Joel Stein: "Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention"

Joel Stein wrote an opinion piece for the LA Times alleging that nut allergies are, by and large, a Yuppie invention.

Your kid doesn't have an allergy to nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. Your kid also spends recess running and screaming, "No! Stop! Don't rub my head with peanut butter!"

Yes, a tiny number of kids have severe peanut allergies that cause anaphylactic shock, and all their teachers should be warned, handed EpiPens and given a really expensive gift at Christmas. But unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.

I think he is a bit off in his assessments. Granted there are those who are just as he describes and there is nothing to their little darlings 'allergies', save what is in their fevered imaginations.
There are, however, those to whom an allergy to nuts is a very real and a fatal allergic reaction waiting to happen if they are not careful.

Read the rest of his opinion - Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention