All the Buns Are Blank
onefoottsunami.com
onefoottsunami.com
In 2000 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended parents wait until 3 years to introduce peanuts. 17 years later they dramatically reversed the guidance and admitted it probably was at least partly responsible for the meteoric rise of peanut allergies in America.
https://apnews.com/article/sesame-allergies-label-b28f8eb3dc...
You either follow difficult procedures to avoid cross-contamination, or you make it an ingredient. There is no option in between.
There must be something different about sesame and it's role in the food pipeline that makes it harder to deal with compared to other common allergens.
There's two conflicting laws here - one says you MUST label if you have allergens (this one allows the "may or may not contain the devil's seeds") and another says you cannot imply or state your product has something it does not have (this appears to be the one banning "may or may not").
Control and consistency.
If you don't measure an ingredient, you are at the mercy of a zillion different things for how much of that ingredient is present and your consistency is terrible. In addition, people who are only weakly allergic to said ingredient can never be sure if there is too much of it. People who go into anaphylaxis have to avoid your stuff altogether, anyhow.
If, however, you measure the ingredient, now the amount is precisely controlled. People who are only weakly allergic can test and now know from that point on that they are okay (or not).
The people who are jumping up and down are the people who are strongly allergic. They expected the adopted law to cause manufacturers to have to pristine clean their lines when, in reality, the precise opposite occurred--the manufacturers added the ingredient and made their lines "dirtier".
> If the ingredients don’t include sesame, companies must take steps to prevent the foods from coming in contact with any sesame, known as cross-contamination.
> Food industry experts said the new requirements aren’t simple or practical.
> Some companies include statements on labels that say a food “may contain” a certain product or that the food is “produced in a facility” that also uses certain allergens. However, such statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA, and they do not absolve the company of requirements to prevent cross-contamination.
> Instead, some companies have taken a different approach. Officials at Olive Garden said that starting this week, the chain is adding “a minimal amount of sesame flour” to the company’s famous breadsticks “due to the potential for cross-contamination at the bakery.”
There's some explanation here:
https://www.tuvsud.com/en/press-and-media/2018/january/tuv-s...
Of course this is the exact opposite of what TFA had to say.
>Some companies include statements on labels that say a food “may contain” a certain product or that the food is “produced in a facility” that also uses certain allergens. However, such statements are voluntary, not required, according to the FDA, and they do not absolve the company of requirements to prevent cross-contamination.
Basically the options are redo your production process so that there are no traces of sesame or add enough to put it on the ingredients list.
Facts like that are completely irrelevant before a judge and jury, so their position is understandable and probably for the best (for them).
When kids are exposed to the above early and often, they're much less likely to develop allergies. However, to protect the allergic, peanuts and now sesame are removed from childcare facilities, school lunches, etc. This exposes fewer children, which increases the percent that develop the allergy, requiring the allergen to be removed from more products & places people eat!
Who knows if it applies to these buns, but it's an interesting situation we're stuck with.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/01/10/peanut-allergy-earl...
of course, there are a whole lot reasons why parents don't.
what is that old joke--we need a license to drive a car but not to make a baby.
Move to the US, where peanuts and peanut butter are everywhere, and suddenly I'm responsible for checking whether my kids' snacks contain peanuts because someone in the class might be allergic to it!
As you’ve highlighted this would imply that cultures where there are no peanuts would be filled with peanut allergies — but that’s not the case.
I suspect that there’s a cross reactivity going on. Infants are exposed to an allergen and their immune system develops a good response for it. That response also applies to peanuts, unnecessarily. Had they been exposed to both peanuts and the true allergen then their immune system would’ve learned to discriminate.
A similar example — some US citizens are exposed to poison Ivy. They develop a stronger and stronger response after multiple exposures. Later (as a consequence) they are also allergic to Mango because Mango has some kind of similarity to Poison Ivy, from the immune system’s point of view. The Mango allergy could be reduced if they had been also exposed to mango… but mango isn’t the problem — Poison Ivy is!
Peanuts, by the way, (if not organic) have the highest concentration of pesticide saturation.
Here is more information: https://www.crigenetics.com/blog/dirty-truth-peanut-allergie...
The solution is for people to expose their kids to that stuff at home. That way the kids get the exposure without endangering the population.
I have no evidence for any of it, but my pet theory is that the increase in food allergies (especially adult onset) is at least somewhat environmental. That we're exposed to so many toxic products/pollutants, and our bodies so filled with microplastics, that our gut epithelium becomes compromised, we have increased inflammation, and our immune systems are increasingly on high alert causing them to overreact to things that aren't really threats.
Even if someone managed to have a somatic illness that actually did cause their throat to swell and close up when exposed to certain allergens (the mind is a powerful thing after all) I don't think it'd make any meaningful difference in the event that it occurred. It would still be a life threatening medical emergency. It might however mean that with help it could be possible for them to stop having the reaction, but I'm not even sure they'd work if their immune system genuinely saw the food as a threat and learned to treat it as such.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/eating-disorders-the...
https://www.livescience.com/64423-food-allergies-overestimat...
https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2008/0615/p1678.html
https://www.verywellhealth.com/fake-food-allergies-1323997
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/food-cocktails/a5402/food-aller...
But the grocery’s internal notes in the product attribute the change to the FDA ruling sesame a major food allergen.
Anyone allergic to sesame?
Here’s a direct link to FDA’s announcement, which includes mention of the January 1st, 2023 new product labeling requirement.
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/allergic-sesa...
The 9 major allergens are now: milk, eggs, fish, such as bass, flounder, cod, Crustacean shellfish, such as crab, lobster, shrimp tree nuts, such as almonds, walnuts, pecans peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame
So now bread that was previously in practice (but not theoretically) safe for her to eat is being made specifically unsafe.
Adding sesame as an ingredient just seems spiteful.
Note that we're talking about companies big enough to have factories where they make several different kinds of food item. So those are the same people who happily sell over-processed food with excess quantities of salt, sugar and fat. Not only do they not give a shit about the minority of their customers with allergies, they don't give a shit about the majority of their customers, either. They just want to sell shit and make $$$!!!
This legislation backfired because people are assholes and put their profits above everything else, not because regulators are idiots who can't foresee the consequences of their decisions.
So it's easier to just make sure it has some, rather than guarantee no cross contamination.
Most of the time it's not an ingredient but worked on shared equipment. Other times it's like an oil that changes depending on availability.
The old law let you say that, and you could sell your stuff as mostly-allergen free but if some got it no biggie.
Now you can't do that, it either has or has not, there is no may. And you can't say it has sesame without it being in there, so adding it is easy.
Otherwise you have to not list it and you have to prove you've prevented cross-contamination.
The cost of that is way higher than adding an ingredient in an existing product, and the business cost of losing these customers is low (allergics will be a minority). Short of media backlash, that's the lower cost move.
In most of EU we’re still on the “may contain…” train, and reality is any food maker with enough product lines will have a decent number of them with allergens. The list of major allergens is about 10~20 ingredients, and if you’re a chocolate or candy maker for instance you’ll probably hit more than half of them.
I mean, even thinking of local bakeries, they’ll have a range of products that just spans so many allergens.
They’ll do their best to avoid cross contamination from the start, but being _absolutely sure_ there is none is a level of commitment that is crazy high, and would be probably only achieved by completely dropping most of the allergens (no more peanut flavored chocolates, no more almonds…).
My family has allergies so we have a few brands and shops we follow closely, and all their products are marked as “made in factory also using…” and “may contain traces …”. While it’s vague, we never had any issue with their products, but also know we shouldn’t eat them in situations we can’t react. That is to me the best balance that seems realistic to achieve.
I either have to position and bite down on one between my canines or they may break up when they get stuck between teeth or in course of unsticking them.
Sesame seeds are never that satisfying to eat, but they do add texture to the bun.
I have a niece who is crazy allergic to sesame. She'll have a serious reaction to even very tiny amounts.
I am. I'm lucky in that I'm not anaphylactic to it, but it causes me other problems. I was able to eat sesame for decades, then one day, after having a bunch of other issues, I went to the doctor and they tested me for a bunch of stuff and a bunch of stuff I could previously eat without issue, I'm now allergic to. It really sucks, though it's better than if it caused anaphylaxis.
Maybe there’s some manufacturing location sesame buns can be done alongside other sesame products that is more efficient.
Maybe instead of making portions sneakily smaller you just get rid of the extras.
Watch out, it'll be the sprinkles on cupcakes next...
McDonalds never struck me as a company that cares very much.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/ma...
What I’ve always wondered: What exactly do these seeds add to the experience? I never really got the point of sesame seeds. Now that I can eat them again I still don’t get it.
On other breads, sometimes there's enough density that you get a real flavor from the seeds.
But they do seem to make the bun a bit "higher class" somehow.
Nope, you saw him engage Retail Worker Droid Mode, where their soul leaves their body.
Doesn't totally answer the question, they had to update the packaging anyway. To Mr. Hedburg's point, I'm sure no one misses them.
Big Marty's still have a ludicrous amount. I guess it's all or nothing.
If I accidentally buy a soy product my wife is basically screaming at me after eating it (out of her mind). Then after she finds out I bought soy she screams at me again (this time in her right mind). Don't buy soy guys, it's a fucking estrogenic nightmare at home.
Phytoestrogen is very different than the literal estrogen and resulting molecular mimicry found in animal products - the real nightmare.