You can find an in depth article on Time’s website covering lots of the current concerns regarding allergies. Food allergies, that is, and as the article says, these are the ones that are getting the attention these days, “So forget pet dander and pollen. “In this day and age, allergy in pediatrics is all about food, food, food,” says Dr. Allen Lapey, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Each year, 30,000 people in the U.S. are rushed to the emergency room suffering from an allergic reaction to food.” But the acutal number of deaths from food allergies, is relatively small, about 15 – 20 a year in the U.S. More people die from beestings.

Here are some of the topics and partial comments touched on in this piece. Many of these are in constant debate in the allergy world:

• Why is the prevalence of food allergies rising at such alarming rates?
Part of the fault may lie in modern medical practices: with antibiotics and immunizations to protect against micro-organisms and parasites, children’s immune systems may be getting weaker and even bored, with little or nothing to fight…Sanitation can’t demystify the entire trend, but the so-called hygiene hypothesis remains the leading answer to baffled parents’ questions.

• Diagnosing, forecasting prognosis and testing:
Because allergic reactions to food can vary, even within the same person, allergists often shrug when it comes to advising parents about forecasting anything about their child’s next reaction. “We really have no test that can tell us who is apt to have a severe, life-threatening reaction and who is more like the vast majority who will never have that kind of reaction,” says Dr. Hugh Sampson, director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Even the act of diagnosing allergies has become a source of confusion… But some positive tests may be false alarms that lead families to spend a lot of energy avoiding common foods that their kids can actually tolerate.

Advice from allergists and other doctors ( I have my own experience similar to this, i.e. no help):
Too often parents of newly diagnosed children aren’t given enough information about when and even how to inject the lifesaving epinephrine. “Our allergist said, ‘Here you go. Here’s a prescription and see you in a year,’” says Dena Friedel, an Ohio mom whose daughter was diagnosed with a peanut allergy when she was 2.

Not enough information is given and when it is, it is often conflicting.The article also covers a slew of other topics including  misleading information from the media, the benefits and down  sides of peanut free zones in school, labeling and the confusion that comes with it and cross contamination, new testing with peanut flour to cure allergies, and some informative statistics.

Take a look if you have some time. I am interested to see what kind of reactions it begets.