Some say that there is an "epidemic" of peanut allergy – is there?

Now that this world has virtually ignored a report on climate change published by UN scientists earlier this month, which predicts an environmental crisis as early as 2040, we can now look again at how to prepare a good meal at l & # 39; school.

Parents are warned of an "epidemic" of allergy to peanut. Or "almost epidemic", to be precise.

"It's really an epidemic," the director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, Scott Sicherer, told CNBC's "On the Money" show on Sunday.

A Jaffe Institute study found that between 1997 and 2008, peanut allergies had more than tripled, from one in 250 children to one in 70.

"It's impossible to deny an increase, even with anecdotal reports of school nurses," said Sicherer, adding that "about two (children) per class have food allergies." This is not just our imagination."

In the world of Sicherer, the food dangers far worse than the mayonnaise left in the sun threaten allergic people.

"When you live with a food allergy, it's like you're living in a landmine situation," he told CNBC. "Every meal, every snack, every holiday, every social activity – is this food that can hurt me going to be there?"

Nobody argues that peanut allergies are not serious, but deaths are extremely rare. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 13 deaths (including six adults) between 1996 and 2006.

According to more recent information, a few hundred people die every year in the United States of food allergies, including about 50 to 60% of anaphylactic shock related to the ingestion of peanuts. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

"The problem is that the concern over nuts is far too disproportionate to the risk," said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, an internal medicine specialist who studies medical sociology at Harvard University. Medical School, in 2009.

Christakis told the BBC that fear of peanuts led to a situation resembling a "mass psychogenic illness" – formerly known as epidemic hysteria.

The United States has a peanut allergy rate of between 1% and 2% and 10% of the population. This is much more than in France (between 0.3% and 0.75%), Denmark (0.2 to 0.4%) and Israel (0.4%). Self-declaration may partly explain the gap between the United States and other countries.

In a 2003 study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 30 children with a significant peanut allergy were exposed to peanut butter, which was pressed onto the skin for a minute or the aroma was inhaled. None of the children had a serious reaction, although about one-third had redness or rash.

Giving the alarm to the danger of food allergies can be profitable for people who sound the alarm – for example, a pharmaceutical company that markets a new food allergy suppressant.

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It should be noted that Sicher's book "Food Allergies: A Complete Guide to Eating When Life Depends" (Second Edition / Johns Hopkins Press) is currently for sale on Amazon.

In recent years, doctors have recommended that parents feed infants at high risk of developing an allergy containing peanuts as early as four to six months of age. A 2015 study from Kings College, London, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that peanut consumption during childhood prevents the subsequent development of allergy.