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In Allergy Bullying, Food Can Hurt
Summary: Recently, bullying has expanded to target children with food allergies. Bullies have been reported to pour milk over their target, wave peanuts in their face, and have cake thrown at them. In one instance, Bridget Starbuck’s 12-year-old, who is lactose intolerant, had nacho cheese dip smeared on his face by a bully, but luckily he was able to wash it off in time. Ms. Starbuck said, “kids may think something like that is funny, but when a child has an allergy, this is like an assault with a deadly weapon.” Another father took to Twitter to recount how his son, who is severely allergic to peanuts, was once “taunted by ‘friends’ with a PB & J sandwich,” who said, “‘let’s see if he dies.’” Bullies are easily able to trigger a life-threatening reaction, as well as cause distress, depression, isolation, and anxiety. Bullying has become very common among children with allergies, however, most children do not tell their parents they are being bullied, even though adult involvement is extremely effective. Dr. Sicherer, a doctor of pediatric allergy and immunology, said “most of the bullying was verbal, as in ‘Ha ha, you can’t eat this,’ but occasionally they would wave the food at the person and threaten them with it, and if they dropped the allergen into the child’s own food, that could cause a serious reaction.” More recently, in the new Peter Rabbit movie, rabbits are seen throwing blackberries at the human, who is allergic to them, which causes him to go into anaphylactic shock. Sony issued an “apology, but parents say the movie illustrates one of the persistent preventable threats to their children’s health: bullies who pick on children because of their food allergies, going beyond verbal taunting to attack them with allergens.” Now, these attack may carry legal repercussions for the bullies, as victims are alerting law enforcement officials and pressing charges. Also, civil lawsuits have been filed against restaurants accused of deliberately inserting allergens into food ordered by customers who made their allergies known when they placed their orders.
Analysis & Opinion: Personally, I believe that there should be laws or rules set in place to prevent this from happening. If not within the government, at least at the schools. Bullies should be punished, and this is a serious threat as allergies can cause someone to die. I think that the fact that this has become so common is a terrible thing, and that even restaurant chains like Panera and Sony Pictures are doing this type of thing. Doing something like this should damage their business, but the truth of the matter is that this is not that well known and people will continue to go to Panera and watch Sony's movies.
Questions:
- Have you ever personally seen something like this happen? Has this happened to you personally? Either taunting or physically bullying.
- What do you think should be done to someone who hurts someone with their allergy? Should it be treated as a criminal offense?
- Do you think that it is okay for someone to taunt someone with a food allergy? (like saying “haha you can not have this”)
- What do you think the future holds for an issue like this?
Article Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/well/family/in-allergy-bullying-food-can-hurt.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth
9 comments:
I absolutely believe that bullying of any kind is unacceptable. I actually was not aware that bullies frequently targeted students with allergies, and am appalled by it. It is such a cruel thing to do. I think that students should be taught about allergies and how dangerous it can be, in schools. They don't need to be taught the graphics of a dangerous, allergic reaction, however, just alerting young students about it can be beneficial in my opinion. Young kids are very impressionable, and so if they are taught to not "mess around" with someone who has allergies, they hopefully will carry that lesson with them for the rest of their lives. To answer your other question, I don't necessarily think that it should be treated as a criminal offense unless something as serious as death occurs. Otherwise, I think they should just be disciplined in school. As a final thought, maybe Melania Trump will look into this issue, as she did say that she wanted to work on preventing bullying in schools, during her tenure as First Lady.
I think it's horrible that children have started to bully each other because of their allergies. Allergies can be life-threatening, and it's alarming that kids are putting each other in danger for a few laughs. I remember one time when I was in elementary school, a boy didn't realize the severity of our classmate's peanut allergy, and thought it would be okay to rub his peanut butter covered hand on her. I'm sure his intentions were not cruel, but his actions resulted in our classmate having to leave school after getting an EpiPen injection. It's incredibly upsetting knowing that kids are purposefully putting each other in danger like this, and I think that Emily's point about educating children on allergies would be a good first step toward ending this problem.
Like Emily said, I think educating people, especially kids, about how to interact with people with food allergies is both necessary and effective. I was having a similar conversation last week with my friend who has severe peanut allergies, where she was telling me how people have never really understood how easy it is for people with food allergies to have a reaction, even if they are not physically eating the food. However, she said that every time she has told someone about her allergies and asked them if they could eat the peanuts when she wasn't around and in a place she wouldn't be in in the future, they will always listen to her, even if they are a child. I think that a lot of times young children don't understand the true severity of food allergies and how they could kill someone, so while their intentions should still be considered bullying, I think the best way to fix it would be to let them know what can happen if someone goes into anaphylactic shock and how their rude actions could severely hurt someone.
This is one of the worst forms of bullying because of the potential effects it can have on the victim physically. As you mentioned, someone could have their life threatened if they are forced on to foods that they are allergic to. I can't remember any time in my life in which I have seen someone bullied because of their allergies. I honestly do think that there should be some type of legal laws to prevent this. School rules wont do anything, because people still bully even though it's against school policy. Hopefully some legal restrictions would incentivize kids to not do this.
As the sister of a brother that has had (and still has some) allergies to dairy, wheat, tree nuts, peanuts, and seafood, I think allergy awareness and education could definitely be put to use. While I haven't heard of my brother being bullied, there have been multiple incidences where someone was a little too careless and left peanut butter on their hands before touching my brother's water bottle (as an example). Educating students, especially younger students, about how easy it is to cause somebody to have a severe allergic reaction could both decrease allergy-related bullying and accidents.
I think its terrible that bullying has escalated to threatening kids health more like this by using their allergies against them. I have friends who have had their peanut allergies used to try and harm them by sneaking it in their food. I agree with Meiling that the education of students about how dangerous allergies could be is very important. I think if more kids knew how bad an allergic reaction could be they wouldn't try to use it to bully others.
This has never happened to me before and I have never seen it happen before but it is sad that it is has grown common in other schools. I think hurting someone with their allergy is a severe form of bullying and it should be treated and punished as such, because allergic reactions could be potentially life threatening. While taunting someone who has an allergy could be considered rude, I am not sure if it is considered bullying or joking around.
Like all fellow commenters, I do not believe that any kind of bullying is acceptable, especially something that targets an aspect about someone that’s life-threatening. Though I have not seen this form of bullying face-to-face, I’ve seen allergy taunting all over the media, especially in children’s shows. For example, when I was babysitting my younger cousin a couple years back, there was one episode of the Disney Channel show Jessie where the running joke was a kid’s long list of allergies, including gluten. The tactics used against him included throwing slices of bread at his face among others. Maybe the show’s writers thought it to be harmless fun because his allergies just seem like an inconvenience, but again, like what many have brought forth previously, children are very impressionable. TV shows have the tendency to depict those with allergies as weak and vulnerable, and are often mistreated by the main characters. When they see those with allergies treated like that by the show’s protagonists, kids laugh and attempt to taunt other kids with allergies if they haven’t been educated about the dangers that come with allergies. Because of this, I believe that the media ought to be held accountable for its portrayal of those with allergy-related conditions. Instead, children’s shows can sprinkle in some education about such issues in their episodes. That way, viewers are more likely to latch onto the message because it’s on TV.
I lowkey felt obligated to drop a comment because I have been in that situation. As of two years now I have been vegan, and while I'm the last person to care if someone roasts me or makes fun of me, it irks me when people try to shove meat into my face trying to "tempt" me into breaking my lifestyle. While I do understand that it is all meant in good fun, there is still a line that needs to be drawn because even though I am not allergic, the idea and thought of eating meat, to me, is horrendous and nauseating. And to even think- this is coming from high school students who we accredit to being more responsible, respectful, and mature in comparison to those getting bullied in the article. By those standards, you would expect soon-to-be-adults to have some morals and respect for another person's lifestyle and choices. I think education as many others have said is vital in this scenario because these students are taking bullying to an extreme, and that might result in fatal consequences that the perpetrator may not ever expect due to their lack of awareness. I also want to echo angelique's comment to say that the media does a Terrible job of portraying a positive message to their viewers. Although everyone onlines makes these immature and thoughtless jokes all the time, we can't really control the media and what it does. The best we can do is to encourage the directors and production workers to rethink their scripts.
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