Life-Saving Break for Food Allergy Sufferers

Recently my sister-in-law and I were having a conversation about how much we love peanut butter. While peanut butter is a staple in my diet, she was lamenting that it’s an easy lunch for my 2 ½ year-old niece but that the old favorite peanut butter and jelly sandwich is banned at her preschool. My heart dropped for all those peanut-allergy sufferers who have never been able to taste the creamy deliciousness of my favorite sandwich spread. This then sparked a debate about the rise of life-threatening allergies, especially high in children, because when we were in school, the only allergy I knew about (and sympathized for) was a boy in my elementary school who was allergic to chocolate. Even then the only precaution taken was that he always got a vanilla cupcake or sugar cookie on someone’s birthday. My sister-in-law said that she and the other teachers at preschool have to schedule homemade play-doh days around one child that has an allergen to whey. Whey and peanuts are two of the top eight food allergies along with milk, shellfish, tree nuts, wheat, eggs, and soy, which the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) hopes to clarify through their new labeling system.

My niece’s preschool is adjusting its procedures to keep up with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases report that 6 to 8 percent of children from infancy up to 4 years old suffer from food allergies.  With over 12 million Americans diagnosed with food allergies and over 30,000 food reactions taken to the emergency room each year, it’s a wonder we don’t have a better food labeling system that caters to our fellow allergy sufferers like our eager-to-accommodate school systems.

Everyone has seen a cereal or candy bar or pre-packaged meal that says, “Packaged in a place that handles peanuts,” or “May contain traces of peanuts.” Although I don’t have a severe food allergy that requires me to read the labels, I still find these vague statements to be confusing. These ambiguous labels will hopefully undergo a face lift soon because the FDA held a public hearing Tuesday to discuss the future of food labels. The founder of the Virginia-based Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, Anne Munoz Furlong says, “We would like to see all of the food industry adopt one set of criteria for using these descriptions and a limited number of those descriptions," Furlong goes on to say, "There are about 30 different ways to say 'may contain' on the marketplace. That's way too many." Without a cure for food allergies and 150 deaths in America each year due to severe reactions, the FDA is right to seek a long-term strategy for updating label information.

One of the major problems is complexity of the label descriptions which, in the past, have yielded the confusing labels stated above and leads consumers to ask what “trace amounts” really mean. New York University/Bellevue Medical Center’s pediatric allergy and asthma clinic emeritus director Dr. Jonathan Field agrees, "I think [the FDA] may be trying to find a medium in how much do they have to explain and in how much detail….There's a problem on both sides in terms of over-labeling or under-labeling foods. I think they have to be specific." Regardless of how specific the labels end up being, the FDA will never be able to be 100 percent accurate. Each allergy has a specific reaction to every individual, and because some are naturally worse than others, unless total avoidance is possible, no one will be completely safe no matter how the labels read.

Even with the hopeful revamp of food labels across the United States, the FDA still urges consumers to be careful when buying and dining out in restaurants. I think they should adopt a color-coded system on the front with better explanations on the back of each product. There could be varying degrees of a certain color on packages that correspond to one of the eight major food allergies. For example, light to dark yellow for minimal to harmful amounts of eggs, different shades of purple for soy percentages, blue for shellfish, green for tree nuts or peanuts, and so on. Hopefully by the time I have kids, the FDA will have labeled everything correctly so I know how to appropriately pack lunches, even if I have to leave the peanut butter at home.