I was hugely gemused to read recently the a staggering one in five Britons now claims to have a food allergy or intolerance.That is an increase of 400% in the past 20 years.
Has our gene pool been so damaged by modern day life styles that we really are this ill?
Errmm...no actually!
It transpires that these food allergies are in the main:
Bollocks!
Research conducted by Portsmouth University has shown that of those people claiming to have an allergy or intolerance, only 2% cent actually did.
In other words, 98% of people who claim to have allergies are talking bollocks.
Why has this come about?
1 Supermarkets and Z list "celebs" push over priced crapola, that they claim offers wonderful health benefits.
2 The Nanny state has created a generation of selfish, self obsessed, fearful people who think that they, or their over spoiled kids, are ill.
Unless your head swells up to the size of a pumpkin, and you turn green, then I humbly submit that eating a good variety of food and drinking a good variety of drinks will not kill you.
In fact it will make you feel on top of the world.
Eat nuts freely!
Visit The Orifice of Government Commerce and buy a collector's item.
Visit The Joy of Lard and indulge your lard fantasies.
Show your contempt for Nanny by buying a T shirt or thong from Nanny's Store.
www.nannyknowsbest.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
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Ken,
ReplyDeleteSpot on...
Food allergy, or any other allergy for that matter, is a serious problem.....I suspect many of these yes sheep that claim they or their kids have allergies,(because they're special)are the same people that regulary "upgrade" their illnesses as they have realised "the primary gain in playing the sick roll" which is special treatment and attention.....I expect a common cold is upgraded to serious flu and a bit of a headache is upgraded to migraine.....I suspect much of it is a form of Munchausens syndrome....I hope I spelt that correctly, especially if the spelling police are here today;-)
Enjoy chewing nuts responsibly
www.iamspecialaware.co.uk
Search on-line for "My child is the most special and sickest in the world."
I think it's especially interesting that the trial taking place to overcome so-called nut allergies (the paranoia over which stops my Son being allowed to take anything even remotely nutty to school) involve giving the patients...nuts!
ReplyDeletei.e. it seems their so-called allergy is caused by NOT eating nuts, rather than eating them...
Anon;
ReplyDeleteLet's hope a terrorist organisation doesn't break into a school and explodes a bag of Dry roasted KP nuts....Imagine the carnage;-)
Too right about the flu and headaches Tonk. People seem to think it sounds better if they upgrade their illness a notch or two.
ReplyDeleteIts a funny thing isnt it, calling someone "special" because they have issues. I can see why some other people (with no life) would want to be called special too.
I saw something about this on telly a while back and it basically said that all these wheat, gluten, lactose ect, intolerances were pants. It seems that some undiagnoseable illnesses based more on hyperchondria than anything alse, are easier to pass of as an intolerance to something.
I remember working in a restaurant a few years back. One woman used to bring in her own gravy because she had a gluten intolerance. I dont know how genuine it was but it managed to get her out of queing at the bar and waiting her turn like everyone else.
Bucko;
ReplyDeleteThe recent "Swine Flu" pandemic was a really good example of upgrading an illness.....People with real flu are too ill to get out of bed or do anything else....I know a friend who was "working from home" because he was too ill with swine flu to get to the office......I told him, as a retired health care professional, that he didn't have swine flu but had in fact "Piglet Cold"....He did not think I was very funny, although his wife did!!!
I have seen genuine allergic reactions and they are rather frightening to witness to say the least. Sadly my own daughter has a thing about nut allergies in my grandchildren....I haven't the heart to tell her that they have all eaten many items at my home with nuts in them but, it is fun to tell them to go off home or I'll get the peanuts out;-)
Regards
Hi Tonk,
ReplyDeleteYou are, of course, correct. My son has a fairly rare bowel disease and you wouldn't believe (ok, you probably would) how other yummy mummies like to compete by saying such nonsense as "my little angel suffers terribly with her bowels too".
After having a colostomy bag on an infant for months and now dealing with constant soiling and large doses of medication, other parents daft comments make me want to beat them (and their kids) over the heads with thick wads of prescription print outs...
I wonder how much money is spent on treating these, and other imaginary illnesses (asthma comes to mind).
ReplyDeleteWhilst the compensation culture exists, doctors are too scared to say, ‘Fuck off, there is nothing wrong with you’.
Wow, I had begun to think that the U.S. had pretty much cornered the market on hate-mongers, til I read this blog and the comments. Thanks, guys for showing me the error of my ways. If you can squeeze it into your busy day, try reading some science for a change. Or is your motto "We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, and sift out information that does not validate what we wish to believe"?
ReplyDeleteOn a parallel, I wonder how large is the percentage of people who now have their own "tame" Social worker, cos they're "special" ?
ReplyDeleteThat Nuts are safe to eat is something well known to Lord Manglebum for years ..
Anon @ 7.19 .. F.O.A.D ...
"try reading some science for a change"
ReplyDeleteLOL!
That's the problem, there is no science behind 99% of these so-called allergies, other than hypochondria, parenteral guilt by projection and conversion disorder.
Re: see my comments on reliving nut allergy by exposure to...nuts...
Dear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteSadly, scientists and ‘experts’ are often politically motivated and rarely impartial.
The whole purpose of science is to question and seek answers, especially by using systematic observation and experiment.
If you merely ‘read science’ without questioning the validity, you will quickly become a dullard.
Yes there are food allergy suffers out there. I am one of them but knowing what to avoid and reading the ingredients and it is sorted. On the other hand there are a hell of a lot of faddy eaters too. I once helped run a camp, before going, every child had to give a list of known allergies/religious objections to foods. Mine was known (I was running the catering so sorted!) and one other came back (not a pork eater). The rest blank.
ReplyDeleteWell the kimshi hit the pagoda big time! Yummy Mummy turned up saying I should have KNOWN that her darling spawn only ate Marmite sandwiches and Chicken Nuggets. In vain did I show her the form SHE filled in, or more accurately, did not. Not happy at my, and the other children's attitude - not on the form, SUAEI.
SUAEI - regulation 9a, Para 13.
Shut Up And Eat It.
Er, as most people who claim to have food allergies demonstrably do not have food allergies when exhaustively tested I think anonymous @7.19 should check his or her own facts.
ReplyDeleteI have been tested for milk intolerance, the tests are uncomfortable and sadly not exactly definitive. I was told that I had "an atypical response" to cows milk. I already knew that, just as I knew that whilst inconvenient the problem is not exactly life threatening. It is not hard to avoid cows milk so that's what I do. This does NOT mean that I get to turn everyone elses life upside down by insisting that they avoid something they like and can eat without a moments hesitation. I don't really care if someone has a food allergy, I will willingly be accomodating if they can accept (as I have) that their problem is just that, THEIR problem.
Imaginary food "intolerances" shouldn't be conflated with actual food allergies. *True* food allergies do indeed exist and there is no doubt that they are serious and life-threatening. It's ignorant and irresponsible to suggest otherwise. As a nursery nurse I cared for a number of children whose mothers had frightening accounts of their children's first exposure to the food they were allergic to - generally nuts or fish. The children had their epipens with them 24/7 and nursery staff had to undergo training in how to use them. I was never truly convinced that any of it was actually necessary until the day we had to administer an epipen to a child. The children were "junk modelling" - making structures by sticking boxes together with glue. The boxes should have been scrutinised by nursery staff for "May contain traces of nuts" labels on them, but weren't. One of the boxes contained remnants of cereal which had nut particles in it and the child put traces of it in his mouth and went into anaphylactic shock. It's not an experience I would wish to repeat and it changed my attitude to allergies PDQ. I also think that real food allergies are on the increase in children. When I was a child in the 1970s I went to a very large (800 plus) mixed primary school and allergies of any sort were virtually unknown (although I recall a teacher who was allergic to bee stings and carried medication with him all the time). I was a nursery nurse from 1988 until 2006 and witnessed a slow but steady increase in cases of genuine food allergy during that time, although I wouldn't like to speculate on the cause.
ReplyDeleteKen - I couldn't agree more. Throughout my formative years I never heard of "food allergies".
ReplyDeleteAs you correctly state, faux "food allergies" are a contemporary put-up-job seized upon by vast legions of insecure, outer-directed personalities as a mockable social crutch to boost their soft egos: "Look at me! Look at me! I'm lactose-glutin-nut intolerant!!".
By the way, you don't find too many of these people amongst the genuinely poor in places like Sao Paulo and India. Food really is food in those places......
I'd suggest the actualite to be between the two extremes: there ARE more cases of food allergies around but many are down to hypochondria.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, our modern processed diet is heavily laced with chemicals, and the raw materials contaminated with pesticides that weren't around when I were a little tadpole. Secondly, allergies are often the consequence of a dysfunctional immune system and with the current obsession with household cleanliness, modern kids' immune systems aren't challenged. On the other hand while dressed only in swimming trunks I regularly played in the raw sewage that was UK coastal waters back in the 1950s. My immune system was most certainly challenged during my childhood and probably explains why I can eat anything without ill effect.
I do suffer from asthma but this could be a congenital condition together with a couple of others resulting from my (very) premature birth.
Food allergies are fashionable, apart from anything else.
ReplyDeleteFashion means money.