Food Fight
When my son's preschool banned peanut butter, I thought the idea was, well, nutty. But my wife educated me that exposure to nuts could kill a child we knew at the school. Suddenly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches seemed less important, but still I wondered what was behind all of these food allergies I was hearing about for the first time. Now Child magazine has a story by Pamela Kruger that does the best job I've seen of explaining the truth about these allergies to nuts, milk, eggs and other foods. Kruger's "Allergy Nation" explores the medical knowledge about these allergies and discusses the parenting challenges they have created. Best of all, her story is full of anecdotes about the conflicts that arise, such as the school that refused to admit a peanut-allergic child and the PTA father who instructed his son to smear peanut butter along the walls of his school because he was angry about an anti-peanut policy. http://child.com/child/story.jhtml?storyid=/templatedata/child/story/data/1173889980546.xml