This morning while I was casing the freezer, trying to decide what to defrost for supper tonight, I caught myself reading the nutritional information and other stuff printed on the back of a box of Blue Bunny Fudge Lights. The first thing I had never noticed on a food package before was a listing of "Possible allergens", in this case milk. Do we now have to label every food product for all possible allergens? Will everything that has milk in it have to bear a warning label? I don't remember ever seeing this before, except for things that contained, or MIGHT contain, nuts.
OK, so I can maybe go along with labelling potential allergens, though I think it will rapidly spin out of control since there is probably NO ingredient in ANYTHING that SOMEONE out there isn't allergic to. Won't this end up being just a rehash of the ingredients listings?
But further down on the box I found ANOTHER warning:
Notice: This product, when extremely cold, may stick to warm lips or tongue. Allow to warm slightly before eating.
This made me sigh loudly and rest my head against the refrigerator. What have we come to as a society when we have to warn people that ice cream is cold?
I guess some allergens are more common or potentially damaging than others. I was looking at the Q&A page for our parish's soon-to-open school and one question was whether the school would be peanut-free. (No commitment was made by whomever answered the questions.)
This reminds me of the warning label on the Superman costume: "Cape does not enable children to fly."
Yeah you have to wonder what kind of stupid people out there did the things to enable certain warning labels on things!!
As for the milk, my friends daughter is allergic & breaks out in a bad rash if she even has a tiny bite of something with it. She had half a cheese it the other day in a church childcare setting and that was all it took.
My late grandmother used to make us wait to eat ice cream until it was almost completely melted -- she feared it would "freeze the esophagus" if eaten too cold. (She was a martyr to her esophagus.)
What.....no little BRAIN FREEZE WARNING pictogram?
got to love our litigical society. each one of those warnings came from a lawsuit - -- some for the better - peanut alergies can be deadly. others from the stupid and selfish. I can't stand paying extra for a product because some idiot didn't realize that frozen foods were cold and could "stick to warm lips" and won money from the deep pocket corporation who had the gall to freeze a treat for the rest of us to enjoy. I wonder how much lips with a little skin removed from the frozen treat is worth? $1,000, $10,000 - hopefully not $100,000 or more.