Legume: It May Concern

Northwest Airlines has added peanuts back to its in-flight snack menu, and boy are some people pissed. The web site of the Star Tribune (in Minneapolis, where Northwest is based) was inundated with complaints from the public.

One man stated “This is a very disappointing development. My wife’s allergy is so severe that if someone is sitting next to her and eating peanuts, the odor is enough to trigger an allergic reaction."

I’m thinking if your wife is that susceptible, what the hell is she doing out in public?

“What’s wrong with pretzels?” asked another. Nothing at all…unless you’re allergic to wheat.

We’ve all heard horror stories about severely allergic people accidentally ingesting some peanut product and dying. Schools across the country scrambled to remove peanut products from their lunchrooms, airlines endure the bitching and demands for special accommodation, and lobbyists try to cadge money for research.

Know how many people died of food allergies in the US in 2005, according to the CDC?

Eleven.

That’s eleven total; from all food allergies.

Peanut allergies seem to account for approximately 54% of all food allergy-related deaths, so that’s what…six people a year, or thereabouts? And, as it turns out, many of those deaths happened because the person did not have their epi pens with them, so that’s their own fault. So we’re left with maybe two or three people dying each year from a peanut allergy. To hear the stories, though, you’d think these folks were bursting into flames if they even came into contact with Styrofoam peanuts.

Of course, there’s always that one fucking idiot that piously informs you that if even one person dies, it’s too many. If we banned every thing that ever killed at least one person, we wouldn’t have anything left. People are remarkably inventive/stupid when it comes to finding ways to off themselves. More people die from falling out of bed (about 450) every year than from food allergies, but no one is lobbying for the elimination of beds. (At least...I hope not. I'm not giving up my California King.)

I hate it for them, but people that are allergic to peanuts are in the extreme minority. You don’t hear folks with dairy allergies (the #1 food allergy) kvetching about the creamer the stewardesses are tossing around the cabin, do you? Should the rest of the flying public have their P-NUT PAKs taken away because 0.0000006% of the U.S. population might be on the same flight, and might accidentally hoover up some peanut dust?

Don’t be a goober.