The Straight Dope 06/13/2003

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The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 06/13/2003

Dear Cecil:

Forty years later, I dimly remember a bologna contingent.
There was also a tuna fish faction, and the chicken-
noodle-soup-in-an-Underdog-thermos brigade. A fringe
weirdo or two might've favored liverwurst. But the
plurality, if not majority, of the brown baggers in
my grade school lunchroom were staunch peanut butter
and jelly devotees. I ate a PB & J sandwich every
single day of grade school. I never got sick of them,
and so far as I can recall, nobody got sick from them,
either. Today, however, peanut allergies are so
widespread in schools--or at least so feared--that
many lunchrooms and preschools ban peanut butter
altogether, while others enforce a separate seating
area for the PB & J coterie. (Children excluded from
this group sometimes suffer from peanuts envy, also
known as Peter Pan syndrome.) I do not belittle
anyone's allergic woes, but I do wonder why such a
perennially popular and heretofore benign comfort
food has so suddenly mutated into typhoid goober.
--David English, Somerville, Massachusetts

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Cecil replies:

You got me, bubba. Peanut allergies have been around
forever, but peanut phobia blew up out of nowhere.
Ninety-four percent of the journal articles I turned
up by searching on "peanut" and "allergy" in an
on-line medical database (165 out of 176) were
published since January 1995. Now a week doesn't go
by without some new sign that peanut butter is to
the 21st century what fleas and rats were to the
14th. Recent bulletins: 

A nanny in the UK was tried for child abuse last
year after feeding a peanut butter sandwich to a 
toddler. The boy struggled for breath, lost 
consciousness, and was taken to a hospital. A 
witness testified that the nanny was told the 
child was allergic to peanuts, but that she'd
said, "This way we will find out for sure and see
if his mother is just neurotic." (She was found
not guilty.)

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030613.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

Not knowing much about anything, I was surprised to
find that there is an underlying logic to the Jewish
dietary laws (cloven hoofs + eating grass + chewing
cud + bled dry = safe to eat). What I want to know
is, given that Muslims agree on bleeding the meat,
is there any more common ground in terms of dietary
principle between these two religions? And if so
why? --A. Gow

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

First, let's be clear that this report will be a 
brief summary. The details of Jewish dietary laws
are extremely complicated, and would (and do) take
up volumes. While the laws of Islam are simpler,
there are minor complications that would again
make for a very lengthy report. We will therefore
content ourselves with the famous 30,000-foot
overview. Readers should be aware that every 
sentence in the table below should have a footnote,
probably a page of footnotes, describing exceptions
and implications and what-if scenarios. 

Second, to be fair, we should add a column for 
Christianity, but mainstream Christianity has no 
dietary laws to speak of. There was a time when
meat was forbidden to Catholics on Fridays, and
many Christians refrain from meat during Lent, but
these are more in the nature of "special occasion"
meals, rather than everyday dietary rules.

We also want to say that both Islam and Judaism permit
violations of the dietary laws if necessary for
survival. So, a Muslim or Jew who is stranded on a 
desert island with nothing but ham sandwiches is 
permitted to eat them to save her/his life.

Let's start with the history and origin of the laws
in both religions, briefly. . .

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mjewishislamdiet.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 10/20/1978

Dear Cecil: 

Can man live by bread alone? If so, how long? 
--Irving Butternut, Los Angeles 

Cecil replies:

Long enough to wish it were shorter, Irv. What we are 
about to discuss here is the massive breakdown of the
human body. It will be a slow death and a messy one,
but before we proceed let me say that science hopes
you will step forward. Not until some selfless 
volunteer such as yourself eats bread and dies will 
your question receive the precise answer it deserves.

First the good news. You may assume that you would die
of thirst. That's not necessarily true--if you take
certain precautions. Bread is about 35 percent water, 
but most breads also contain so much salt that a 
greater amount of water than is contained in a loaf is 
needed to rinse that loaf's sodium out of your body.
If you were to try to live on ordinary bread, you would
become hypernatremic (too much sodium in the blood--
for a fine word like that you should pay me), you would
vanish into a coma and in about ten days you would 
vanish forever out of it.
  
For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_209.html
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