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In the past, food allergies were believed to impact 1 in 25 children under 18 years of age. A recent study has concluded that food allergies are twice as common as previously thought, affecting 8 percent, or roughly 1 in 13 kids. These findings come after analyzing survey data of about 38,000 parents.
Of the reported food-allergic kids of the survey, 40 percent had a history of severe allergic reaction; their reactions seemed to gain in severity as the kids got older; and Asian and African American kids are more likely to have allergies than their Caucasian peers.
CNN and Huffington Post have written articles about the study and the real risks of food allergies. Both articles are worth reading as they detail the findings and also feature how two families have been forever changed by food-related anaphylaxis.
1 in 13 kids are affected by food allergies...How many kids' in your child's classrooms have food allergies?
In Kindergarten, Ryken was the only child out of 25 with food allergies. I believe there was one other student with peanut allergies in his preschool class of roughly 20.
ReplyDeleteIn Tristan's class, 3 out of 22 have food allergies, all with Epipens, and more have inhalers for asthma. In Logan's class of about 30, 3 have food allergies.
ReplyDeleteIn Kian's Kindergarten's class, 2 out of 24 kids had peanut allergies.
ReplyDeleteIn any given year, I usually have one student (out of 20-25) with a peanut allergy, and sometimes one student with another allergy. This year, with 25 students, one had a peanut allergy, and one had an allergy to red dye. There has only been one year (out of 18) that I remember having more than one student with a peanut allergy. That year, one of the kids was allergic to peanuts and tree nuts, and the other, who had been born prematurely, was allergic to a long list of foods and environmental things.
ReplyDelete