[radicality]

I’m European, and have been living in the US for a number of years and in Europe before that. It’s like some alternate reality here in the US, where peanuts, bread, and shrimp are out to kill a large part of the population. The article says they estimate 33M people in US to have food allergies which sounds insane to me.

I fully agree on exposure to these allergens when young. Have your child eat wide variety of foods, have them play out in the open and get dirty, have them play with animals, wash hands and keep clean but not to the point of sterility, etc.

One personal anecdote - when I was a few years old I apparently started having a lot of asthma-like coughing symptoms. We got a German shepherd, whom I would then play with, hug a lot, and sleep. My symptoms went away pretty quickly.

Similarly, my parents made sure I eat normal meals and not a ‘child’ diet. Eg I was never allowed to order from a ‘kids menu’. At home, salmon or shrimp for dinner and I don’t want it as a young child? Too bad, that’s dinner, eat that or go hungry (and of course I ended up eating and now love many cuisines and allergic to nothing).

[Viliam1234]

It seems like a cultural difference, that in America, corporations are trying to comply with the laws in the most malicious ways, and most customers get angry about the laws rather than about the corporations. Which of course, removes any incentive for the corporations not to act obnoxiously.

Sometimes it doesn't even seem to make sense. For example, one might think naively, that if a website reacts to the law by throwing tantrum and displaying the most annoying dialog ever invented (which by the way actually isn't GDPR compliant), they would just hurt themselves, because their readers would move to different websites. Yet somehow they don't, and other website adopt the same annoying dialog. I am confused, because this isn't how free market was supposed to work.

Could you list the allergens, please? No we won't, because f--- you!

Well, now you have to list the allergens, or you get punished. Okay, so we will list all allergens in the world, including the ones our products don't contain, because f--- you!

Then we update the law so that you also get punished for listing made up allergens. Okay, so we will add as many allergens as we can to all our products, because f--- you!

Always choosing the most aggressive way to comply with the letter of the law while going completely against the spirit.

Meanwhile, in the deep jungles of Eastern Europe where most people laugh at the very idea of a law, if a product contains an allergen, the producers write "this product contains this allergen"; if the product does not contain the allergen, they write "does not contain this allergen"; and if they are not sure, they write "this product may contain this allergen". Sometimes with an explanation like "we are not adding it on purpose, but we process the allergen for some other products in the same factory, so maybe some small amounts accidentally get there".

People should travel a lot, to learn that things that are considered impossible at one place are often considered trivial at some other place.

EDIT:

Half of the comments in this thread is like "stupid law, this is what you get for making laws, clearly the lawmakers never heard about unintended consequences", and the other half is like "in my country (different countries in different comments) this problem does not exist, producers simply label their products honestly".

[nequo]

> because their readers would move to different websites. Yet somehow they don't, and other website adopt the same annoying dialog.

I’m a minority on this most likely but if a website does this, I close it, unless my life depends on it which it rarely does. The same if a website has so many ads that it blocks the content and I don’t have adblock. Life is too short for these games.

[neuralRiot]

> It seems like a cultural difference, that in America, corporations are trying to comply with the laws in the most malicious ways, and most customers get angry about the laws rather than about the corporations.

The only goal is to avoid lawsuits, that’s why in every product there is a warning, a car owners manual used to contain lots of useful info, even timing belt diagrams and ignition advance angles, now they are just a “warning encyclopedia”. We are a litigious society and that’s what we get for that.

[LorenPechtel]

And why do you assume this is dishonest labeling?

The problem is with possible cross-contamination. For some reason the FDA has gone stupid about what was the accepted practice that the label listed other standard allergens processed in the same facility. It worked. If hitting one of your problems could kill you you didn't touch anything with a cross contamination risk. If hitting a problem was simply an unpleasant time then you went ahead.

Companies originally reacted to the FDA insanity by deliberately adding trace amounts of the maybe items so it definitely contained (who benefits? Nobody!), I don't know the trigger for this latest bit of trouble.

[Gormo]

> The article says they estimate 33M people in US to have food allergies which sounds insane to me.

33 million is only about 10% of the population, and the phrasing in the article makes me suspect that there may be some disingenuous motte-and-bailey argumentation going on here -- the definition of "food allergies" applicable to the 10% claim might be vastly more expansive than the one applicable to "life-threatening allergic reactions".

Unfortunately, since the article doesn't reference any independent fact-checking for these claims, and just quotes not-necessarily-disinterested sources verbatim, it's hard to validate any of it. All in all, it's very poor-quality journalism.