Tuesday, October 7, 2008
With the 2nd presidential debate scheduled for tonight, I couldn't resist a political post today.
Before my recent wise decision to avoid any and all message boards dealing with nut allergies (too much risk of high blood pressure!) a couple of choice comments caught my eye in the past few weeks.
One guy on a CNN message board said that Democrats have "invented" food allergies and are raising a "nation of whiners" who will only grow up to vote Democrat. I kid you not. This post followed a story about Sloane Miller's recent "Worry-Free Dinner" event geared towards kids.
Well, gee, if you'll let our kids with food allergies grow up at all. Apparently, serving food-allergic kids a lunch that won't kill them, in an environment that relaxes them is just too partisan for some people!!
And then there's that nation of whiners comment. That's a been a big tagline this election year. In this case, the "whiners" are parents or kids who may want to avoid certain foods for the very good reason that it could cause their death. Would they be anything like the nation of "Wall Street whiners" that overreached their bounds and now have us poor suckers forced to bail them out???
There was another choice comment that made me chuckle recently. Some of you may remember the "Marketplace" (show on NPR) segment I mentioned a while back. The show quoted The Nut-Free Mom Blog and talked about the recent FDA discussion about better ways to regulate and label foods for food allergic folks. All of us know how important that is--currently, nobody has a clue if a food is safe or not.
Here's what one poster wrote: "I'm allergic to something. I'm allergic to government regulation." They didn't specify their party affiliation, but regulation is something Republicans don't like. From my point of view, who could possibly be opposed to properly labeling a food so that folks who need to avoid it, can??? When eating the wrong food may kill them?? Well, you be the judge of that one.
Could the perception that food allergies are just another hideous invention of "liberal Democrats" be perpetuated by the Republican party symbol--the elephant? After all, elephants like peanuts!
Food for thought. Enjoy the debate!
