PEANUT PRIVILEGE
Peanut privilege, it’s a real thing! Now before you start screaming at me and rolling your eyes at this post, please take a minute and really hear me out. Nobody wants to have a food allergy. It’s true, food allergies of any kind stinks! However, if you live with food allergies other than peanut, you are the ugly stepsister in the food allergy world. With a food allergy other than peanut, you really have no one other than yourself and your own advocacy protecting you. Worse, people with peanut allergies seem to feel they have the right to demand the world around them become nut-free.
This idea of being able to control what others eat and when is unique to people with peanut allergies. Just the other day, I saw a post from a mother saying Disney should go nut free. Parents demand schools go nut free and people want nut free announcements on flights. We see lawsuits about nuts being sold at little league games. I could go on and on about demands and requests that are made, but I think you get the point.
Now, first, it’s important to note that current science doesn’t even back up these requests for accommodations. In fact, many doctors are now offering proximity challenges to ease anxiety around nuts.
My main point though, is that this ” peanut privilege” has made life so much harder for people with other food allergies. Many people are not aware of this. Schools do not ban items like Doritos or Pirate’s Booty . Yet, that powdered cheese is just as hazardous to someone with a dairy allergy as peanut dust would be to someone with a peanut allergy. Schools don’t ban items with eggs or wheat or soy; heck, schools have swapped peanut butter for sunbutter or soy butter, both which cause anaphylaxis in others. The irony! It’s just as messy and just as dangerous to the person who is allergic.
As for air travel, nobody is making an announcement not to eat powdered cheese items or not to steam milk, or not eat fish or tomatoes. Yet, both have been in the news for causing anaphylaxis on flights without consumption. Heck, even a tree nut allergy is not treated with the same precautions.
Parents with kids with multiple food allergies or with dairy or other allergies are constantly fighting a battle to get those food allergies taken as serious as a peanut allergy. However, the more people fight for a nut free world, the more problems we encounter. We are told things like ” at least it’s not a peanut allergy” or ”only peanut allergies are deadly.”
We are fighting two sides. First, people who know nothing about food allergies, only what they get told, and the other side, peanut allergy parents who tell us that peanut is the most dangerous and the others aren’t as deadly.
People with food allergies other than peanut never have the expectation of the world being free of their allergens, they have learned how to cope and deal being surrounded by their allergens every single day. We deal, we don’t make demands on others because we know it’s impossible.
So yes,” peanut privilege” ,right or wrong, is a thing. Call it what you want, does exist. There’s no denying it. Now how do we make it so that all food allergies are seen as equal?
