Korean Job Discussion Forums

[BoholDiver]

Unless a lot of people are lying, I have yet to meet a Korean with a deadly peanut allergy.

I was talking to my adult students about this a while back, and when they asked me why, I didn't have an answer.

I guessed that it was because Koreans eat less peanuts than western people on average, and there are some hypotheses about pregnant women eating peanuts, raising chances of contracting an allergy.

Koreans eat just as badly as westerners, worse sometimes. Lots of instant crap, MSG, sodium-laden food, etc. I doubt that's the answer.

[Xuanzang]

They use them in their mu chim dishes though.

[BoholDiver]

I'd still say they eat less nuts on average than westerners do. Except maybe chestnuts.

[peppermint]

I asked about that a few years ago, when taking a small group of students out for ice cream, and the Korean teachers didn't believe such a thing existed. They knew about lactose intolerance, but they hadn't heard about other food allergies at all.

I read a study years ago, that suggested the food allergy wave in the west was related to people keeping their homes too sterile and using too many chemicals to do so, as a result lots of kids immune systems overreact to stuff like peanut. I wonder if that means that these allergies will become common in 15-20 years in Korea?

[Xuanzang]

[Hindsight]

Peppermint is correct. The theory applies to the first six months or so, not to school age.

In the West, babies are typically born in sterile hospitals, and return home after a few days to a spotless crib, room, and drink sterilized formula, etc.

In less developed countries, babies are immediately inundated with germs. So their immune system goes into action to protect them from real threats.

In the West, babies' immune systems train their idle resources to react to allergy threat, like hay fever.

Watch in the spring, and you will see some Korean kids with hay fever, though they may not know what it is. So Korea is moving in this direction.

However, whether this theory applies to IgE allergies, which can cause a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction, is another matter. The peanut allergy you are referring to is an IgE allergy. Hay fever is not.

Some food allergies are IgG allergies -- such as to milk, eggs, soy and wheat -- and are not life threatening. These may be tied to this sterile environment issue to some extent.

[schwa]

The whole anaphylactic shock & death syndrome seems to have been born since I was. My deep sympathies to victims & their families but wtf?
Something in the modern western industrial food chain is evidently predisposing a small but significant number of kids to succumb.

[tzechuk]

Actually, Koreans do know about nut allergies.

Both the nursery and the kindie my daughter attended and attends now have asked about nut and other food allergies when we applied. Her kindie now sends a form every term asking if she's developed any food allergies in the past 3 months.

I was a little surprised that they asked, to be honest, because I didn't think they knew or cared, but apparently the government does, cos it's a gvt issued mandatory form.

[i]

I brought it up in a class once thinking the students wouldn't know what I was talking about, but one kid knew someone who was allergic to nuts. Thought she was wrong but she persisted that the person (a Korean student) could die if exposed to nuts.

[Hyeon Een]

What I find interesting is the allergies that Koreans DO have. The two most common allergies are ones I'd never heard of in the West. They are: peach and cucumber.

I think there's definitely something wrong in the West with the growth of reports of allergies over the last couple of decades. Even worse is the nonsense about being 'intolerant' to wheat etc..

[Rusty Shackleford]

I was allergic to peanuts as a kid. I still have a reaction when I eat them, but far less serious. Growing up, I was the only person in my age group (I'm 24 now) who had an allergy to peanuts. I literally never met another person who was allergic to peanuts. People thought I was weird and couldn't get their heads around the idea.

Now, it is far more common. Two of my parents friends have kids with peanut allergies and it is a big deal at schools now. With schools even going as far as banning nuts. Having said this, I think the actual deaths per year attributed to anylphalactic shock is infinitesimally small. Smaller than deaths by freak toilet accidents or scissors for instance.

[Rusty Shackleford]

[Gillian57]

[Rusty Shackleford]

[Goon-Yang]