My compliments to Tesco who have decided to take the piss out of Nanny, by "enhancing" their food labelling.Milk bottles now contain the very pertinent warning that they "Contain Milk", and packets of nuts are emblazoned with the legend "Contains Nuts".
Needless to say, you can never please everyone; David Reading, director of The Anaphylaxis Campaign, said that the "bleedin' obvious" labels undermined the seriousness of the problem of food allergies.
Quote:
"It is utterly ludicrous.
People obviously don't need to be told that milk contains milk or that bags of nuts contain nuts.
That just undermines the seriousness of allergies.
People will laugh."
I think that was the point!
What really troubles me about the "rise" in allergies, that people claim afflict themselves and their offspring, is how on earth the human race managed to survive for the last 150,000 years or so if we are allergic to so many things?
Do you think that it is possible that some of this "rise" in allergies may in fact be attributable to some lazy, indulgent parents who succumb to their childrens' whims; simply because they are too lazy to train their children to eat what is put in front of them?
Just a thought:)
I sometimes wonder incredulously how I have managed to survive Nanny's dangerous world and reach the grand old age of 52 relatively unscathed - although positively extremely grumpy with Nanny!! (Very pleased to see her get a bloody nose in Scotland this morning).
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, I also wonder just how the little generation will similarly survive to my great age. Part of our internal body chemistry is built up from poisioning/infecting ourselves with all sorts of 'orrible things, to which we build up anti-bodies and resistance.
This puts me in mind of a street vendor I saw just before Christmas (or Winterval or whatever)
ReplyDeleteThe man in question had a little stall about the size of a wheely bin selling roast chestnuts.
On one side was the "caution may contain traces of nuts" sign, on the other "caution hot surface".
Seems this man felt compelled to state the bleeding obvious to protect himself from law suits.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteAllergies are indeed a serious problem today. When we were kids nobody had heard of peanut allergies but in every school these days there will be a number of kids suffering from them. Peanut and other serious allergies are not just stuck-up parents inventing illnesses (like rich kids when I was a kid being off with 'Flu' when I walked to school with a 'cold').
Allergies are a serious problem today and I am convinced that it is because Nanny forces children to have no fewer than 25 separate vaccinations (compared to just Polio vaccine when we were kids)
Nanny thinks "a vaccine against polio is good. Therefore the more vaccines, the better". Ok, so some kids have a bad reaction and end up autistic (something else we'd never heard about 30 years ago before this lunacy started), but the majority is OK. That's the essence of socialism - do not treat people as individuals, just look at them as a mass.
What's happening to the immune system? like someone said we have survived countless millennia eating/spitting it out if we don't like it etc but no allergies. When I was at school about 15 years ago no allergies, sure there were asthmatics but nobody's head swelling like a spacehopper on looking at a peanut. Now you see all this hysteria and progs on t' telly banging on about it continually, I think it's the hysteria that's causing the allergies, oh and over protective mums, the Government and probably Al-Qaeda.
ReplyDeleteMy younger sister has a nut allergy, and she was once taken by ambulance to hospital following the ingestion of a biscuit that had traces of nuts.
ReplyDeleteI am convinced that allergies are caused by underworked immune systems, due to our overly clean living style.
It's definitely to do with over protective mothers. If your immune system is never challenged, then it has a tendency to over react when it comes across something it's never seen before. I've had every jab going, but I've never been allergic to anything. Nor am I ever ill because the cleaners only come once a week and I was only allowed off school if I had visible pock marks
ReplyDeleteIf you take a walk through a supermarket, you will see aisle upon aisle of products designed to kill every form of bacteria known to man. From Dettox to Sanex. A few feet away you will see aisle upon aisle of products claiming to replace all the good ones. Actimel to Yakult.
ReplyDeleteWe no longer have an immune system of our own, we buy it along with our other shopping.
Having said that, I do know someone who is allergic to nuts and I don't tease her about it since her sister died of it. Seems there is truth to some of it.