Having a food allergy can make anyone’s life much more challenging. There’s no such thing as ordering an item off a restaurant’s menu without clarifying with the server that it won’t have any contact with nuts, dairy, gluten, shellfish or anything else that will cause your throat to swell up. You’ll obsessively check labels of food items to see if there could be any cross contamination, and you’ll never leave the house without an EpiPen.
Inevitably, though, everyone with allergies will at some point encounter a person who doesn’t take their allergies seriously. And this can be even more disappointing when the culprit is a close friend or family member. Below, you’ll find a story that was shared on Reddit detailing how one woman poisoned her friend’s granddaughter by insisting on feeding her cookies.
Everyone was warned that the baby at this gathering has a severe egg allergy
Image credits: EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
But one woman blatantly ignored that information just so she could feed the child some sweets
Image credits: katemangostar/Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: chickennoodlecoupe
Later, the author responded to several readers and shared more details about the situation
33 million people in the United States have food allergies
Image credits: jcomp/Freepik (not the actual photo)
It’s likely that you know someone who has a food allergy. In school, you may not have been allowed to bring anything with peanuts for lunch, and you might have celebrated many birthdays with a vegan, gluten-free cake to be more inclusive towards your friends. According to FoodAllergy.org, one in ten adults and one in thirteen children in the United States has a food allergy.
Over half of adults with food allergies report that they’ve experienced a severe reaction, while 42% of children with food allergies have experienced the same. Apparently, in the U.S., there are over 170 foods that have been reported to cause allergic reactions, but the most common ones are milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish.
Unfortunately, food allergies have also been on the rise for decades. They increased by a whopping 50% between 1997 and 2011 and shot up again by 50% from 2007 to 2021. Peanut allergies in one-year-olds also tripled between the years of 2001 and 2017.
While it might seem simple to just avoid a certain food or food group, FoodAllergy.org notes that having these allergies may even qualify individuals for protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as having a severe allergy greatly hinders an activity that we have to do multiple times a day every single day of our lives.
Having a food allergy can also take a toll on a person’s quality of life, as it can make eating out or enjoying social events with food extremely complicated. One third of children with food allergies even report that they’ve been bullied over not being able to eat certain foods.
And over a quarter of parents of kids with allergies won’t let their kids participate in sleepovers or overnight camp for fear that their child will be exposed to an allergen. At the same time, over 15% of parents of children with allergies don’t eat out at restaurants, and over 10% don’t let their kids go to playdates at friends’ homes.
It’s crucial that food allergies are taken seriously, as allergic reactions can quickly turn life-threatening
Image credits: Freepik (not the actual photo)
This may sound extreme, but it is necessary for everyone to take food allergies seriously, as they can quickly become life-threatening. 3.4 million people in the United States go to the emergency room every year due to allergic reactions to foods, and emergency treatment for anaphylaxis caused by food allergies increased by 377% between 2007 and 2016. Meanwhile, the CDC reports that every year, between 150-200 people tragically lose their lives due to an allergic reaction to a food.
The good news, however, is that nowadays, there are plenty of allergy-friendly options available for people to eat. If you’re allergic to eggs and dairy, picking up a cake from a vegan bakery should be perfectly safe. And if you can’t have gluten, there are plenty of wheat-free bakeries and products being sold today too.
It’s never going to be worth it to risk someone’s life by feeding them something that will trigger an allergic reaction. But when it comes to eggs specifically, this family is lucky that there are plenty of alternatives available that will allow someone with an allergy to enjoy all of the treats and meals they can imagine without feeling like they’re missing out.
We would love to hear your thoughts on this situation in the comments below, pandas. How would you have reacted to seeing this mother-in-law poison a child with cookies? Feel free to weigh in. And then, you can find another Bored Panda article discussing similar family drama right here.