Mom called 'inconsiderate' and 'disgusting' for letting kid eat peanut butter in Target

A mom who asked an online parenting forum if it was okay to let her child eat a peanut butter sandwich in public was flooded with a wave of negative comments, some of which called her “awful,” “inconsiderate” and “disgusting.”

Originally reported by SFGate, the original poster (OP) asked the question Monday in the New York City parenting forum UrbanBaby.

“Has it become unacceptable to eat peanut butter in public? DD was eating a pb&j at a store today, and a woman stopped me to lecture me about peanut allergies,” the original question asked. The mom explained in the comments that her child was riding in a shopping cart at Target and eating a sandwich when she was stopped by a woman and hounded over the dangers of peanut allergies.

Then the storm began.

“That's really inconsiderate So many kids have life threatening allergies to peanut butter. Eating it in a shopping cart GUARANTEES it will be smeared on the handle, etc. Its really awful you would do this,” one user wrote. Another called the OP “awful.”

A few posts down, one user wrote that “If I ever saw your kids, I'd tell them what a disgusting mother they have.” One commenter said the mom’s “total disdain for the safety of other kids is awful” and called it the “epitome of low brow.”

One user implied that allowing the child to eat the sandwich was worse than smoking cigarettes around them. “No one is going to drop dead inhaling second hand smoke but a child could die because your kid smeared peanut butter on playground equipment,” they wrote.

The mother tried to defend herself in several comments, saying that she wiped down the cart and the child’s hands and made sure there was no mess. She did have a few defenders, one of whom called the other posters “ridiculous,” but the majority of the comments were squarely on one side of the debate: it was not the right thing to do.

But how dangerous is it really?

The most recent estimate show that about 2.1 percent of people in the United States have peanut allergies. That’s up 21 percent from the last count in 2010.

Scientists have not weighed in on the etiquette of eating nut products in public, but some have advocated for expansions of peanut bans in schools. Others have not found evidence that such policies make kids any safer.

“It’s not that the intention’s not good, it’s just that realistically, from a practical point of view, can you truly reduce the chance of accidental exposure by having a food ban? The data that we have suggests that it’s not an effective intervention,” Edmond Chan of the BC Children’s Hospital told GlobalNews Canada.

Of those who do become sick, only about 0.3 percent of cases are fatal, The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology reported. In another post, the journal called it “highly unlikely” that someone would have a major allergic reaction simply from coming into skin contact with peanut product, such as might happen if a child got peanut butter on them from the shopping cart.

Plus, scientists now say it’s actually possible for children to become immunized against peanut allergies.

Experts have begun recommending feeding infants peanuts and peanut products earlier to shore up the body’s defenses and actually prevent an allergy from developing. A pill might even be able to do the same thing for older children too. A 2017 study found that most of the children who were given a pill containing a pro-biotic and peanut protein were free from peanut allergies even four years after their last dose.

This story was originally published April 12, 2018 at 11:11 AM with the headline "Mom called 'inconsiderate' and 'disgusting' for letting kid eat peanut butter in Target."