The truth about peanut allergies
By Dr WC Douglas
Editor of the Daily Dose

Only about one percent of the population suffers from nut allergies, yet it seems that more and more, peanuts are being treated as though they're as dangerous as asbestos.

Finally, a professor from Harvard University has had the nerve to point out that the nut allergy hysteria is out of control. In his commentary, published in a recent issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal, Dr. Nicholas Christakis writes that the anxiety over nut allergies is totally overblown.

Christakis was prompted to research the mania over nut allergies after hearing that a school bus in his son's Massachusetts school district was evacuated because - get this - a single peanut was found on the floor.

It sounds absurd, but it's true. Other over-the-top nut allergy incidents include a nurse in a San Francisco elementary school who actually monitored all the children in the school to be sure that each had thoroughly washed their hands when they arrived in the morning - and then conducted complete searches of ALL their lunches. Why? So she could find and confiscate ANY peanut products in order to "protect" a SINGLE child in the school with a nut allergy.

I know that nut allergies can potentially be fatal, but they account for just about 150 deaths each year, in the US alone - which makes dying from a nut allergy only slightly more likely than being struck and killed by lightning.

With numbers like that, it's hard to take the "dangers" of nut allergies too seriously, and easy to see that the panic over these allergies is completely out of proportion to the actual danger.

But in spite of the facts, the out-of-whack perceptions about the danger of nut allergies persist. Not long ago, a Connecticut town ordered that three hickory trees be cut down because they leaned over the yard of a local resident who claimed that the trees' nuts were a direct threat to her grandson.

Wood, who has himself suffered from nut allergies his whole life (and managed to survive a childhood during a time of significantly less mollycoddling) believes it's "an unfortunate situation" that some families are making their allergic children "believe that a peanut from 3 metres away is a lethal weapon."

There are, however, some other very serious reactions between certain medications and foods that most people don't make a big fuss over. And yet  they cause millions of deaths annually. Click here to find out more...

Are the olives that you're buying in your local supermarket lacking in the essential ingredient that makes them good for you?
Dr Wright
Editor of Nutrition and Healing

Q: I've heard a lot about how good extra virgin olive oil is for your health - but what about olives themselves? Where I live, "olive bars" have become very popular, and I admit to being more than a little addicted myself. Do I need to feel guilty or cut back?

Dr. Wright: As they say, the fruit doesn't fall too far from the tree. In the case of olives, everything that comes from this fruit appears to be healthy - the oil, the leaves, and the fruit itself. They are low in calories, contain "good" fat, and have no cholesterol, to name just a few of the benefits that stand out.

But while all olives may be created equal, all olive preparation is not. Olives are not edible straight off the tree. They contain a glucoside called oleuropein that makes them bitter – but manufacturers remove it during processing. And there is a big difference between the traditionally fermented olives and those that are commercially processed.

In order to make foods "shelf stable" manufacturers practise some combination of high-heat pasteurisation and refrigeration in almost all mass-produced foods, including the olives on your average supermarket shelf. Some experts have hypothesised that excessive pasteurisation might cause imbalances in intestinal flora since it eliminates the beneficial lactobacteria produced by traditional fermentation practices. The olives in the olive bars you refer to (a new trend in supermarkets and natural food stores) are more likely to have traditionally fermented fruits and, as such, would be the healthier variety to satiate your "olive tooth."