Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (9 page)

In a widely circulated 2003
Daf Hakashrus
article by Rabbi Gavriel Price of the Orthodox Union Ingredients Approval Registry, Rabbi Price used the example of beta-carotene to demonstrate the complexities of hidden ingredients. Beta-carotene is a yellow or orange food agent often used to color margarine. Because margarine's appearance is not reflected in a final product, such as cookies, beta-carotene was regarded as an incidental additive and did not have to be listed under existing guidelines. But the water-dispersible variation of beta-carotene uses gelatin that could be made from fish, pork, or beef. The
possibility of contamination by pork or nonkosher slaughtered beef renders the food impermissible for those who keep kosher.

(Beta-carotene is also a frequent additive to premixed juice drinks, which is why many companies invest in placing kosher pareve signs on their drink labels. For years, you'd find gelatin in Sunny Delight. They claim to have gotten rid of it when the brand relaunched as SunnyD, though they've passed on the opportunity to advertise “Now with fewer fish bones.”)

Back in 2003, Rabbi Price was skeptical that the FDA would ever mandate acknowledgment of contaminating ingredients to a degree that could satisfy Jewish dietary law. In a typical processing plant, “airborne particles of whey powder, although in parts per million, can nevertheless be present in food.… Labeling laws do not require such declaration because the whey powder is present at ‘insignificant levels.' ” He judged that “the dairy or non-kosher status of equipment, important in an evaluation of the kosher or pareve status of a food, is totally outside the FDA's universe of concern.”

“Totally outside the universe” proved to be a slight overstatement. In 2003, skyrocketing levels of celiac disease and peanut allergy were already shifting the mainstream perception of what constituted “insignificant levels” of exposure. Just over a year after the article in
Daf Hakashrus
, the U.S. government passed the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004. This act required that the secretary of Health and Human Services submit a congressional report analyzing “the ways in which foods, during manufacturing and processing, are unintentionally contaminated with major food allergens.” The secretary was also instructed to begin conducting inspections to ensure the reduction or elimination of cross
contact between foods. It might not have been a banishing of whey from the factory, Rabbi Price, but it was a start.

The act's primary function is to formally recognize those eight major foods or food groups that account for more than 90 percent of food allergies in the United States: milk, egg, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat. When it comes to the “big eight,” loopholes have been sewn tight. Their presence may not be generalized within colorings, spices, or flavors. If a derivative such as casein is used, the label must include the major allergen label, either in the form of
casein
(
MILK
) or by appending
CONTAINS MILK
to the end of the ingredient list. The specific member of an allergen group must be specified; e.g., “cashews,” rather than simply “nuts.” Soy lecithin, used to coat baking pans, is no longer a hidden “processing aid.” Provisions are made for research into national prevalence rates of food allergies and anaphylactic reactions, and to develop allergen-free guidelines for food preparation in restaurants, grocery store delicatessens, and school cafeterias.

The wheels of bureaucracy—even after they begin turning—take a long time to move the cart forward. FALCPA, as the food-allergen labeling act is sometimes called, prescribes a somewhat labyrinthine system of ingredient parsing. A year earlier, Congress had also passed a stringent set of guidelines for labeling trans fats. Out of consideration for companies absorbing the cost of rejiggering recipes and reprinting labels on dozens of products, accommodating both sets of guidelines, the FDA did not demand compliance on either front until January 1, 2006.

In February 2006, the media picked up on the fact that the
McDonald's corporation had added the phrase “contains wheat and milk ingredients” to the nutritional labeling of their French fries. The Associated Press contacted Cathy Kapica, McDonald's then director of global nutrition (a rather idealistic job title coming from the folks behind McNuggets). Kapica confirmed that a flavoring agent in the cooking oil contained “wheat and dairy derivatives.” She was quick to clarify that the derivatives did not include proteins, and suggested that people with wheat or dairy allergies who had eaten fries without problem should continue eating them.

“Technically there are no allergens in there,” she said. “What this is is an example of science evolving.”

Uh-huh. This was not the first controversy over McDonald's flagship product. In 1990, the company had announced a switch from cooking with beef tallow to pure vegetable oil. But a 2002 lawsuit brought on by vegetarian groups revealed most fries were still being cooked in “beef-flavored oil” (to the horror of Hindus everywhere), resulting in a $10 million settlement. Apparently, McDonald's subsequent promise to
really
change the recipe had become mired in production purgatory. The reality was that they were scared to alter the taste of an iconic product; as Colonel Sanders could have attested, there would be no going back.

Watching these news reports in 2006, I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I didn't have many food rituals as a child. What I had were usually weird variations on what the “normal kids” did, merely offering the comfort of routine rather than signaling membership in their ranks. Who else lined up twelve hazelnuts in the pencil groove of her desk? Who else equated
catching a cold with eating whole artichokes in home-brewed broth, instead of the comforting, canned conformity of Campbell's chicken noodle soup?

But I had one ritual that had made me feel like every other kid. During the first decade of my life, when I was undergoing weekly shots, only one reward brought any consolation: a trip to the McDonald's near my allergist's office. It was a particularly fancy one, with an indoor merry-go-round populated by Grimace, the Hamburglar, Birdie the Early Bird, and Ronald himself. I always knew what I would order: French fries in a cheery red cup.

Every week, I endured injections to protect me from my dairy allergy. And apparently, every week my reward had been tainted with beef.

Maybe the exposure was minimal. Just as KFC managers altered the “secret recipe” on-site, perhaps the manager of that McDonald's used vegetable oil earlier than most. Still, we should have suspected something. There were times when the fries upset my stomach, my body refusing to digest the grease and stranding me in the bathroom for twenty minutes at a time. We'd blame it on contamination by a neighboring hamburger. We all ignored the warnings, even my watchful parents.

What can I say? It was my ritual, and ritual is a powerful thing.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Great Peanut Scare

B
etrayed by McDonald's, I had spent my teens and twenties searching for the next great fast-food fry. Wendy's fries are too bland. Arby's fries, though temptingly curly, are cooked in enough soybean oil to make my stomach churn. Then, thanks to my then boyfriend's weekly pilgrimages for his bacon cheeseburger, I discovered Five Guys: hand-cut, skin-on potatoes doled out with an extra scoop that guarantees copious soggy, salty, bottom-of-the-bag fry perfection.

On my first visit, I'd noticed a plaque on the front door warning guests that peanuts are served in bulk at every Five Guys—a barrel of nuts in their shells that sits by the register, available to customers to snack on while waiting for their order. I didn't think twice about it. But on my next visit, someone had taped an ink-jet, large-font sign proclaiming
DUE TO THE
POSSIBILITY OF SEVERE ALLERGIC REACTION IN SOME NEIGHBORHOOD CHILDREN, PLEASE
DO NOT
TAKE PEANUTS OR PEANUT SHELLS OUTSIDE OF FIVE GUYS
. That got my attention.

More and more, public venues show an awareness of peanut allergies. The Washington Nationals (along with the Red Sox, Padres, Mariners, and several other major-league teams) designate peanut-free seating zones at a couple of baseball games each season. Sometimes a whole stadium goes peanut free for a minor-league game—no roasted nuts, no peanut M&M's, no Snickers. Bags are inspected at the door for contraband.

Peanut bans are spreading like cultural kudzu. No more making peanut butter-pinecone bird feeders in kindergarten. No more baskets of peanuts at the bar. In 2009, the Wisconsin Division of State Facilities sent a letter to downtown offices in Madison requesting that locals no longer feed peanuts to the squirrels. The front lawn of the capitol had become littered with shells, and officials feared reactions among the thousands of children coming through for tours.

Why all the worry? Allergies among children are on the rise, and allergies to peanuts in particular. In a study titled “Food Allergy Among Children in the United States,” published in the November 2009
Pediatrics
, a survey of 2005–2006 medical records revealed a 9 percent incidence rate for peanut-sensitive IgE antibodies. Note: This doesn't mean 9 percent of children are allergic to peanuts. Only an oral food challenge reveals if the antibodies actually react. But it's a marked increase from previous levels of sensitivity.

Some try to dismiss these figures as an inflated product of the yuppie imagination. Come Halloween, the kid who dies “from a hidden peanut” has replaced the kid who dies “from
a razor blade hidden in the apple” in the pantheon of suburban myth. Yet in urban areas, the incidence rate of allergies is also rising. In that same 2009 study, blood samples among African-American children showed they were twice as likely as white children to carry an IgE antibody for peanuts. The Hispanic population, though exhibiting the lowest prevalence rate overall, showed the greatest increase from previous years.

In an interview for
Living Without
(a magazine that caters to those with food allergies, celiac disease, and other dietary restrictions), Jackie Clegg Dodd—wife of U.S. senator Christopher Dodd and mother of two children, including Grace, a child with multiple food sensitivities—recounted an experience that epitomizes the extreme scenarios associated with peanut allergies:

Clearly, the PB&J-smuggling granny is the bad guy in this story. Yet I find myself nagging at what is known, and what is implied. What does Dodd think was the reaction catalyst? Was
it the smell of the peanut butter? Peanut oil contact-transferred up to their row in a matter of minutes? Isn't it more likely that the child ingested an old crumb in the area of her seat, or that one of her own snacks was contaminated?

What if that woman's grandchild had allergies of her own? I think of all the times a peanut butter sandwich or peanut butter pretzels served as my anchor for a long trip. Even a supposedly allergy-friendly in-flight meal usually arrives with a fat slice of cucumber in the salad and cost-friendly cantaloupe mixed among the fruit. There's something slightly self-righteous in Dodd's offer of her “great food.” I imagine someone offering my mother a package of Garden Salsa (and whey-laced) Sun Chips instead, or a home-baked brownie, with the presumption that it will be a welcome option for her hungry child. The exchange would not go well.