Welcome to America in 2023, where they are deliberately adding allergens to food, in order to comply with potentially over-reaching laws...
It's peanuts too: https://snacksafely.com/2022/04/company-will-add-trace-amoun...
I was with you until you mentioned over-reaching. Problem is, there's a small segment of the population that will literally die from sesame. 0.3% total sesame allergies, maybe less will get death as the side effect. It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to omit sesame from products that don't have it labeled, and forbid cross contamination. It's also reasonable for companies to consider including it and labeling it for ease of operations. I worked in the food industry and dealing food cross-contamination is really hard. There is no one-size-fits-all for public health on a scale as large as the US.
And the manufacturers doing this, is a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Where trying to solve a problem through legislation makes it worse in the end.
At the same time, it is now easier for you to tell what products are unsafe for you to eat. Before, you could only tell if there were sesame seeds on the outside, or if they were listed in the ingredients. But sometimes a food item (in a restaurant, for example) might have sesame seeds on the inside, or ground up in a sauce, and you'd never know it was there. I once ordered a vegetarian dish at a Singaporean restaurant and was surprised to find that it had a sauce with ground up shrimp in it. I'm not vegetarian, but I don't like seafood and didn't expect to find any in a vegetarian dish.
I'm allergic to milk, but I can survive a trace amount if it ends up in something. The trial and error isn't fun, but I can eat the majority of things that "may contain milk".
Having 90% of my relatively safe food options become toxic and dangerous overnight isn't a good trade off for "at least I know it's safe".
All that would be necessary is for a "may contain" label. If that's there, people who are severely allergic can avoid those products.
I can understand a fast food place, where sesame products are in circulation doing that, you'd get a non trivial amount of sesame even on the air around those places.
But a lot of places seem to do it just out of spite. Seems to be part of the 'American Dream' like kids selling cookies to pay for medical treatments or something.
"And industry giant McDonald’s said it will not add sesame to foods that did not previously contain it. America’s largest restaurant chain has worked with its suppliers to follow the new law’s cleaning protocols and does not plan to add sesame flour to any buns, a McDonald’s spokesman said. "
Well looks like some companies did manage to do the right thing
Personal responsibility? If somebody has a rare and possibly fatal condition, you'd expect they'd consider cross contamination and be very careful what they ate. This story shows that relying on labeling is a flawed approach in any event.
They are.
But without accurate labelling, what can they do?
We are now in a regime where the same “free from sesame” products exist, and all other products must contain sesame.
It’s not clear that this has increased or will increase the number of products free from sesame. It is clear that it has increased the number of products with sesame and the amount of sesame. It sounds like we would prefer a regime where fewer products have sesame.
Assign whatever merit or import you want to the issue of sesame in food, but it is not at all clear that this new regime is actually better for anyone.
Now there is exactly one brand of bread at the store without sesame. Kings Hawaiian, if you're curious. Every. Other. Brand. now includes sesame.
It's like that with so many things now. Hot dog buns. Cereal. Super frustrating if the store is out of the one brand without sesame. Guess nobody makes sammiches this week.
I totally get the companies trying to find the cheapest way to comply. But for people trying to feed allergic folks it really sucks. Hopefully enough people buy the sesame-free products to make it worth the effort for the companies actually doing the work on this one.
Without regard to this particular policy, those are all foods that your young relative is better off avoiding along with sesame seeds. I have been forced to avoid them for many years now due to different health issues, and it turned out to be a blessing that was hard to appreciate at the beginning.
Do you have some issue with carbs? High calorie foods? Something against processed foods? Gluten? Plastic sensitivity? Why was it a blessing? What made you start appreciating it? etc. etc.
I wish I had started younger, but nothing short of that kind of compulsion would have made me. Few kids need to go to such extremes, but most would benefit from the absence of flours.
Now that I think of it I wonder how much of 'gluten issues' is actually due to all those foods having excess sugar added to it
IMO flours have been damaging people in many of these ways for centuries. Since the agricultural revolution. That damage came along with a nice perk -- not starving. But if now we're affluent enough to not starve without it, that's a good thing.
And even a substandard load of homemade bread is much nicer and tastier than store-bought.
It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say, "this is too much work, I need store bought bread."
I disagree about cleanup being a big deal, though. You do have to do it immediately, but there's not a lot of it to be done. When I make bread, I need to clean a bowl, the bread pan (or dutch oven, if I'm making sourdough), the large cutting board I work the dough on, and a couple of utensils. That's not a big deal.
> It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say, "this is too much work, I need store bought bread."
Indeed it is! But I was giving a possible alternative to someone who struggles to find store-bought bread they can safely eat. I was not saying "everyone must make their own bread".
(I'm also a long-time home baker. I've been making my own bread for 30 years now).
I believe the overreach they are referring to is: the law prevents companies from labeling a product as a possible sesame allergen when it may have trace amounts of seed.
I'm supposed to feel bad for A&W because they put an "aged vanilla" label on their cream soda even though it contains none? Companies that engage in the "whole grain" nonsense? Packaging straight out of /r/AssholeDesign? Fuck 'em.
The guy's doing good work as far as I'm concerned.