Cloudy With a Chance of Food Allergies

My husband took my son to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs yesterday. I’d heard there was a scene in it where someone has an allergic reaction to peanuts. I didn’t tell my son about it – I wanted to see his reaction when he got home. In fact, what I really wanted him to do was write about it for my blog today.

The interesting thing is, he was able to describe the scene to me just fine, but when I asked him what he thought about it, he shrugged. “I don’t have any feelings about it at all. It was just a scene in a movie, Mom.”

“But did you think it was kind of neat to see food allergies show up in a movie, or did they make it too silly?”

“Mom, I told you. It was just a scene. I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cry, I didn’t go Arggg!”

Hmmm. “But do you ever see characters with food allergies in any of the cartoons or movies you see on TV?”

“I wouldn’t say it was normal. They don’t usually say that people have allergies in a movie or show. It was just a scene in a movie; I didn’t think much of it.”

I’ve been reading a few comments online about this scene, and it’s mixed. For the most part, parents of food allergic children are annoyed or downright horrified that 1) the reaction is depicted as comical, 2) the smart allergic heroine carries a Doppler radar thingy but not an EpiPen, and 3) it’s unrealistic, yet still scary for little ones with reactions, and 4) it makes light of the whole thing. On the other hand, there’s that old saw about “any publicity is good publicity,” so some parents are saying it’s good to see that food allergies are common enough that they can be used as a major plot point (I brought this up a while back in a posting about allergies in the movie The Game Plan) or even as a throw-away piece of dialogue (like in an episode of the TV show Reaper). Only a few are saying it’s no big deal either way. I guess my son is one of those.

He’s ten, of course, so maybe older kids are simply able to recognize that it’s silly, unrealistic, and as absurd as the entire rest of the movie, and therefore not to be taken seriously. I would be willing to bet that kids his age are probably better equipped to let things like this roll off their backs than we parents are. We parents take everything seriously when it comes to our children.

So if you’ve seen the movie, what did you think of it? And more importantly, what did your food-allergic child think about it? Did it help, hurt, or was it “just a scene in a movie”?

Food Allergy Snapshots

Sometimes I’m amazed at the places I go and things I do that make me think about life with food allergies. Here are a few snapshots of things that brought food allergies to mind in the last couple of weeks:

• On the Metro in Washington D.C., as well as on TRAX here in Salt Lake, you’re not allowed to eat or drink anything. That’s a blessing for food-allergy sufferers – one less place to worry about getting spilled on or sitting in crumbs.
• At a birthday party, the mom served Italian Ice from a new place in Layton called Zeppo’s – it’s milk-free, egg-free, and nut-free, and quite yummy!
• Another friend called twice to check on ingredients for a birthday cake to make sure the two allergic boys there would be okay at that party. Don’t you love friends who care?
• In the ultra-cheesy movie “The Game Plan” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (not my usual movie fare, but it was late and I was too lazy to find the remote), the big climax is when his newly discovered daughter suffers an anaphylactic reaction to nuts in a dessert that he fed her without remembering that she’d mentioned her nut allergy earlier in the movie.
• At the Utah Arts Festival, a vendor was hawking free samples of those roasted almonds – and my son was nervous about standing at the art booths next to the vendor’s stand because the smell made him worry he might have a reaction. (He didn’t.)
• Southwest Airline’s peanut policy makes me nuts. (Ha.) They hand them out to every passenger without even asking. I had to be quick to tell them not to give us any before they plopped them down on my tray. On a longer flight, they also offered other snacks as an additional treat, but nearly every one had a nut warning.
• Hershey’s Dark Bark recipe makes great chocolate for making S’mores:
  1 (8-oz.) package of Hershey’s Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, broken into pieces (if you can’t find Hershey’s baking chocolate, substitute 3 T Hershey’s cocoa melted and blended with 1 T shortening or oil for every ounce of baking chocolate); 1/4 cup plus 1 tsp. shortening; 1/8 tsp. vanilla extract; 2 cups confectioners sugar.
  Grease 9x9-inch pan. Set aside. In medium bowl, microwave chocolate and shortening on high for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, until mixture is melted and smooth when stirred. Add vanilla extract. Gradually stir in sugar. If mixture becomes too thick, knead with clean hands. Spread out in prepared pan. Cover tightly. Refrigerate until firm. Break into pieces. Store, well covered, in refrigerator.

What are some of the places and events that have made you think of food allergies this week?