Northwestern To Host First Peanut Free Game This Saturday, As In No Peanuts Allowed In The Stadium.

(Source) When the Northwestern Wildcats face off against the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Ryan Field in Evanston on Saturday, something will be missing: peanuts. Northwestern University is hosting its first peanut-free football game to give fans with allergies a chance to focus on the game instead of worrying about negative reactions to the popular stadium snack, which can range from mild irritation to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. That’s a big draw for Joyce Mason’s family, Northwestern fans from Gurnee. Mason’s daughter Julie, 13, has a potentially life-threatening peanut allergy. Safeguards such as wiping down the seats and traveling with two EpiPens to counter severe reactions aren’t always enough.

At a Cubs game a few years ago, Julie broke out in hives and began wheezing despite taking all of those precautions, Mason said, so now they attend only peanut-free games. Peanut allergies affect about five of every 1,000 Americans and are on the rise, said Raoul Wolf, chief of the pediatric allergy and immunology section at University of Chicago Medicine. Though closed environments like airplanes pose a greater danger, stadiums can be “a huge risk,” Wolf said. “If you can smell the peanuts, there’s enough protein in the air to cause a bad reaction. For the most sensitive patients, it’s not a risk worth taking.”

 ..

..

What the fuck? Like I know this story is real, I got it from the Trib, but even knowing that I still feel like I’m being duped by the Onion. This can’t be real life can it? “Give fans a chance to focus on the game instead of worrying about negative reactions to popular stadium snack”. Really? That’s honestly what Northwestern is saying? And I’m not trying to trivialize peanut allergies, I understand people can die from it, but are we really are going to just start banning Peanuts because a few people are allergic? That’s the worst trend I’ve ever heard. If you are allergic to something you can basically hold 50,000 people hostage. That’s unreal. I’m just going to sit here and wait until someone tells me this was a huge satire piece on the direction America is headed because that’s the only way I’m believing this. And if that doesn’t happen, well then I might just have to go to Evanston covered in Peanut Butter to fight for my rights as a non-allergic normal person.