^{Image by Josephine Rozman}

The other day, a friend came into my bakery with a box of delicious-looking peanut dumplings, but before she even showed me the box, she asked, “Can you eat peanuts?” This is a topic that we, as chefs, are hearing all too often. When we work on a new all-day dining menu, we are told we can do anything we want, except use peanuts. When working on a new kids’ menu, anything is good, but we can’t use any nuts at all.

Now, you can imagine how frustrating it is for a chef not to be able to use the many wonderful varieties of roasted nuts – lamb loins without its pine nut crust, a chocolate cake without its praline crunch, or more straightforwardly, life without peanut butter.

Why is it that 20 years ago, we only had one case per year requesting us to design a special menu to accommodate an allergy to nuts, but today, nuts are the number one priority in designing menus – specifically peanuts? We hear of schools with stipulations in their guidelines that prevents kids from bringing peanut products in their lunch boxes, just in case it would affect his or her classmate sitting across the table. Or what about the Florida school that asks all of their students to wash and sanitise their hands after handling peanut products, just in case it would affect one of the students who happened to be allergic to peanuts? At that particular school, parents have said that a lot of small accommodations have added to their frustrations, with one parent saying, "If I had a daughter who had a problem, I would not ask everyone else to change their lives to fit my life."

There is one straightforward fact here: while more than half of the people who follow a gluten-free diet do it because they think it’s healthy or trendy (without actually having gluten intolerances), but the number of people who avoid nuts because it’s the next craze is more or less equal to none. When you research for answers into why this is the case, you will probably see the “standard” response, which blames the age at which kids are exposed to peanuts in their life. It says that an early exposure lowers the risk of developing an allergy, while a later exposure increases that risk. British pediatricians recommend not feeding younger babies with peanut products, but according to Wikipedia, “The exact cause of someone developing a peanut allergy is unknown.” In the U.S. alone, there are a reported 4.5 million cases of peanut allergies, which is considered an epidemic, but with an unknown cause? It feels a little too convenient, but then again, Wikipedia sources can sometimes be questionable. However, would the fact that most allergies are happening in developed countries have anything to do with this? Perhaps not directly.

But digging deeper into conspiracy theories circulating, you will find one theory that I personally believe makes a lot of sense. In 2011, Heather Fraser published a book titled “The Peanut Allergy Epidemic,” where she explains in-depth the use of peanut oil in children’s vaccine as an adjuvant. Peanut oil is used to slow down the vaccine propagation in the body, but is not listed as an ingredient in the vaccine. It was a cheap and effective adjuvant to the vaccine, and just like that it became one of the worst manmade disasters in the history of mankind. It was found that the allergic reaction came on as the result of intact proteins in the peanut oil having bypassed the digestive system and making their way into the blood steam. Foreign protein in the blood happens to be the perfect trigger for an allergic reaction, and whilst not much reaction could be noticed at the first vaccine injection, the hypersensitivity would happen at the second exposure, i.e. when eating peanut products, with a violent, and possibly fatal, physical event.

If you search for Adjuvant 65, you will find medical evidence that back the theory, but of course many of the pharmaceutical industries behind the disaster are trying to dodge their responsibilities by pushing the blame elsewhere.

With that said, there are a lot of genuine allergies to nuts (other than peanuts) out there and not everything is to be blamed on the vaccine theory. Yet, jumping from 416,000 cases to 4,500,000 cases of peanut allergies in the U.S. alone within the space of 12 years is one big fail from the industries. For me, it’s a reminder of all the additives put into the processed foods we consume, which has been done since the 1950s. When reading and learning about this horrible disaster affecting so many people’s lives, I wonder if the next generations will realise the damage, stop it, and re-think it, whether it is for vaccines, food or any other consumable products.