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Comment by benkuykendall | Hacker News Reader

> A tasty, energy-packed paste made from peanuts, oil, sugar, milk powder and vitamin and mineral supplements

What do they do about peanut allergies? If they are so common and dangerous (as witnessed by many US schools banning peanut products) why doesn't this food use an alternative protein source?

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peanut allergies are really only common in the west. weirdly, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between parts of the world that eat peanuts regularly and those that don't wrt childhood peanut allergies - peanuts are super common in sub-saharan Africa but the allergy is exceedingly rare. and in Sweden, where they eat peanuts at roughly the same rate as the US/UK, their peanut allergies tend to show up after the second year of life while in the US it tends to show up by 9 months.

which isn't to say there isn't a chance of allergic reactions to the RTUs, but given that their typical consumer is in Africa/India it seems like much less of a concern.

One theory is that we're causing peanut allergies by keeping them from our children until too late:

     https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-early-exposure-is-key-to-prevention/

The other problem is a single exposure and then too long of a delay to a subsequent exposure.

yeah I've read a few things about that, certainly seems reasonable. doesn't quite describe the situation where different countries have different allergy timelines though.

Some experts believe those bans are an over reaction.

The Wikipedia article on the topic is pretty US-centric, but I get the impression allergy rates are lower in other parts of the world.

Peanuts are cheap and nutritious. I'm sure that's why they are used.

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