More junk science. This time from Pediatricians who took time off the golf course recently to declare in the current issue of Pediatrics that hot dogs should be redesigned so they aren’t potentially lethal to small children.
Other risky foods for small children include grapes, popcorn, hard candy, carrots, pears, apples and celery anything that may block the throat. OK parents, stop giving the kids all that stuff and shut up.
In Canada, about 44 children age 14 and under die every year from choking and another 380 are hospitalized, according to SafeKids Canada. A huge and frightening number. But listen up only half those cases on food — and there is no mention of hot dogs.
Do pediatricians spend any time in the office?
How do those stats compare to peanut allergy deaths/hospitalizations?
Seems the stats are unreliable but according to Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, an internal medicine doctor and professor at Harvard Medical School, writing in 2008 in in the British medical journal BMJ ” This Allergies Hysteria is just Nuts”
Dr. Christakis points out that about 3.3 million Americans are allergic to nuts, and even more — 6.9 million — are allergic to seafood. But of 30 million hospitalizations each year, just 2,000 are due to food allergies, and about 150 people die annually from serious allergic food reactions. That’s the same number of people killed by bee stings and lightning strikes combined.No breakout of those affected by peanuts.