Tootsall

I will now (swear to God it's true...I can scan it in to prove what I say) read from the label of a bottle of peanut butter in our kitchen: (house brand for a grocery chain).

"! CAUTION...ATTENTION. ALLERGY WARNING. CONTAINS PEANUTS"

To what depths has the educational system of our society stooped when citizens can't figure out that peanut butter might actually contain PEANUTS!

Any of you other oldsters remember the old comedy routine "What it was was football" (AKA "It's In The Book")?

Solar Bell

It was....


Andy Griffith

Well have a "Big Orange"...

I still tell my kids that when they complain.

-cw-

__________________
Chuck Willard
The Willard of Oz

"Don't be afraid to see what you see."
Ronald Reagan

Tootsall

LOL... right you are, Chuck. And it showed up on an LP (round, black, plastic... had grooves that filled with dust) titled "Cavalcade of Comedy". And I think I have a copy of that around here somewhere.

(So this whoooole raft of people gets up and THEY begins to holler)

Solar Bell

And then two CONVICTS come out and they commence to odd man right there, they did.

-cw-

__________________
Chuck Willard
The Willard of Oz

"Don't be afraid to see what you see."
Ronald Reagan

Tootsall

OK, that does it. I'm going out to the garage to see if I can find it right now!


Edit: YAHOOO! There it was in the first box (right behind Glenn Campbell and Nana Mouskouri and Godspell and a bunch of other stuff I'd forgotten I even had!)

Playlist:

What It Was, Was Football (Andy Griffith)
John and Martha (Stan Freberg)
The Bees and the Birds (Yogi Yorgesson)
It's In the Book (John Standley)
St. George and the Dragonet (Stan Freberg)
Yokohama Mama (Harry Kari)
Romeo and Juliet (Andy Griffith)
The Object of My Affection (Yogi Yorgesson)
Little Blue Riding Hood (Stan Freberg)

robertwhite

Don't mean to burst your bubble here, Toots, but it has nothing to do with societal stupidity. The grocery chain your talking about probably adopted allergy warning labels for legal reasons (anaphylactic shock is deadly, after all), and have thus labeled all items containing peanuts, just as most major food manufacturers have done (Nestle, Kraft, etc.).

This would include some items your average consumer might not have thought of - like some kinds of processed snack foods, cereals, and asian foods for example - as well as the oh-so-obvious peanut butter. The question of course is why would they NOT label peanut butter if they're labeling everything else? A company has to make sure their butt is covered.

So again, sorry to spoil your fun, but the world isn't really going to hell in a handbasket because of political correctness.

Tootsall

I gotta disagree with you on this one. If someone who might suffer from anaphylactic shock (I have a daughter who carries an epipen due to avery recently-discovered allergy to shellfish...no shrimp cocktail for Christmas this year...) is so dense as to not recognize that peanut butter contains peanuts, then they deserve a place on the Darwin Awards list.

Liability lawsuits have gotten to the point where they are absolutely ludicrous all on the basis of "what a reasonable person might expect". Unfortunately the bar of expectations for intelligence has been lowered to the point where even our (debatable) simian ancestors might be considered "reasonable"!

You aren't ruining my "fun" at all... I've come to the conclusion that we're just about at "the lowest common denominator" and every time I flick on the TV (more rarely all the time) I am reminded of this.


Oh... and don't tell me that the warning is there because perhaps they can't read the label to know that it is PEANUT BUTTER.... cause then they can't read the warning neither..... (How about a peanut in a red circle with a red diagonal slash through it?...perhaps with the skull-and-crossbones in the background)

A year and half ago our twins went on a school band trip... bus to Victoria BC for Easter. Mrs. and I drove our car along to visit the in-laws "sans kids" and attend one of their concerts. Anyway... one of the kids in the band has peanut allergy and carries a pen too. On the ferry ride over to the island (about an hour-and-a-bit trip) she decides she wants a chocolate bar.. WITH PEANUTS! And she ate it. And ended up in a private cabin with the ship's medic attending and the crew wondering if they were going to have to turn the boat (along with the thousand-or-so passengers, cars, trucks, buses etc) around and go back to Vancouver!...... Yeah... she knew she was allergic and she knew there were peanuts in the chocolate bar....and ate it anyway.

She survived.....but is no longer in the band.

A.N.A. Mendez

"And you can even get stucko, boy can you get stucko" Groucho Marx

__________________
(Above) Alexanders ragtime band-circa 1960

"Baby, I'm already the coolest, and the hippist, now you want me to be on time too?" Buddy Love

"We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and our best generals to edit our newspapers." Robert E. Lee

trumpetmike

I saw a similar sign, on a bag of peanuts:

"Warning: this product may contain nuts"

"may" contain nuts - it had better contain nuts - otherwise it could just be an empty bag


I would prefer that products are labelled clearly, rather than risk the consquences.

robertwhite

Well, if it makes you feel better to look at the world this way so be it. You're still wrong though.

The Food Allergy Labeling Consumer Protection Act, which passed in 2004, requires that labels be clear enough that a 7 year old can comprehend them. While it's silly and redundant to label peanut butter as "may contain peanuts", the label isn't tailored specifically to peanut butter. It's an all-purpose label put on many, many products. The resulting redundancy is funny, but it's not a symbol of national decline. In fact, there's been a noticeable decline in peanut allergy related deaths and hospitalizations even in the one year since it was enacted. I think we'd both agree that's good, right?

The peanut allergy warning labels came about after many (not a few, but hundreds) of product lawsuits where peanuts were NOT clearly listed in the ingredients of certain snacks, candies, etc. resulting in hospitalizations and in some cases deaths.

Sorry to hear about your daughter's shellfish allergy. Be sure your allergist provides you with an updated list of products to avoid, as some processed foods contain products which are NOT identified as shellfish, but are. Also, avoid fried foods in restaraunts where they serve fried shrimp. Sometimes they use the same oil for chicken and french fries.

Merry Christmas!
Bob