deaths _increased_ due to an unintended consequence of the
| bounty system, just for different reasons than is usually
| mentioned.
| magicalist wrote:
| The post says deaths in _houses_ increased due to snake
| habitat destruction that drove them there. It suggests that
| could be because of snake death awareness raised by the
| bounty system, but that feels a step too removed to call it
| an "unintended consequence".
|
| It's not due to a perverse incentive regardless, though,
| which is what the original anecdote is supposed to
| exemplify.
| jacknews wrote:
| requirements are so stringent that many manufacturers, especially
| bakers, find it simpler and less expensive to add sesame to a
| product -- and to label it -- than to try to keep it away from
| other foods or equipment with sesame.
|
| I don't see how that follows. Surely they can just label it
| 'might contain traces of sesame' rather than actually adding
| sesame unnecessarily, and presumably at extra cost, or just add
| 'traces of sesame' as an ingredient.
| vinaypai wrote:
| "such statements are voluntary, not required, according to the
| FDA, and they do not absolve the company of requirements to
| prevent cross-contamination."
| xoa wrote:
| From the exact same article (emphasis added):
|
| > _If the ingredients DON 'T include sesame, companies MUST
| take steps to prevent the foods from coming in contact with any
| sesame, known as cross-contamination._
|
| And as far as "may contain", also from the exact same article:
|
| > _Some companies include statements on labels that say a food
| "may contain" a certain product or that the food is "produced
| in a facility" that also uses certain allergens. However, such
| statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA,
| and they DO NOT absolve the company of requirements to prevent
| cross-contamination._
|
| So the government has created a situation where anything
| without sesame is apparently vastly more expensive, or
| impossible, to manufacture now in the facilities they
| previously were. But the public would never tolerate banning
| sesame entirely just for some fraction being allergic, so of
| course it's still allowed as an actual intended ingredient in
| which case it must merely be labeled.
|
| Obvious result of this is obvious: in attempting to
| unrealistically force a new level of isolation on previously
| "best effort" products, and with no compensation, the result is
| people cease bothering with those now actively punished
| efforts. Bad unfunded mandate driven by activists without
| consulting with actual producers from the sound of it.
|
| A better approach might have been to support/reward the
| construction of new dedicated allergen free production
| facilities that could be devoted exclusively to those foods.
| But whatever the approach, it has to take into account actual
| demand vs costs.
|
| --------
|
| _Edit_ : I didn't do a good enough job in elaborating on the
| result for parent poster, and plenty in the overall thread seem
| not to see how this leads to wanting to actively add sesame, so
| copying my response post from farther down:
|
| Say we consider bakers. Essentially before the law there were 3
| classes of bakers wrt sesame: known contaminated (actively
| using it as an ingredient), regular (not actively using it, but
| make no promises either way), and medical (actively promise to
| ensure no contamination as a product feature). This law banned
| regular bakers, and it did it in such a way that they all
| become medical bakers _by default_ , because if they don't
| actively use sesame then they must meet the medical standard.
| But that's _TERRIFYING_ for a regular baker for good reason.
| Before if they cooked both sesame goods (lots of delicious ones
| in high demand) and non-sesame goods (same) they could make
| reasonable efforts and that 's fine. But medical means they now
| look at blame and liability for some child or adult having a
| serious reaction or even dying. And meeting that level of
| liability and standards may simply be impossible in an existing
| mixed normal facility. There is no funding for this mandate
| either.
|
| The obvious reaction to do is to switch to the "known
| contaminated" class instead. For the cost of adding a minuscule
| untasteable amount of sesame flour to everything, now they
| effectively return back to being regular bakers again. They can
| keep all their existing cooking, in their existing (very
| expensive, potentially impossible to move from) facilities.
| Like, what did anyone expect would happen here?
| Semaphor wrote:
| > However, such statements are voluntary
|
| That made me wonder, and I looked it up: The situation is
| exactly the same in Germany, and presumably the EU.
|
| Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required when
| there's a reasonable chance of contamination and b) why laws
| are not written in such a way, that "contains traces" is
| enough if you aren't sure about cross contamination like in
| TFA's case.
|
| Naively, that seems like it would improve things for
| everyone?
| sokoloff wrote:
| How long until you end up with Proposition 65-style
| warnings that products may contain trace amounts of every
| food product?
|
| Today, if I'm severely allergic, I might assume product X
| has a trace amount of my allergen. Tomorrow, I might assume
| the same thing, only now I can read it on a label.
| ghaff wrote:
| Except what good does that do you if a pinch of "blended
| allergen" is added to almost everything?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It makes food products continue to be as cheap and
| available as they currently are for everyone who can
| tolerate a pinch of blended allergen.
|
| Basically, it does about as much good as the Prop-65
| labels do.
|
| (Note that this sub-thread seems to be talking about the
| "what if we didn't [effectively] make it better for
| manufacturers to intentionally include the pinch of
| allergens, but instead just allowed them to label the
| possibility of trace cross-contamination?")
| ghaff wrote:
| Which was my point. It adds a small hoop for
| manufacturers/bakers to jump through and people who have
| actual allergies are no better off--and arguably
| marginally worse off--than before.
| sokoloff wrote:
| OK, in that case, we agree 100%.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Does anyone know why a) this is not legally required
| when there 's a reasonable chance of contamination and b)
| why laws are not written in such a way, that "contains
| traces" is enough if you aren't sure about cross
| contamination like in TFA's case._
|
| > _Naively, that seems like it would improve things for
| everyone?_
|
| Again per the theme of this article: beware second (later)
| order effects. What is "reasonable chance of
| contamination", _precisely_? Once you start creating legal
| liability, all the incentives change. In a voluntary
| situation people may only write it if they 're pretty sure
| it might be an issue, but if it's required and companies
| are punished if they get it wrong then the natural reaction
| is to just slap it on everything. If everything simply
| defaults to "may contain traces" then the notice is
| essentially worthless right? And someone with a serious
| allergy to a common food product should just assume that by
| default anyway.
|
| Which I think points to the real issue, which is that the
| approach is arguably all backwards. Certified/promised
| allergen free food, just like certified/promised kosher or
| a range of other things, are a specialized subset of food
| in general. This in some ways is similar to white lists vs
| black lists on the net in terms of dealing with content.
| Black lists are more appropriate when it's desired to be
| accepting by default (commonly when there are no or minimal
| life/safety factors). But it's expected that some
| objectionable things will slip through and then have to be
| reacted to after the fact. It prioritizes preventing false
| positives over false negatives, and it keeps overhead cost
| and uncertainty on the production side lower.
|
| When something is life/safety critical though, or similarly
| important, then instead it's better to do the opposite and
| white list. That prioritizes preventing false negatives:
| since everything must be explicitly and individually
| certified, nothing clearly failing criteria will ever
| appear. But of course this also means that potentially
| valuable things may get blocked from appearing, there are
| higher overhead costs, and producers in some cases may feel
| its riskier since they can't be sure they'll have a chance
| at all (which also raises cost).
|
| Both are important tools, but for medical products (and
| serious allergic reactions are a medical issue) it's
| probably almost universally better to white list. A purely
| tech example of an ongoing controversy would be "child safe
| internet": a lot of the efforts try to blacklist the adult
| general net into being child safe, which both doesn't work
| and causes major harm to regular adult discourse and
| expression. I think it'd be better to have approaches such
| as ".kids" and ".teens" TLDs or similar where nothing can
| go on that isn't pre-vetted to some standard. Then parents
| can restrict to those if they wish. That's a whole
| different discussion though!
| Majromax wrote:
| > If everything simply defaults to "may contain traces"
| then the notice is essentially worthless right?
|
| Not exactly. A business that produces _no_ products
| containing sesame will not have risk of even trace
| contamination, so it would have every incentive to not
| include "may contain sesame" on the label.
|
| > Certified/promised allergen free food, just like
| certified/promised kosher or a range of other things, are
| a specialized subset of food in general.
|
| Only some kinds of kosher food are "special." Nobody
| needs to think about whether a raw carrot is kosher; it
| can't possibly _not_ be. By its plain and obvious nature,
| a raw vegetable is fine.
|
| Allergies are weird in that a "plain and obvious"
| production process would probably be fine. A normal
| breadstick, made at home, would probably not contain
| sesame flour and thus would be perfectly safe. However,
| efficient industrial production results in not-strictly-
| necessary cross contamination and unexpected allergen
| exposure.
|
| > When something is life/safety critical though, or
| similarly important, then instead it's better to do the
| opposite and white list.
|
| Since allergies can lead to deadly-if-not-treated
| anaphylactic reactions, isn't this an argument for
| whitelisted ingredients?
| xoa wrote:
| > _Not exactly. A business that produces no products
| containing sesame will not have risk of even trace
| contamination, so it would have every incentive to not
| include "may contain sesame" on the label._
|
| But that was already the case, that's the point. If a
| business produces certified/assured allergy free food,
| then they can advertise that as an explicit product
| feature, and those who need it (or those buying on their
| behalf or with them in mind) can then pick it out vs
| competitors. That's "white list" in action, by default
| things aren't medical grade, and consumers can be
| confident in those that claim they are.
|
| > _Allergies are weird in that a "plain and obvious"
| production process would probably be fine. A normal
| breadstick, made at home, would probably not contain
| sesame flour and thus would be perfectly safe. However,
| efficient industrial production results in not-strictly-
| necessary cross contamination and unexpected allergen
| exposure._
|
| My understanding from family with serious allergies is
| that this definitely isn't true. Real effort needs to be
| made avoiding cross contamination in a home kitchen too,
| and indeed cross contamination at home is more, not less
| likely because most people are much more casual and have
| less space and equipment. Unless it's an allergy
| sufferers home (or their family) and there simply aren't
| any allergy ingredients there at all. But that merely
| makes the home a "dedicated facility" in essence too.
|
| > _Since allergies can lead to deadly-if-not-treated
| anaphylactic reactions, isn 't this an argument for
| whitelisted ingredients?_
|
| No? Banning sesame (or peanuts, or dairy, or a vast array
| of other potential allergens) in general is unacceptable
| to an overwhelming supermajority of the population. It's
| not a reasonable accommodation, and in a democracy it's
| not happening. Whitelisting _products_ is the solution.
| Ensure that anything labeled as allergen free is, and
| then that anyone with the need can get access to it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume the thinking is along the lines of "contains
| traces" or "may contain traces" of long list of allergens
| would get treated the same way California's carcinogens
| signage does, i.e. it would be absolutely meaningless. But
| instead manufacturers actually are adding trace amounts of
| allergens so if they put those ingredients on the label,
| it's actually true.
| sedivy94 wrote:
| Article mentions this "violates the spirit of the law". If
| anything, this is exactly the spirit of the law, as written.
|
| Do legislators run simulations on possible downstream effects
| of laws or...? My impression is that occurrences like this
| one are not uncommon.
| zo1 wrote:
| How can they? There is no way to know what a certain knob
| will do N-levels down the line. They're essentially
| "playing" against the collective brain and will power of
| millions of smart and motivated individuals, and all the
| money behind the huge corporations that play in that space,
| so how can they. It's impossible and a losing battle.
| ironSkillet wrote:
| Look at incentives you have created in the impacted
| industries, and think about what the new optimal strategy
| is from a cost/profit perspective. That is what behavior
| will converge to, and is a central concern for any good
| policy maker.
| danaris wrote:
| > spirit of the law
|
| > as written.
|
| I'm not sure you understand what the "spirit of a law"
| means. It has very little to do with the written wording.
|
| In tabletop RPG circles, there's a very clear distinction
| between "rules as written" and "rules as intended" (because
| basically zero tabletop RPGs of nontrivial size can avoid
| having some rules that fail to properly convey their intent
| in their plain wording).
|
| It's clear that, by this law "as intended"--ie, the
| _spirit_ of the law--foods that didn 't already contain
| sesame would be carefully separated from chances of sesame
| contamination.
|
| You are, however, absolutely correct that "as written", it
| strongly encourages the behavior being seen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm not sure that follows. "This law makes 'no sesame'
| products a lot more expensive. We are <shocked
| pikachu.png> that producers stopped making as many 'no
| sesame' products in response to reduced consumer demand
| for those now more expensive products."
|
| The spirit of the law could be deduced as "if your
| product claims to contain no sesame, this law ensures
| that is true, even in trace amounts". That spirit is
| being upheld.
| randallsquared wrote:
| Do you believe that advocates of the law would have
| ceased to advocate for it in the counterfactual case that
| there was no effect on expense? If you don't believe
| that, then you cannot believe that the spirit of the law
| was to make "no sesame" products more expensive.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I made no claims as to "[making] 'no sesame' products
| more expensive" being the spirit of the law. I claimed
| that the spirit could be the most straightforward reading
| of the law: "if your product claims to contain no sesame,
| this law ensures that is true, even in trace amounts".
| drdec wrote:
| No, the intent of the law was to make it easier for
| people (and parents of people) with sesame allergies to
| find and select foods to eat. By incentivizing
| manufacturers to add sesame to everything, the unintended
| consequence is to make their lives much harder.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's your belief. An equally valid alternate belief is
| that it was a food safety law, intended to ensure that no
| products were sold which contained trace amounts of
| sesame without being disclosed on the label. This is why
| we rely on the contents of laws rather than our
| beliefs/feelings about what the contents should have
| been.
|
| No one can be compelled against their will to manufacture
| a product containing no sesame, even if they were
| probably doing so before this law was passed.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _This is why we rely on the contents of laws rather
| than our beliefs /feelings about what the contents should
| have been._
|
| This is called "the letter of the law", and in practice
| courts do not rely on it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In this specific case, do you believe that any of these
| companies have violated the law in any fashion which is
| actionable? (whether you call it spirit, text, belief,
| letter, feelings, or ouija) They appear to be complying
| with the law in a quite straightforward manner.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > A better approach might have been to support/reward the
| construction of new dedicated allergen free production
| facilities that could be devoted exclusively to those foods.
|
| I'm thinking there is no realistic level of subsidy which
| could make it rational for Bob's Bakery (with 1, maybe 2 or 3
| modest retail locations) to build a separate no-Sesame
| production facility. And a separate no-Peanut production
| facility. And a separate... And how could Bob afford the
| extra staffing, property taxes, utilities, etc. for all
| those?
|
| The article notes that _Kellogg 's_, a company with annual
| revenue >$10 billion, found it easier to add peanut flour to
| some products. Vs. dealing, even at their scale, with the
| whole "separate facilities..." thing.
| xoa wrote:
| > _I 'm thinking there is no realistic level of subsidy
| which could make it rational for Bob's Bakery (with 1,
| maybe 2 or 3 modest retail locations) to build a separate
| no-Sesame production facility. And a separate no-Peanut
| production facility. And a separate... And how could Bob
| afford the extra staffing, property taxes, utilities, etc.
| for all those?_
|
| Sure? If the standard is "0.5% of the population gets
| perfect medical grade alternatives to literally everything
| including purely local tiny producers of a common food
| item" then no that's not going to happen. But if the
| problem is merely having at least 1-2 national brands on
| the major super market shelves so that everybody always can
| buy something safe and nutritious (if not the most
| exciting), well that strikes me as doable. After all, it's
| not as if these products had sesame in them anyway, and
| they are plenty popular with everyone. Some of them are in
| large enough national volume to justify their own
| production facilities at the national level. It's "just" a
| capital expenditure hump and coordination problem for
| those, which is precisely something the government can help
| with. Both with the capex side, and with things like taxes
| of course (which you brought up). I think this is actually
| easier then some, this isn't like a medicine where only
| those who need it will consume it, it's making something
| mass consumed already.
|
| So maybe the real first step that should have been done
| would have been to actually get all stakeholders together
| and get a consensus on what the real final realistic goal
| is here, _then_ craft law to help realize that in a
| deliberate manner.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > So maybe the real first step that should have been done
| would have been to actually get all stakeholders together
| and get a consensus on what the real final realistic goal
| is here, then craft law to help realize that...
|
| Yes, I agree. But - sadly, I have serious doubts about
| American government and business being capable of such
| intelligent cooperation these days. At least in any
| situation short of "Asteroid Dino-Doom v2.0 is gonna hit
| Kansas".
| Xelynega wrote:
| Why does bobs bakery need 2-3 retail locations with 2
| seperate baking facilities each for a community to have
| access to a seasame and non-seasame options
|
| We already have a working model for gluten free bakeries
| where they are independently owned and operated entirely
| gluten free to prevent the situation you describe where a
| small Baker needs multiple facilities.
|
| Why are you strawmanning a future that's wholly unkind to
| the point you're responding rather than drawing parallels
| from reality?
|
| Ps. With Kellogg's, obviously it's cheaper to add peanut
| flour. People with allergies already aren't purchasing the
| products, so it costs them nothing to prevent fines, I
| don't really see the relevance of this, other than to say
| Kellogg's doesn't think the demand exists for peanut-free
| Kellogg's products that already may contain peanuts.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Great. This law opens the doors for an entirely sesame-
| free baker to open up and compete now that most other
| bakers are adding sesame to their products. Do you expect
| that to be the outcome?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| > Bad unfunded mandate driven by activists without consulting
| with actual producers from the sound of it.
|
| This is because if they had changed these rules after being
| alerted to these absurd side effects by producers, the story
| would be "FDA tried to pass regulations to protect consumers
| but scrapped them/ watered them down after aggressive
| lobbying by Big Sesame".
| jacknews wrote:
| From the exact same comment, emphasized, _add 'traces of
| sesame' as an ingredient._
| xoa wrote:
| > _From the exact same comment, emphasized, add 'traces of
| sesame' as an ingredient._
|
| I'm not sure what you're confused about here? Say we
| consider bakers. Essentially before the law there were 3
| classes of bakers wrt sesame: known contaminated (actively
| using it as an ingredient), regular (not actively using it,
| but make no promises either way), and medical (actively
| promise to _ensure_ no contamination as a product feature).
| This law banned regular bakers, and it did it in such a way
| that they all become medical bakers _by default_ , because
| if they don't actively use sesame then they must meet the
| medical standard. But that's _TERRIFYING_ for a regular
| baker for good reason. Before if they cooked both sesame
| goods (lots of delicious ones in high demand) and non-
| sesame goods (same) they could make reasonable efforts and
| that 's fine. But medical means they now look at blame and
| liability for some child or adult having a serious reaction
| or even dying. And meeting that level of liability and
| standards may simply be impossible in an existing mixed
| normal facility. There is no funding for this mandate
| either.
|
| The _obvious_ reaction to do is to switch to the "known
| contaminated" class instead. For the cost of adding a
| minuscule untasteable amount of sesame flour to everything,
| now they effectively return back to being regular bakers
| again. They can keep all their existing cooking, in their
| existing (very expensive, potentially impossible to move
| from) facilities. Like, what did anyone expect would happen
| here?
|
| Edit to the reply, since I'm getting rate limited:
|
| jacknews: _" My point is they could simply add 'traces of
| sesame' to the ingredient list without actually delberately
| adding sesame."_
|
| You're arguing for producers to commit arguable fraud then,
| and add an ingredient to the list that isn't actually an
| ingredient and may not be there for the explicit purpose of
| bypassing a new legal requirement. There is no "simply"
| about that one. Maybe they'd win the resulting lawsuit, or
| maybe it'd bankrupt them. Or maybe it would bankrupt them
| even if they did win, as such things in America often do.
| And for what benefit?
|
| This entire subject is about second order effects. Please
| spend a bit of time doing some game theory on any "simple"
| fixes you wish to propose, and consider why those "simple"
| fixes aren't what producers did.
| jacknews wrote:
| My point is they could simply add 'traces of sesame' to
| the ingredient list without actually delberately adding
| sesame.
| kergonath wrote:
| But then, there has to be some sesame. Otherwise the
| ingredients list is not truthful, which comes with its own
| set of penalties and headaches.
| sokoloff wrote:
| So get a box of sesame flour and have a gloved worker dip
| a finger into it and wipe the rim of the mixing vat every
| shift. Product now contains a trace of sesame.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| As I understand it, because the new law made it more either/or:
| those trace warnings aren't satisfactory, and they can't
| misrepresent what is in the product. So they _have to_ be sure
| sesame is in it if they 're liable for saying it's not without
| a newly cost prohibitive means of assuring that.
| whiddershins wrote:
| This makes no sense. I can understand adding sesame to the label,
| but not actually adding more sesame to the products.
|
| I think this reporter is confused.
| DannyBee wrote:
| No. The article is very clear why: if the products don't
| contain sesame, they are required to prevent cross
| contamination, which they can't do.
|
| They can't simply label them as "may contain sesame", as it
| doesn't absolve them of needing to prevent cross contamination.
|
| Their only reasonable choice is to just add sesame.
| Xelynega wrote:
| The other reasonable choice is to not produce non-seasame
| items in ways that can potentially cross-cobtaminate with
| sesame items, or vice versa.
|
| If a bakery is jumping through hoops just to make a batch of
| sesame buns daily, I think there's some misdirected effort.
| whiddershins wrote:
| That's insane.
| leephillips wrote:
| You mayn't claim that the thing contains sesame unless it does.
| The only option is to really add the real seed, and proclaim
| it.
| jeff_tyrrill wrote:
| This is just a syndication of https://apnews.com/article/sesame-
| allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc.... Can the URL be changed to that?
| kapildev wrote:
| I think (and there are studies to back this too) that the more
| you eschew an allergen the more violent your reaction against it
| would be. I am from a third-world country and I know no-one from
| my country that has allergies related to foods like peanuts,
| sesame or gluten. The only other explanations for this would be:
| a) These allergies occur so rarely that I haven't heard from the
| minority of the people. b) Or, the people who had this allergies
| have already died without diagnosis. c) Or, people have these
| allergy but choose to hide them for fear of social shame. d) Or,
| people don't get medical checkup that allows the discovery of
| these allergies.
|
| But I think the case that people being accustomed to the
| allergens due to forceful conditions is the best explanation for
| this.
| viraptor wrote:
| > accustomed to the allergens due to forceful conditions is the
| best explanation for this.
|
| While desensitization works
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(medicine) you
| can't really just force expose someone and hope for the best.
|
| It's a bit correlated to developed countries, but not
| completely
| https://waojournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1939-4...
|
| I'd propose a mix of everything but also: e) People don't call
| things allergies unless they know it's that. I said for decades
| that I can't eat spinach or I'll have diarrhoea, but learned
| later that also classifies as an allergy. f) More developed
| countries have more difference in available cuisines. For
| example I've not seen a shellfish until I moved out of home, so
| wouldn't know if I'm allergic to them. g) (probably lots of
| other factors)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I am from a third-world country and I know no-one from my
| country that has allergies related to foods like peanuts,
| sesame or gluten.
|
| B is quite likely, I am from a non-firstworld world country,
| and back there you hardly ever see people in wheelchairs, blind
| people, people with disalities.
|
| When I first got to EU, I saw so many people in wheelchairs, I
| thought something is wrong. There are more people with
| disabilities in europe?
|
| Well, turns out people with disabilites in back home live sad
| and short lives. There is literally zero infrastructure for
| them - entry to every apartment block has stairs befpre the
| elvator (90% of people live in apartment blocks)
|
| The curbs don't turn into ramps near crossings, they just stay
| vertical.
|
| Our apartment block came with a ramp, and the residents knocked
| it down because it looked ugly.
|
| Eu uses special tiling to indicate to the blind where is an
| edge of the pedesteian path, where is a crossing, etc. In
| Russia this does not exist. When the city bought this special
| tiling, the workers didn't know what it was, so they made
| random patterns out of it.
|
| The traffic lights do not make a sound when its green, if there
| are roadworks and a giant hole in the ground, no-one puts a
| yellow fence around it. A missing manhole cover attracks no
| attention and zero lawsuits.
|
| Its not just the government, here is zero awareness, and
| disabled people don't leave the house, no-one gives a fuck.
|
| If you live in the capital, things are slingthly better, but
| for 90% of the countru thats the reality.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Those aren't the only explanations, there are dozens of other
| possible explanations, all worth investigating. And it's not
| just allergies, there's been an unexplained spike in multiple
| autoimmune conditions [see google scholar].
|
| The hygiene hypothesis for one.
| blamestross wrote:
| > But I think the case that people being accustomed to the
| allergens due to forceful conditions is the best explanation
| for this.
|
| The dead don't show up to be counted.
| greenthrow wrote:
| > and there are studies to back this too
|
| I have been online for about 30 years. This is the first time I
| am going to say:
|
| Citation needed.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| My vote is all of these, with B/C/D being primary.
|
| A: Sterile environments don't properly prepare the immune
| system.
|
| B/C/D: People with severe allergies and disabilities aren't
| accepted as part of society. Often there is no support for them
| other than what their family can provide.
|
| The sad fact is many people view medical problems as character
| flaws. If you were strong, you wouldn't be sick.
|
| So people die, hide, or never realize their problems for what
| they are. My grandmother had food allergies her entire life.
| Never told anyone. She just didn't eat things that made her
| sick. Despite being a nurse her entire life, she would say she
| didn't have food allergies.
| culi wrote:
| There was a big "medical reversal" around this where a very
| large seemingly well-conducted study led to doctors advising
| patients to avoid their allergens. Later studies failed to
| replicate this result however and doctors have reversed course
| as evidence has built up that avoiding the allergen can indeed
| worsen it over time
|
| However, I don't really think this is all relevant. Allergen
| immunotherapy is not as simple as just exposing yourself to the
| allergen and requires medical oversight. Even if someone is
| trying to work through this process without a medical
| professional, they still have a right to know which foods do
| and don't contain this allergen that could still kill them in
| large amounts
| pwnmonkey wrote:
| Do you happen to have a link to the new study?
| wardedVibe wrote:
| My dude, sesame allergies are higher in the middle east, where
| sesame is a very common ingredient [0]. There is _something_
| happening with development that leads to immune system fuckery,
| but it 's definitely more complicated than simple exposure.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_allergy
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Why can't they just do what they have done with peanut? "May
| contain peanut." It's not a listed ingredient but it's also isn't
| ruled out since the product was manufactured at a plant that also
| makes product with peanut and the manufacturer cannot guarantee
| that there aren't trace elements of peanut.
| chomp wrote:
| That's what this is about. Food producers are allowed to comply
| with a "may contain X" statement, or adding it to the list of
| ingredients. Previously, sesame was allowed to exist under
| "spice" or "natural flavors". Now, there's an explosion of "may
| contain sesame", probably due to the difficulty of tracing
| sesame through their supply chain, and it may honestly be
| everywhere. For example I think if buns are cooked in the same
| facility as sesame buns, you gotta either add it and include it
| (which is what's happening now) or create a lot of controls to
| ensure no cross contamination, and bakers may not be set up for
| separate cook areas, etc.)
| donatj wrote:
| It says in the article that marking as "may contain" doesn't
| actually cover them legally in cases of cross contamination.
| metaphor wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Some companies include statements on labels that say a food
| "may contain" a certain product or that the food is "produced
| in a facility" that also uses certain allergens. _However, such
| statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA,
| and they do not absolve the company of requirements to prevent
| cross-contamination._
| chaostheory wrote:
| _"The unfortunate reality is that our equipment and bakeries
| are not setup for allergen cleanings that would be required
| to prevent sesame cross-contamination and was not an option
| for us "_
| asvitkine wrote:
| So why hasn't the same effect happened with peanuts?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It has. There was a small controversy in 2016 when
| Kellogg's started adding peanut flour to some snacks to
| avoid cross-contamination concerns; one that's still around
| is their cheese crackers
| (https://www.kelloggs.com/en_US/products/austin-cheese-
| cracke...). The source article focuses a lot on bread
| bakeries, where peanuts are rare and sesame is extremely
| common.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| IMO the FDA should say that such labels do absolve the
| company from liability, it's ridiculous that it doesn't.
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| That would have the same effect - you would see "may
| contain..." on every single product in lieu of precise
| labelling, and then it would be the same as having no
| labelling at all.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Why are we linking to trash like Fox News on HN?
| calebegg wrote:
| The local fox network affiliates aren't generally strongly
| connected to the news/misinformation cable channel. It would be
| like boycotting The Simpsons because of fox news.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| what is with all the food allergies lately? Why so many people
| unlock them.
|
| I doubt that you will find 13 people allergic to sesame in whole
| of Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean. And 1.3 million in
| the US.
| halefx wrote:
| The difference is access to testing. Most of the people in the
| US who "test" positive for an allergen aren't actually allergic
| to it, but that is often not explained properly.
|
| Simply, allergists have three types of testing: skin test,
| blood test, actual exposure. If you can eat something without a
| reaction, it doesn't matter what the skin and blood tests
| showed (they can be "positive" for other reasons). Skin and
| blood tests are mostly used to determine severity of an allergy
| after exposure has already proven to be a problem.
|
| But allergy testing is covered by insurance (and it's VERY
| profitable), so a ton of allergists will do skin and blood
| tests on people who don't need it, and now there are
| independent scam companies doing "allergy" testing by mail for
| curious people.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Do people actually do random tests and spend the rest of
| their life blindly believing the results ?
|
| Dealing with allergies is such a PITA and a burden that
| follows you every day, every single time you're trying to eat
| anything. It's such a mental toll that I see people going for
| allergy tests usually after they had their first reaction and
| went through ER, or when there is precedents in the family
| and they have a pretty decent chance to have common
| allergies.
|
| Even after getting positive results we had a pretty thorough
| talk with the doctor about the tests and the actual reaction
| we saw when we discovered the allergy.
|
| I understand people randomnly buying gluten free stuff as a
| fad, but they still continue eating gluten in other foods in
| general. Food allergies and avoiding ingredients is another
| level of inconvenience altogether.
| gedy wrote:
| > Do people actually do random tests and spend the rest of
| their life blindly believing the results ?
|
| Yes, hang out with elementary school parents (mostly moms)
| and you'll quickly get an earful from those that do. It
| seems more like anxiety with many of these folks.
| rewgs wrote:
| Or, you know, food allergies are life-threatening and
| they're just trying to protect their child.
| gedy wrote:
| Sure, I've known real, diagnosed situations like this,
| but I'm talking about the self diagnosis types and they
| behave differently.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _Do people actually do random tests and spend the rest of
| their life blindly believing the results?_
|
| Many do, or even don't trust that a negative result is
| real. There are lots of other conditions and situations
| that one would think are strict drawbacks that people lean
| into, in my anecdotal experience. "Gluten allergy" that is
| not Celiac, for example. There are steps to take, things to
| research, and communities of fellow suffers to identify
| with, after all.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| My girlfriend has problems with wheat. I suspect it has
| nothing to do with gluten, and may not actually be an
| allergic response at all, but when she eats wheat it
| definitely causes digestive problems. Ordering things
| gluten free is just an easy way to handle it.
| Kye wrote:
| Science is just now starting to figure out what's going on with
| gut biomes, but it probably has something to do with diet. To
| roll with your example, look up lactose intolerance in Asia.
| sp332 wrote:
| Most adult mammals are lactose intolerant. It's not an
| allergy.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's missing the point.
| Kye wrote:
| My point wasn't very clear. Downside of posting at 9 am
| and 9 degrees.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's different - Northern European tolerance to lactose is
| actually a mutation/adaptation.
|
| There's probably some processed food or medicine that
| triggers these severe allergies in babies.
| Xelynega wrote:
| And the allergies can't also be a mutation/adaptation?
|
| Wouldn't some "processed food or medicine that triggers
| these severe allergies" be a "mutation/adaptation"? I'm
| confused on the distinction you're trying to make it it's
| not "Americans are bad haha".
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My mom used to study this stuff, and her conjecture was
| that the "low fat" craziness happened around the same
| time as people being unable to cook for themselves.
|
| When you eat your Trader Joe's frozen whatever, it is
| often fortified with soy or pea proteins and different
| stuff to preserve taste and appearance. Chain restaurant
| stuff is similar.
|
| Once in awhile, no big deal, but _many_ people are
| incapable of cooking. My local library has a class in
| cutting onions and other vegetables booked out till
| April. Lots of kids grow up with soy formula and frozen
| chicken nuggets. Pre 1990, no human ate that stuff.
| bhk wrote:
| Genetic changes cannot explain the dramatic rise in
| allergies (not just food-borne) over the last few
| decades.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| The lactose tolerance unlocked major food group.
| Allergies lock people out of staples. So we have huge
| interest as a species to figure out why they appear and
| prevent them.
| willnonya wrote:
| This is textbook unintended consequences of government action.
|
| If there were a market for this then the products would already
| exist.
|
| By moving beyond an ingredient disclosure to the elimination of
| all possible sources of contamination the incentives are changed
| and this is the result. Rather than incurring the cost required
| by the law businesses found a different solution.
|
| As a result the people the law tried to help are now harmed. The
| blame here doesn't rest with the businesses but with the lawmakes
| who drafted this unnecessary nonsense.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Unfortunate that we're doing so little to stop the massive
| increase in food allergy rates that has occurred over the past
| few decades. Labeling is good, but we should invest in prevention
| also.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Is there enough of a scientific consensus on how to prevent
| food allergies to drive policy, or are you just talking about
| research at this point?
|
| I've heard things like early exposure, breast feeding, and
| mother's nutrition can help, but always got the impression that
| allergies are pretty random.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| I'm talking about research, but in particular research
| testing potential interventions.
|
| There has been a fair amount of research (but no solid
| consensus) on why allergy rates are increasing.
|
| But AFAIK there have been fairly few attempts to try to use
| _any_ of those competing hypotheses to devise preventive
| treatments whose effectiveness could be tested
| experimentally.
| davidcuddeback wrote:
| There is actually pretty compelling evidence. Enough so
| that the AAP reversed its guidelines in 2017:
| https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/12250/New-
| guidelin....
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Where I live it's advised to introduce peanuts early to
| kids (before 8 months) because of this research
| davidcuddeback wrote:
| > Is there enough of a scientific consensus on how to prevent
| food allergies to drive policy
|
| To be honest, this may have already happened, but it would
| take a generation to see the effects. There was a major
| breakthrough on this a few years ago. I first heard about it
| on an episode of Science Vs [1]. That was merely weeks after
| my second child was born. It was interesting to see the
| advice from the pediatrician a few months later. The American
| Association of Pediatrics updated their advice accordingly
| [2], and my kids' pediatrician handed out informational
| fliers calling out "this has changed," etc. Hopefully other
| pediatricians are also updating their advice and doing a good
| job of educating families.
|
| Check out the Science Vs episode [1] if you want details. The
| gist of it is that in a controlled study, they found that
| introducing allergens early reduced the prevalence of
| allergies by 86% compared to avoiding allergens. This means
| old advice (what I was told with my first-born) about
| avoiding allergens could actually increase the risk. The
| Science Vs episode goes into details about what led
| researchers to look into this and possible explanations about
| the mechanism involved.
|
| [1]: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/2ohd7e
|
| [2]: https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/12250/New-
| guidelin...
| 323 wrote:
| The current theory is that allergies exploded because our
| (first) world is too clean and the immune system needs
| something to do, so it focuses on what it can find - peanuts.
| rewgs wrote:
| It is _a_ current theory. It is far from being _the_
| current theory, and IMO a woefully insufficient one. I 'm
| not a clean freak by any means and still developed a couple
| dozen food allergies as an adult. Ultimately the immune
| system is hopelessly complex and this will likely take
| decades more for us just to arrive at the right theory.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Anecdotally, this is insufficient to explain the evidence.
|
| I have approximately no allergies but was exposed to a very
| diverse and not sterile environment from early on, with
| other siblings being similar. I have two brothers close to
| my age that _did_ have significant and in some case deadly
| allergies, who were born and raised in the same
| environment.
|
| Among my siblings, it is a completely mixed bag of
| sensitivity. Some were highly sensitive to many things,
| others were sensitive to almost nothing. If mere exposure
| to non-sterile environments was sufficient then we should
| all have had similar sensitivity to allergens but the
| variance in fact was quite high.
| davidcuddeback wrote:
| Citation? I think there might be a bit of "telephone game"
| happening here. The current science shows that avoiding
| allergens increases the risk of developing allergies. The
| _hypothesis_ for how that happens is that if an infant 's
| first exposure to an allergen is on their skin (e.g.,
| peanut oil), then their body may classify it as invasive
| and develop anti-bodies to attack it. If they are first
| introduced to an allergen as food, then their body
| classifies it as food. By avoiding feeding allergens to
| infants, you increase the time window for their bodies to
| be exposed through the skin and classify it as invasive. I
| could certainly see this idea transmuting through word of
| mouth into the "first world is too clean" idea in your
| comment, but that's pretty far off.
| 323 wrote:
| > Citation?
|
| Plenty of papers listed here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
| elzbardico wrote:
| But this is kind of strange, as for example in France, you
| definitely don't see the same level of allergies as in the
| US.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm not sure if French people would think life is worth
| living if you couldn't eat the same food as everyone
| else.
| m000 wrote:
| As Ivan Drago would say: If he dies, he dies.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Maybe it's because peanut butter is extremely popular in
| the U.S., but not very popular in most other countries?
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Yes. It's been proven that if you expose babies to all the
| allergens early on they never develop the allergy.
|
| But not only that. If they already have the allergy, you can
| actually cure it by slowly building up exposure until they
| stop reacting to it.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > If they already have the allergy, you can actually cure
| it by slowly building up exposure until they stop reacting
| to it.
|
| Very important to note that not everyone can be cured this
| way, it can be dangerous even fatal, and under medical
| supervision only. Far too many people think they can cure
| their own allergy, allergies aren't "real," or cases of
| grandparents trying to YOLO fix their grandkid by putting
| small amounts of e.g. peanuts in their food and causing
| airway obstruction.
|
| This research is, undeniably, exciting, but people
| overstate it and act like we could just roll it out to
| everyone with allergies and they'd disappear (and that
| everyone who still has allergies is "choosing" to). That
| isn't at all where the science is at today.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| I can't eat gluten. I ate plenty of wheat growing up, and
| suddenly developed a problem digesting it at 18. I was on a
| full-gluten diet when diagnosed and still felt sick all the
| time.
|
| So, as someone who was exposed as a baby, and was pretty
| much doing maximal exposure therapy, you need to write
| better test cases.
| modeless wrote:
| Yes. Early introduction of foods is proven to dramatically
| reduce allergies, and not just for peanut. Everyone should be
| doing it and we should have recommendations and guidelines
| for parents.
|
| There is also a lot of evidence that SLIT and OIT are
| effective treatments for food allergies and most importantly
| that they are _far_ more effective and safer when started
| very early, before 2 or even before 1 if possible. Early SLIT
| and OIT should be prioritized for research.
| rewgs wrote:
| Obviously I don't disagree with you, but trust me, this
| mountain is far steeper than anyone tends to think. Medical
| science has absolutely zero clue why my body decided to become
| allergic to roughly 30 different foods at age 30 after a
| lifetime of eating whatever I wanted.
|
| The reality is that we are decades away from solving this, if
| ever. Not to mention the vast majority of science is funneled
| towards child food allergies, which ironically are the only
| kind to go away. If the mechanisms involved were similar, I
| wouldn't have a problem, but it's very possible that child and
| adult food allergies have completely different causes. People
| such as myself who develop food allergies as an adult are very
| simply fucked.
|
| Beyond that, just look at the sickening replies in this very
| thread. On the whole people view people like me as a nuisance
| and would rather us die than deal with whatever comparatively
| minuscule alterations to their lives required to accommodate
| us. You wouldn't believe the things people have done and said
| to me to my face. It's one of the more invisible disabilities
| for sure.
| kqr wrote:
| And early family support. Since my wife can die from a sesame
| seed, this topic is naturally important in our family. We have
| read the research we've found and tried to do what we could,
| but we got no external support for this -- if it hadn't been
| important to us it wouldn't have happened at all.
|
| It's particularly tricky with sesame exposure. Since we can't
| have it at home, we have no idea how our children react to it.
| Relatives did promise to throw hummus parties, but those never
| happened and now everyone is afraid to be the one who almost
| killed our child, naturally.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Prevention would ideally be reducing the rates of food borne
| allergies, in as much as it is possible to do so.
|
| After having two flights recently where our food service was
| cancelled due to a flyer with a nut allergy, I'm ready for us
| to invest whatever it takes to reverse this trend.
| Mezzie wrote:
| How long was the flight? I can see this being an issue for
| people with some other health conditions - type 1 diabetics
| come to mind. If it's a long flight and they assume food
| service and then it's removed and they have nothing to eat
| for their blood sugar, that's not great.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| you can always ask the flight attendant for food. they have
| something
| Mezzie wrote:
| I mostly feel bad for the flight attendants. "Why is HE
| getting food and I'm not?" etc. People suck.
| ghaff wrote:
| If getting food on a flight is a medical issue, someone
| should be bringing their own food.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I did. I was told I could not eat it due to the
| possibility it contained nuts.
|
| Both of these flights were TATL but on the lower end (5-7
| hours) of the time range. The restriction only applied to
| our section of business class, which neither time was
| fully booked.
| sib wrote:
| "If being exposed to trace amounts of [an allergen] on a
| flight is a medical issue, someone shouldn't be taking a
| plane."
| [deleted]
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yeah, they should, but if someone with that severe an
| allergy is on the plane, would that be allowed? Also
| people are stupid and don't think ahead or plan for
| contingencies: I can see people reading there will be
| food service and deciding they don't need to bring their
| own.
| rubylark wrote:
| It's not always only ingested food that is a safety
| issue. Some people have allergies that are severe enough
| that physical contact is enough to cause anaphylaxis. For
| example, there was a kid with a dairy allergy who died
| when other kids put a piece of cheese down his shirt[1]
|
| [1]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/02/boy-
| with-all...
| ghaff wrote:
| If someone can't tolerate anyone else on a flight eating
| anything, they probably shouldn't fly.
| rubylark wrote:
| Why not? If the airline has a policy that allows them to
| fly, why wouldn't they? It's not the people with
| allergies asking the flight not to serve other people
| peanuts, it's the airline itself deciding to do that.
|
| Besides if someone has a contact allergy to nuts, I can't
| think of a place more likely for it to happen than a
| plane. One patch of turbulence, and your seat neighbor's
| peanuts go all over you.
| tracker1 wrote:
| You mean, forced to buy food at 500% markup inside the
| airport.
| letmeinhere wrote:
| This made me chuckle, imagining us starting a Manhattan
| Project for allergies because Delta didn't distribute their
| customary snack packet one too many times.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I mainly meant that if the quantity of people who can die
| from simple exposure to food is now such a high proportion
| of the population that I'm regularly encountering it in
| this and other contexts, that seems like a significant
| enough potential loss of lives/reduction in quality of life
| to merit a serious effort to fix the problem.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am curious why airlines seem to be the holdouts regularly
| putting nuts in everything/distributing nuts as the main
| snacks. And they all do it.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Note: This is capitalism always finding ways to make money at the
| expense of public health.
| h2odragon wrote:
| > requirements are so stringent that many manufacturers,
| especially bakers, find it simpler and less expensive to add
| sesame to a product -- and to label it -- than to try to keep it
| away from other foods or equipment with sesame.
|
| That's why I always carry explosives when traveling by air: what
| are the chances that there's _two_ bombs on a plane?
| gattr wrote:
| I remember this one from a youth mathematics book. 10-4 chance
| of one bomb, and 10-8 of two (assuming the other one is an
| independent event -- which it would be, as you're certainly not
| in collusion with any actual bomber).
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Potentially catastrophic false assumption made at the end
| there.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Conditional probability doesn't work like that.
|
| If you always have a bomb with you, then the probability of
| you sitting on a plane with a bomb is 1, and thus the
| probability of you sitting on a plane with _another_ bomb is
| again 10^-4.
| 542458 wrote:
| Yes, the post you're replying to was recounting a joke :)
| gattr wrote:
| Indeed. Hmm, but what if I roll a D20 before each flight
| and take a bomb only if I get a "1"? Do I decrease the
| average two-bombs probability to 5*10-6?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Yes. But the conditional probability of the plane having
| a bomb _that's not yours_ will still be 10^-4.
| [deleted]
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| Those to examples are not at all comparable. The problem with
| having to keep completely separate facilities for products made
| with, and products made without sesame is a real problem. And
| if the law requires that food that is not labeled to have
| sesame mustn't be baked in the same oven as products without,
| then it seems like the easy choice to deliberately add a bit
| and label it, rather than having to buy new ovens.
| bonney_io wrote:
| Corporations are evil. Do worse for the consumer to cover their
| own butts.
| elgoblino wrote:
| Government forcing random small-time businesses to handle
| extreme edge cases is pretty evil to me.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| If they added an impact clause of, say, greater than 10,000
| individuals affected, could you think of any ways around
| that?
|
| My initial feeling is that it could protect small and local
| businesses and possibly encourage investments from large
| nationals who would find it less expensive to pay others to
| produce certain products.
| halefx wrote:
| If the labeling is not consistent, it's not useful
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small
| businesses. The crucial difference is that some local family
| owns the shares, rather than a bunch of people? And this is
| what we have to protect, at the cost of not being able to
| implement rules in our economy? If that's the case, they're
| holding back progress and it's good when one goes under.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Around half of all workers work for small businesses.
| smegsicle wrote:
| are workers for large businesses even people?
| Majromax wrote:
| > Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small
| businesses.
|
| Because today's small businesses can become tomorrow's
| large businesses. Each new rule is a barrier to entry.
| Here, for example, zero-contamination rules for sesame
| would make it impossible for a small business to make both
| sesame-containing and sesame-free products unless they can
| afford an entirely separate production line or long deep-
| cleaning periods between runs. Large business, large enough
| to have simultaneous production lines, can rearrange
| production more easily to avoid disruption.
|
| With a large-enough regulatory fortress, incumbent
| businesses protect themselves from competition, losing that
| very "progress" that you champion.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Each new rule is a barrier to entry.
|
| To explain barriers to entry, consider that right now you
| can choose between an iOS phone and an Android phone and
| nothing else. Try to imagine how much it would cost to
| write a 3rd OS and kickstart a useful app store (you'd
| have to bribe devs to port their stuff, and not even that
| worked for Microsoft).
|
| That is an extreme barrier to entry.
|
| If you're not careful, you'll end up with one or two
| options for everything.
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| There's more than one way to progress! Reducing start-up
| capital requirements by tearing down regulations is one,
| sure. Other ideas:
|
| - Govt subsidizes new businesses with capital/staff/what-
| have-you so they can comply - ...and to
| steal a libertarian arg against welfare: charitably-
| minded private citizens could do the same :)
|
| - Expand social safety net so private businesses don't
| have to provide the same for their employees, freeing up
| capital for compliance
|
| - We can just deal with a higher threshold starting
| businesses... like honestly what _is_ the proper
| threshold here? Are we even optimal now? Lots fail and
| ruin peoples lives, when honestly maybe it's better for
| those same people to go work at a successful business as
| a manager.
| kevingadd wrote:
| 'Sesame is the ninth most common food allergy among children
| and adults in the U.S. According to the National Institutes
| of Health (NIH), sesame allergy is considered common among
| children who already have other food allergies. According to
| research reported by NIH's National Institute of Allergy and
| Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a study found that approximately
| 17 percent of children with food allergies also are allergic
| to sesame.'
|
| I'm not sure whether 17% of child food allergies counts as an
| edge case? Food allergies are serious stuff.
| danaris wrote:
| They are, but that's a potentially misleading statistic, on
| two counts:
|
| First, it doesn't give any indication of the percentage of
| children with food allergies. Is it also about 20% (which
| would mean sesame allergies affect approximately 4% of
| children)? Or is it more like 4% (which would mean sesame
| allergies affect approximately 0.8% of children)?
|
| Second, it doesn't say anything about the severity of the
| allergy. My brother-in-law has a severe, anaphylactic
| allergy to peanuts. Traces of peanut in anything he eats
| could kill him. On the other hand, I have a close friend
| with an allergy to tree nuts...that makes his throat kinda
| itchy for a while if he eats too many.
|
| Yes, we need to be mindful of food allergies, and properly
| label foods for them. But that doesn't mean we should be
| using incomplete or misleading statistics to inform our
| decisions about how prevalent serious problems with certain
| foods could be.
| shkkmo wrote:
| For actual numbers, I found this.
|
| > Using survey responses from 78 851 individuals, an
| estimated 0.49% (95% CI, 0.40%-0.58%) of the US
| population reported a current sesame allergy, whereas
| 0.23% (95% CI, 0.19%-0.28%) met symptom-report criteria
| for convincing IgE-mediated allergy. An additional 0.11%
| (95% CI, 0.08%-0.16%) had a sesame allergy reported as
| physician diagnosed but did not report reactions
| fulfilling survey-specified convincing reaction symptoms.
| Among individuals with convincing IgE-mediated sesame
| allergy, an estimated 23.6% (95% CI, 16.9%-32.0%) to
| 37.2% (95% CI, 29.2%-45.9%) had previously experienced a
| severe sesame-allergic reaction, depending on the
| definition used, and 81.6% (95% CI, 71.0%-88.9%) of
| patients with convincing sesame allergy had at least 1
| additional convincing food allergy. Roughly one-third of
| patients with convincing sesame allergy (33.7%; 95% CI,
| 26.3%-42.0%) reported previous epinephrine use for sesame
| allergy treatment.
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarti
| cle...
| halefx wrote:
| FYI for your tree nut friend, itchy throat is often a
| sign of "oral allergy syndrome" (could be useful for him
| if he hasn't already seen an allergist)
| raymondh wrote:
| Summary: A new law substantially increases liability for making a
| sesame free product. The predictable result was that there are
| now fewer sesame free products. Now, everyone is worse off.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Well stated. Bring back personal responsibility.
| drewrv wrote:
| How can someone be "personally responsible" if there are not
| accurate food labeling laws?
| wardedVibe wrote:
| No, there's so much secret sesame that you don't know is there
| that even with the range of hypothetical options lessened,
| there are more foods you _know_ are safe now. My partner, who
| has a sesame allergy, had basically sworn off preprepared food
| because there 's no way to tell. At least now she knows what's
| safe.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| And that's what everyone with an allergy should do - take
| their destiny in their own hands and stop relying on labels
| and on nanny state. Buy unprocessed food, bake your own
| bread, it's not that hard.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| fuck off dude, we literally do that. It's exhausting. Is it
| really such an imposition to have labels?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Mandating a "may contain traces of sesame" would provide just
| as much protection without requiring adding the sesame and
| denying it to those of us that aren't going to be killed by a
| bit of cross contamination.
| theptip wrote:
| Perhaps I'm missing it, but I see no attempt to quantify what
| proportion of foods are actually adding sesame in this way.
|
| This could be happening at the margin, and the law could also on
| net be helping lots of people avoid allergens in the rest of the
| food that didn't get adulterated.
|
| If it's 1/1000 products getting sesame added this story is likely
| a nothing-burger.
|
| But yes, at the margin, actors are sensitive to incentives. This
| story provides a(nother) nice clear example of that, if one was
| wanting such.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The solution to this is to add a supplemental tax on foods
| intentionally containing major allergens, that is cumulative per
| allergen, sufficient to offset the benefit sought by adding it as
| malicious compliance with labelling and cross-contamination laws.
| karatinversion wrote:
| I don't think you can do this without basically outlawing, say,
| pizza (intentionally contains wheat and dairy).
| greenthrow wrote:
| This article is clearly red meat for right wing anti-regulation
| types. It is not something interesting to general people in tech.
| ada1981 wrote:
| I think I'm a jerk because I found this industry response
| satisfying.
|
| Perhaps this creates an opportunity for certified allergen free
| foods companies to get into the game in a bigger way.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| This is my thought too. We are reading articles like this at
| the onset of a new law because it plays well to crowds who want
| to have Online Opinions about government oversight.
|
| If the problem is as bad as these articles claim, then these
| facilities will need to clean up their act or willfully hand
| over a slice of the market to competitors. We've even already
| seen this play out in the bread industry with gluten. A bunch
| of new brands started taking shelf space away from the big
| brands and a few years later those big brands have their own
| gluten-free lines. The same could happen with sesame in time.
| To form an opinion on the new law this early is a recipe for
| sour milk.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| I think sesame makes me violently throw up for about 8 hours. The
| last three times I've knowingly eaten it this has happened. But
| it doesn't show up on an allergy test and all three were 6 months
| apart so could have just been a flare up of something else. But
| it was the exact same symptoms each time. So now I just avoid
| sesame, it's really tricky to do as it gets in to all sorts of
| things, but for seemingly no reason. Even ordering a burger is
| tricky, why are there sesame seeds on a burger bun?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| This has been my struggle. From my POV it's such a dumb allergy
| to have -- like I feel so stupid bringing it up. But on the
| other hand, are sesame seeds really that awesome that my food
| needs to be able to kill me.... for what exactly?
|
| Now, sesame oil - fine. That's great. But the seeds... the
| seeds are just there to insult me.
| ei8ths wrote:
| I dont think they do anything to the bun. My kid has a sesame
| allergy, its pretty dumb when you pick up something, read
| sesame and you wonder why, we are seriously struggling
| finding hamburger buns at the grocery store that do not
| contain sesame - after this new federal law change to include
| sesame. They have a seed flavor but seriously could get that
| from another type of seed. Luckily he doesnt have a sever
| reaction only irritates his tongue and throat a little. very
| minor.
| InDemoVeritas wrote:
| Hummus. Halva. Tahini. Sesame would be a difficult allergy.
| My condolences.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I love the taste and texture of sesame seeds. I snack on
| black and white sesame seeds all the time.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Sesame seeds on buns were popularized by the introduction of
| the Big Mac in the 60s. They weren't the first, but they
| definitely propelled it into the mainstream. The original
| purpose is lost to history but it was likely just for visual
| appeal.
| sneak wrote:
| Turkish simit bread (a type of roll) is completely coated in
| sesame seeds and I think predates the Big Mac by some
| hundreds of years. There is some prior art regarding sesame
| seed rolls.
|
| Anecdotally I find people from east of the prime meridian
| seem to eat a lot more seeds and nuts than I see USians do.
| [deleted]
| phh wrote:
| > Even ordering a burger is tricky, why are there sesame seeds
| on a burger bun?
|
| Sesame seeds are flavor enhancer, just like salt. The
| "simplest" salt-less bread simply replaces salt with sesame
| seeds. Of course burgers will use all the tricks they can to
| improve flavor, hence the sesame seeds on burger buns.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Texture and visually appealing I assume?
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| I was excited to be able to eat more commercially-produced foods
| without wondering if it had sesame or not. Ah well. I guess
| rather than wondering, I now _know_, my food is contaminated,
| which might be better?
|
| Small restaurants have ignored me about my allergy, which TBH
| worries me more, given the false sense of safety.
|
| Now, I just hope for my family's sake if a restaurant kills me,
| that they're huge and it's their fault.
| dataflow wrote:
| (Edit: Never mind, I phrased my question poorly and I'm not
| sure how to pose it better. I was trying to figure out how one
| would avoid this scenario where restaurants just say "yes" to
| every potential allergen to avoid mistakes - like with food
| labels - if the goal is to have allergic people be able to find
| places to eat at.)
| Fargren wrote:
| In Spain (and I think in all of the EU) every item in every
| menu in every [law-complaint] restaurant has a list of
| allergens. This is clearly not unrealistic to do, as
| demonstrable by the fact that many places do it.
|
| There's a list of 14 allergens that must be indicated if
| present.
|
| https://www.lexland.es/en/restaurant-menus-should-
| indicate-t...
| ffggvv wrote:
| if you have a deadly allergy like that, is eating at small
| restaurants really worth risking your life?
| LesZedCB wrote:
| Try saying no to eating out for 6 months every time and see
| how it feels. Every time your buddy wants a beer, your
| sisters birthday, after work celebration dinner for a late
| evening.
|
| You don't understand, it's not necessarily as simple as "if I
| eat out, I die." there are manageable risks with
| probabilities weighted against being alone again and missing
| out
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| Why don't you just stop eating at restaurants and/or take
| appropriate steps to protect yourself?
| LesZedCB wrote:
| I _promise_ you people with allergies know about this
| "tactic."
|
| What all you who suggest it fail to empathize with is that
| it's the only option most of the time. being completely
| removed from the social scene of eating out is extremely
| alienating, and eating out is very common especially for
| young adults.
|
| So you concede, you look up the menu online ahead of time,
| decide "hey this probably looks safe, I can risk it"
|
| Boom, you accidentally eat something you didn't account for,
| try not to make a scene in front of your friends and the
| other patrons, go out to your car take Benadryl and pass out.
| Night over.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| Very sad stuff, but nonetheless I have zero interest in
| subsidizing your social preferences (either through
| regulation or litigation costs). Lots of people live good
| lives without going to restaurants all the time. Have a
| barbecue or something.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| the stick you want to take with where you tax money goes
| is an ADA protected disability?
|
| I hope society doesn't feel the same way about your needs
| when they inevitably arise
|
| edit: reduced the tone.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Bring back personal responsibility, I'll deal with my
| needs and problems, I suggest everyone does the same.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| If your reaction is personal outrage at me rather than
| considering the issue at hand, you are probably too
| emotionally involved to form a useful opinion.
| [deleted]
| gameman144 wrote:
| I'd be curious about your thoughts on regulations that
| _solely_ pertain to providing available information to
| consumers. For instance, a regulation saying "If any of
| your recipes in this facility use sesame, mark that on
| your product" seems both incredibly feasible and
| incredibly valuable for people trying to determine how to
| manage their needs (e.g. what to serve at the suggested
| barbecue)
|
| I can empathize with thinking that trade-offs that incur
| a high overhead might be super onerous to comply with,
| but simple information-based laws which just provide
| consumers with information that businesses already have
| on hand seems incredibly easy to comply with, no?
|
| For example, in this case a "produced in a facility that
| handles sesame" label seems like it'd be a huge
| accommodation win without extremely minimal overhead for
| businesses.
| NaOH wrote:
| For what you're describing, it's important to understand
| how the FDA and the laws are set up. As things are,
| package labeling is required for consumer packaged foods.
| The FDA inspects those facilities. That would seem like a
| good environment for your suggestion.
|
| But there are other food businesses the FDA inspects that
| aren't subject to the labeling requirements. For example,
| this could be a local wholesaler, like a producer of
| pastries that supplies area coffee shops. That wholesaler
| will have maybe brought a daily box full of muffins to
| the coffee shop, whose staff then moved them to a display
| case.
|
| Those situations have no labeling requirements, and no
| matter how much information is shared by the producer,
| nor how often, the cafe staff as a whole can't be trusted
| to get it all correct. I don't say they "can't be
| trusted" because that's an unwise procedure--and it is
| that--I say it because my business may as well be that
| local pastry producer.
| [deleted]
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Just order a glass of vodka. No sesame and social success
| guaranteed.
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Seems like a the labelling rules overall are bad.
|
| How things work in the UK (and presumably the EU too) seems
| pretty good to me.
|
| Allergens have to be highlighted in bold (or uppercase) in the
| ingredients list.
|
| If a product _may_ contain an allergen, that 's normally listed
| separately.
|
| If you have a mild allergy or intolerance, or avoid particular
| food for other reasons (e.g. milk because you're Vegan), then the
| "may contain" risk may not bother you and you can enjoy the
| product.
| adventured wrote:
| The US is on a slope of increasingly extreme nannyism. Which,
| if you know the history of the US (both its present culture and
| its common historical beliefs about itself), that has to be a
| fairly amusing thing to observe from the outside.
|
| For numerous reasons, the US culture has been fractured by a
| tiny, very loud, hyper triggered minority that screams from the
| rooftops 24/7 on social media. The virtue signaling brigade.
| Also known as the squeaky wheel getting the grease (attention
| in this case). They work hard & persistently at it, they're
| loud, they often band together for pet causes, and they get the
| government and companies to bend to their pressure routinely.
|
| It's leading to a very mentally fragile nation, of emotionally
| stunted individuals that can't deal with reality and require
| aggressive shielding from reality. This type of mediocre
| labeling outcome is indicative of the broader cultural erosion.
| It's simply no longer good enough to label that something "may
| contain" risk. It's going to get worse yet before it bottoms
| out.
| culi wrote:
| [flagged]
| james_pm wrote:
| As a parent of a kid with a sesame allergy, I wish it got the
| same treatment as peanut allergies do. It's common here (Canada)
| to have a school that will throw your lunch snacks away if they
| aren't labelled "peanut safe" but will have sesame buns at a
| school bbq lunch and just tell the kids with sesame allergy to
| bring their own lunch and avoid touching it.
| spacephysics wrote:
| I don't know, I feel this is a slippery slope. I don't want
| everything to be on the same level of caution as peanuts, let's
| look at root cause for this stuff.
|
| Most likely could being an over-sterilized environment during
| pregnancy or at birth, some chemical in common products, or
| something else effecting the micro biome or immune system.
| kqr wrote:
| It's not a slippery slope. There's a small list of known
| deadly allergens. Those need to be taken seriously.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| There's a small list of commonly deadly allergens, but
| there's a ton of diversity in the population of people, and
| some people react with anaphylaxis for items beyond the top
| 8 or 9.
|
| > Asero and colleagues29 recently reported on a series of
| 1110 adolescent and adult Italian patients (mean age 31
| years, range 12-79 years) diagnosed with food allergy based
| on history of reaction in the presence of positive skin
| prick test (SPT) or elevated food-specific serum IgE.
| Anaphylaxis was reported by 5% of food-allergic
| individuals, with the most common cause being lipid
| transfer protein (LTP). LTP is a widely cross-reacting
| plant pan-allergen. Offending food for LTP-allergic
| patients was most often peach, but included also other
| members of the Rosaceae family of fruits (apple, pear,
| cherry, plum, apricot, medlar, almond, strawberry), tree
| nuts, corn, rice, beer, tomato, spelt, pineapple, and
| grape. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440177
| /#:~:tex...
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Ha it's like saying speed limits are a slippery slope, and
| we'll trend closer to 0 mph over time. It's not a slope,
| it's a dial!
| savingsPossible wrote:
| If speed limits aren't, it is just because of the
| distribution of benefits
|
| With speed limits, almost everyone suffers and almost
| everyone benefits. Of course, some people are more likely
| to be walking, and other driving, but it is not a core
| part of their identity.
|
| Whenever something makes a specific small group much
| safer and around 100% of the people pay the cost, giving
| in and making those people safer is a slippery slope.
| There are infinite such cases, the system points towards
| more safety because of lawsuits, and careful cost benefit
| analysis is harder because there is no one person for
| which cost and benefit are similar -- for some it is just
| a small cost, for others just a gigantic benefit.
|
| You'll get a small percentage doing a lot of activism and
| a large majority harmed, but not enough to fight it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think it's tremendously slippery, but I do think
| it's a slope. It's hard to imagine the government ever
| _removing_ an allergen from the mandatory labeling list -
| if they did, a lot of people who got used to having it
| would find themselves in more trouble than if it had
| never been there.
| j-bos wrote:
| Peanuts, sesame, pineapples, eggs, fish, shellfish. The
| list may be small but it's varied. Yes, deadly allergies
| should be taken seriously,and reasonably. Banning entire
| classes of food for those not allergic seems much.
| kqr wrote:
| My wife has been allergic to Sesame for as long as she can
| remember. It's always a struggle not only because it is less
| known than peanuts, but it's also very easy to hide it in all
| sorts of foods -- intentionally or accidentally.
| sidlls wrote:
| I absolutely hate not having peanut butter as an ingredient for
| my kids' lunches and snacks because the school forbids anything
| with peanuts in foods they bring to school. I understand the
| struggle of having a kid with special needs in schools--one of
| mine has autism and the other an as yet incompletely diagnosed
| neurological condition (could be epilepsy, could be mundane
| ADHD, could be both--we're still testing). The school must
| accommodate these conditions, but that accommodation doesn't
| require banning things or reorganizing every activity around
| their needs.
|
| Your kid will be just fine if some other kid eats something
| with sesame in it, unless they're sharing, kissing, or fighting
| with their food.
| drewrv wrote:
| > unless they're sharing, kissing, or fighting with their
| food
|
| Good thing kids never do this.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Well no, it depends on how severe their allergies are. And
| there have been multiple stories or examples in the past
| decade or two of kids hazing someone with peanut butter
| allergies by intentionally triggering it or even putting
| peanut butter on them.
|
| This is why schools have taken drastic measures because all
| it takes is one incident to send a kid to the hospital, put
| the school in serious lawsuit territory and cause a massive
| news scandal. It's a matter of liability reduction.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| hard cases make bad law.
|
| extreme cases make bad policy.
|
| If a kid assaults another with peanut butter, might I
| suggest the problem is the assault, not the peanut butter?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Which is easier, banning peanut butter or eliminating
| bullying?
| savingsPossible wrote:
| Considering that bullies might choose to bring peanut
| butter as contraband?
| sidlls wrote:
| Neither. Parents routinely send their kids to school with
| prohibited food items, including sweets and various
| products with nuts. I'm not allowed this privilege
| because of the extra scrutiny already on my kids due to
| their conditions.
| [deleted]
| Aperocky wrote:
| > a school that will throw your lunch snacks away
|
| What is the reason to that?
| orangepurple wrote:
| Another absurdity is food containing prop 65 warnings like this
| one
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ramen/comments/zb9xu8/p65_cancer_wa...
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| We shouldn't be doing either of these things. It wasn't a
| serious problem 20 years ago when kids would bring whatever
| allergens to lunch. Throwing away peanut foods is an absurd
| overreaction and misdirection of food-safety resources.
| drewrv wrote:
| The world has changed in the past 20 years. The world will
| change over the next 20 years.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Here's a story from around 14 years ago where this was a
| serious problem [1]. I could probably find more from 20 years
| ago if I looked further.
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/AllergiesNews/story?id=4659
| 705...
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| I guarantee you that schools were not throwing out peanut
| butter sandwiches when I was a kid, and many of the schools
| I went to are doing so now.
|
| I'm sure you can find an article about peanut allergies at
| any point in recorded history where they had peanuts.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Yes, and my schools were not throwing out sandwiches
| either. Schools started doing so because it became a
| serious liability issue with kids weaponizing it for
| bullying and leading to death. Unless you have a solution
| for the human condition that will stop people leveraging
| deadly allergies as a form of torment, then schools will
| keep doing so.
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > Schools started doing so because it became a serious
| liability issue with kids weaponizing it for bullying and
| leading to death
|
| This sounds completely absurd and hyperbolic, but let's
| say I took it at face value - why is this an issue now
| and not an issue when I was in school?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I literally posted a story where this was happening, did
| you not read the link I shared? There are multiple other
| examples in just the past few years, and the thing is
| that all it takes is one inciting incident to cause
| massive problems for the school district.
| drewrv wrote:
| Why are you expecting the world now to exist as it was
| when you were a child?
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm allergic (not deathly so) to legumes, cranberries and have
| trouble with wheat as well. Most of the time, I just try to
| minimize my exposure and live with not feeling well when I get
| wammied. Cranberries are my worst reaction, the only time I
| tend to get really nosy is actually BBQ sauce, because many
| tangy sauces will contain them.
|
| In the end, I don't (and imho, shouldn't) expect the world to
| put padding on the sidewalk to protect my from myself.
|
| I would be happy if labelling laws included a "Manufacturing
| facility handles (allergen list). This product may contain
| trace amounts." as a statement for what there might be trace
| amounts of in terms of allergens not intentionally part of the
| product.
|
| It bugs me a bit that if a kid wants a PBJ they no longer are
| allowed to at school.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Kids need extra protection since they can't weigh risk and
| don't understand how the world works. So I understand if my
| daughters can't have peanuts in elementary school if their
| classmate has a real allergy.
|
| But policies go above and beyond that now. They bar peanuts
| even if nobody has an allergy. Other places bar peanuts for
| self identified allergies (which cannot be confirmed 90% of
| the time by a doctor). That's just bad policy driven by
| litigation fear.
| gedy wrote:
| Wait, there are schools that don't allow non-allergic kids to
| eat peanut butter, etc?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Here is a sample requirement:
|
| https://www.stjohnsschool.org/uploaded/Files/Nut_Sensitive_
| F...
| gedy wrote:
| Thanks. I'd seriously take my kids out of schools like
| that. They shouldn't be scared about their sandwich is
| breaking "the rules", seems like it would breed low-grade
| paranoia in kids.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| Children are remarkably adaptable, it's usually the
| parents who are stuck in their ways
| atdrummond wrote:
| I can't believe they unironically recommend replacing
| peanut butter on sandwiches with Biscoff cookie spread.
| And as the first option!
| jvvw wrote:
| All the schools round here in the UK where I live are 'nut-
| free'.
| [deleted]
| moregrist wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that allowing companies to slip legal
| liability with a "might contain" which just result in
| boilerplate for all allergies which isn't helpful to anyone.
|
| I'm glad your allergies aren't so severe. But minimizing
| contact isn't enough for people who are deathly allergic to
| peanuts or sesame, where the best case for exposure is an
| epi-pen shot and a trip to the ER. It's not so much asking
| for padded walls as enough information to allow people to
| live without fear of dying because of something they ate.
|
| Every kid deserves an education without fear of being killed
| by some other kid's snack. I don't think it's too much to ask
| for people to just eat their PB&J at home.
| gameman144 wrote:
| > I don't think it's too much to ask for people to just eat
| their PB&J at home.
|
| Totally get that. Others _do_ think that 's too much to ask
| though, and I'm sure there are cases where you'd disagree
| with their "not too much to ask" in return.
| rhino369 wrote:
| Why should they have legal liability in the first place for
| small amount of cross-contaminated ingredients?
|
| Regardless, listing ingredients they aren't willing to
| affirm aren't in their products is helpful. It identifies
| products that aren't for sure safe which is what you want.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| > I don't think it's too much to ask for people to just eat
| their PB&J at home.
|
| What's the cost benefit analysis here? That the kid does
| not get to share the food?
|
| Would touching someone that ate a PBJ be enough to trigger
| an episode? In what percentage of people?
|
| How can you just say something like that without also
| stating a model? Without percentages and numbers?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The current treatment of peanut allergies is already an over-
| reaction.
|
| My brother was deadly allergic to even trace quantities of
| peanut products as a child. Nonetheless, we routinely ate
| peanut butter sandwiches and peanuts _at home_ , never mind
| school or the many other spaces a child occupies, and it was
| never an issue. Reasonable precautions were sufficient to
| eliminate all practical concern and it didn't require
| sterilizing the environment of all peanuts. This was easy and
| effective, same as with other kids with dangerous allergies.
| The only incident I can remember involved some Korean food that
| used peanut oil, and he knew it contained peanut the instant he
| put it in his mouth. He was quite capable of avoiding peanut
| products on his own.
|
| Banning everyone from eating peanut products anywhere in the
| vicinity of someone with a peanut allergy is just another
| example of pathological safety-ism. And it goes far beyond
| actual deadly allergies now, we accommodate all manner of
| imagined hyper-sensitivities "just in case" with no rational or
| pragmatic consideration of the risks and costs.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The current treatment of peanut allergies is already an
| over-reaction.
|
| The current treatment of peanut allergies affecting people
| older than infants/toddlers is probably _not_ an overreaction
| to the situation created by the fact that for a period until
| very recently (and maybe still now, as there is some social
| inertia), the attempt to _prevent_ exposure in infants
| /toddlers _was_ an overreaction, that produced a much greater
| number of very severe allergies than otherwise would have
| existed.
| drewrv wrote:
| Imagine you have a school age child. If there were a 100%
| chance that they would be served arsenic at school you would
| probably keep them home. If there were a 0% chance, you would
| send them to school.
|
| What "%" risk that your child would be poisoned do you find
| acceptable?
| gameman144 wrote:
| In this analogy though, is 99% of the population able to
| eat and digest arsenic without a problem?
|
| If so, I think the reality that needs to be dealt with is
| that there are going to be a lot of situations throughout
| their life where people are going to be serving arsenic. It
| sucks to be in that situation, but it's something that
| child will need to be taught to take into account (even if
| accommodations can kick that can down the road for now.)
|
| If arsenic is poisonous for everyone in this analogy, then
| I have a lot bigger problems with this school than the
| lunch menu.
| drewrv wrote:
| My point is that there is a scale and if you think about
| it not as a binary, but as a gradient, you might be more
| understanding of school administrators who are trying to
| create a safe learning environment for hundreds of kids.
|
| Yes, if there is a substance that's poison for one kid,
| they'll need to learn to take precautions. And if there's
| a substance that's poison for all, it should be banned
| from school meals. What if it's 10% of kids? 5%?
|
| Food allergies are common these days.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Arsenic is an essential micronutrient with a toxicity
| profile similar to selenium (another essential
| micronutrient). Arsenic is sufficiently available in diets
| around the world that deficiency isn't going to be a thing
| unless you go out of your way to aggressively remove it
| from the water supply.
|
| Your attempt at an analogy was clumsy and nonsensical
| regardless. They aren't serving poison at schools. Sugar
| would have been a better example.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| they are not imagined and you anecdata of one demonstrates
| nothing.
|
| anaphylaxis is highly individualized and can change within an
| individual over time.
|
| It's also not necessarily just about preventing anaphylaxis
| but general food anxiety as well as alienation from a
| cultural and social staple of sharing food together. Most
| people will never understand the secondary effects of
| anaphylactic food allergies, no less CONSTANTLY downplay then
| as you did with your brother.
|
| I know this sibling downplaying is very possible because my
| partner has MCAS, which causes random allergies to pop up
| like whack a mole. Her family caused her very much grief as a
| child but she developed strong coping mechanisms and it's
| similarly capable of "managing what she eats." However I am
| one of very few people who truly understand how completely
| alienated she feels because of it. The primary concerns
| (death by anaphylaxis) are bad but very infrequent. The
| secondary effects of social alienation are constant and
| boundaries are always being pushed even by close friends and
| family
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > not necessarily just about preventing anaphylaxis but
| general food anxiety as well as alienation from a cultural
| and social staple of sharing food together
|
| I see, moving the goalposts to an even less defensible
| argument. Sharing food together doesn't mean eating the
| same thing. By this reasoning, we should all be forced to
| eat the lowest common denominator of least offensive food
| for everyone. If one person is vegan, we should all be
| vegan. If one person can't eat any nightshade vegetables (a
| common allergy), none of us should eat nightshade
| vegetables. Same for dairy, shellfish, etc. The set of
| foods all humans can comfortably and traditionally eat is
| approximately the empty set. This sounds like the very
| definition of a culturally and socially enriching
| experience around food!
|
| You don't speak for my brother and he'd likely mock someone
| trying to "white knight" his eating experiences or
| suggesting his peanut allergy caused profound alienation.
| We all eat different things based on _preferences_ , never
| mind allergens. Do people feel alienated and anxious
| because they can't handle spicy food but other people can?
| There is a ubiquitous food that I can't eat (for reasons
| unrelated to allergens) but never once did I feel alienated
| because of it, even though people tease me about it.
|
| If people are intentionally being assholes about it, the
| issue is them being assholes and has nothing to do with the
| food. If one person is hyper-sensitive about what other
| people eat, the answer is therapy for that person, not
| changing the world to accommodate their hyper-sensitivity.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lettergram wrote:
| As someone with a sesame allergy I was wondering why suddenly 90%
| of the bread options had it. Effectively, I have 1 option now,
| that's it. No hotdog or hamburger buns.
|
| Is what it is, going to improve my baking game.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I'll take the opportunity and recommend my favorite pretzel
| burger bun recipe. Found this to make for great buns, every
| time. https://www.hefe-und-mehr.de/en/2017/04/pretzel-burger-
| buns/...
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I resonate with you, I've had to remove bread from my diet,
| except for homemade options (which, luckily for me, my spouse
| is great at making). Sesame has a majorly debilitating effect
| on me, so it's not something I can even begin to flirt with.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Wow, great example of unintended consequences.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Based on the apparent demand and critical nature of the allergy,
| somebody needs to invent:
|
| 1. Sesame test strip 2. Sesame neutralizer
| aliqot wrote:
| stop labeling anything and let it work itself out.
| luxurytent wrote:
| What makes sesame such a significant allergen?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Define significant. Sesame allergies are pretty rare, but,
| where present, are extremely dangerous. Generally these
| mandated warnings are based on some combination of prevalence
| and severity; sesame allergy is rare but use of sesame is
| common and the allergy is lethal, so it gets a warning.
|
| The one that confuses me is lupin. It's one of the 14 mandated
| allergen/intolerance warnings in Europe, but is not at all
| commonly used.
| kqr wrote:
| It's commonly used as an alternate plant in soy fields, for
| crop cycling purposes. I forget which nutrient it prevents
| oversaturation of, but there is one.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Lupine fixes nitrogen from air, making it effective as
| fertilizer.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Probably some combination of lack of exposure in early age,
| sterility hypothesis in the west and something in the way the
| food industry makes highly processed foods.
| gedy wrote:
| And frankly some mix of self diagnosis/anxiety from parents.
| In my circle, there's a few obsessive mom-types that are so
| fearful of allergies/vaccines/etc but their kids have never
| actually been diagnosed by a doctor.
| Retric wrote:
| More likely the underlying causes are genetic.
|
| Identical twins have 70% chance to share same allergic
| diseases vs 40% for non identical twins, and both of which is
| vastly more common than their prevalence in the general
| population. Though this also demonstrates environmental
| factors play a significant role.
|
| That said, the human immune system includes significant
| randomness so environment may be even less important than
| generally assumed.
| rwmj wrote:
| But why would it have apparently increased so much in the
| relatively recent past if the cause was genetics?
| Retric wrote:
| Changing rates of testing combined with false positives
| are presumably part of it. Apparently 10% of people think
| they are allergic to Penicillin but only 1% test positive
| and under 0.1% have a significant reaction.
|
| That said, environment _is_ a factor. People in the
| developing world test positive for fewer though by no
| means zero allergies compared to their relatives in the
| developed world.
| tracker1 wrote:
| There's also changes to breeds and varieties in common
| use. For example, modern wheat has like 20x the histamine
| response vs older varieties. These kinds of things will
| also affect different people differently.
| rsynnott wrote:
| _Has_ sesame allergy increased? Like, it's _rare_; it's
| just extremely nasty (it kills people).
| rwmj wrote:
| It _could_ be sampling bias or increased availability,
| but it does seem as if allergies in general are
| increasing: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/
| 02/747545877/se...
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, that's comparing one figure, which came from who-
| knows-where, to one new study; it's not hugely
| convincing. Especially as at least the new figure is via
| self-reporting.
|
| One thing I think people forget with this stuff, 50 years
| ago many people just weren't exposed. I live in Ireland;
| when my grandparents were kids everyone in the country
| could've been allergic to sesame and no-one would have
| noticed; it just wasn't part of the food culture.
|
| Now, it is. In general, particularly in rural areas, most
| peoples' diets were extremely restrictive until pretty
| recently; in industrialised countries people are exposed
| to a lot more variety than a couple of generations back.
| rwmj wrote:
| Definitely the right questions to be asking, and I have
| no idea of the answers.
| wwqrd wrote:
| How do you compare non identical twins to the general
| population? Aren't twins, even non identical likely to
| share the same diet, the same environmental factors and
| maybe even the same viruses etc - all could be contributing
| factors?
| Retric wrote:
| Non identical twins are still siblings so they share a
| lot of DNA while also growing up in similar environments.
|
| The huge difference between identical and non identical
| twins is suggestive of a very strong genetic component.
| james_pm wrote:
| We discovered our kid's sesame allergy when I fed some hummus
| on a pita at age 18 months resulting in a serious reaction
| that almost had me calling 911. It wasn't lack of early
| exposure.
| ziml77 wrote:
| It's entirely possible that the allergy will go away
| though. The immune system can shift and change over time in
| ways that cause it to not overreact to the allergen
| anymore.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Depends on the allergen and individual... What makes me feel
| sore or achy for a day or two might kill someone else.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Bureaucracy strikes again! FDA needs to allow "may contain" or
| "produced in a facility that contains" and let individuals with
| these allergies to choose if they want to eat those foods and
| accept all liability for illness and/or death
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