Lianne Mandelbaum is founder, the No Nut Traveler, and can be reached on Twitter @nonuttraveler.
Food should not kill, but in the last three weeks alone, the food allergy community has grappled with three food-induced anaphylaxis deaths. All were young adults in the prime of their lives; one in middle school, another going to a school dance, and one just engaged to the love of her life.
No one is perfect in how they conduct themselves daily, but for those with food allergies, falling short of …
I was truly gutted when watching the recent Saturday Night Live that joked about nut allergies. My son Joshua, who is 16 years old, has an anaphylactic peanut allergy. I found the segment to be insensitive to the millions of people globally who live each day with food allergies, an invisible but potentially fatal disease.
How do I explain to my son that it is OK to make …
Recently, I came across two high-profile Twitter accounts sharing a meme insinuating that parents who have children with nut allergies are hesitant to give the coronavirus vaccine to their children. The author of the tweet, Bette Midler, so eloquently says, “Vaccinate, or I’m bringing the Jiffy.”
To date, this tweet is still standing and has been retweeted over 2,600 times with over 19,000 …
It seems that adults need to be reminded and educated of the dangers life-threatening food allergies possess. If you think taunting people that have life-threatening food allergies occur only with very young children, you would be sadly mistaken. Case in point, comedian Jimmy Fallon’s in his recent sketch “Masculine Man Masks Commercial” states that his character’s masks “don’t have to make you look like a big sissy with a shellfish …
When my peanut-allergic son was five, he suddenly blurted out, “Mom, don’t worry about me, if I eat a peanut by mistake and it kills me, I can just hit the redo button and get another life, like in the video game.” I became really scared that his child-like innocence prevented him from understanding the potential adverse ramifications of his own food allergy. The sad truth is that there are …
Can you imagine flying home from a family vacation and having a first-time anaphylactic reaction in the air? Did you know that airlines are not required to stock their planes with easy-to-use auto-injectors that any adult or child could operate?
Francine’s family was flying back home from vacation on American Airlines. Her 10-year-old son, who had no history of food allergy, ate the warm mixed nuts they served and immediately had stomach …
Last night, my son was reading a book that was required summer reading for 6th grade. This book was published over 30 years ago. When he got to a sentence that used the word “retard,” he stopped and innocently asked, “Mom, what does that word mean?”
At first, I was shocked that he did not know the meaning, but as I thought about it more, I realized this term was no …
I was attending a 50th birthday party for a friend of mine, when I struck up a conversation with someone I had never met. The conversation, of course, was with a woman who seemed genuinely interested in my quest to make air travel safer for those with food allergies. I told her how my family often receives dirty looks from other passengers when we pre-board a plane to wipe down …
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