With the recent panic about the salmonella poisonings resulting from tainted peanut butter, The Star Press (Central Indiana) ran a story about moms who struggle with deciding whether or not to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their children — once a household staple for meals and snacks.
Who better to quell this fear than a sociologist?
It’s reasonable for parents to react strongly to the initial news of the recalls, said Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, but unnecessarily avoiding peanut butter in the long run could teach children to be afraid of food.
Many more children will die from being hit by lightning than tainted peanut butter, said Glassner, author of The Gospel of Food: Everything You Think You Know About Food is Wrong.
“Are you going to prohibit your child from going outside every time it rains?” he asked. “If you’re rational, what you’ll do is, if there’s lightning outside, you’ll keep them in, and when that’s done, you let them go out safely and go to school in the rain. I think this is the same thing. It’s very reasonable to take peanut butter off the menu until we knew what was going on, but then it’s not anymore.”
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