Living with any kind of food allergy is a struggle, but when you're allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, or peanut butter, you have to be especially careful about what you eat because they are in so many kinds of foods and candies.
This makes trick-or-treating on Halloween less fun for kids with peanut allergies, because we have to be extremely cautious about which candies we can or cannot eat at the end of the night, while everyone else can eat whatever they want without worrying about having a reaction.
Yeah, I was that kid on Halloween who had to read food labels, ask people if they had candy without nuts in it, and had to give half my candy away to my parents after trick-or-treating. If any of you with peanut allergies can relate to that, you might relate to these 5 things, too:
1. Sorting through all your candy and realizing half of it has nuts in it
All that wasted time walking around my neighborhood trick-or-treating, and for WHAT? A hundred Reese's, Snickers, and Butterfingers that I can't even eat?
Y'all worried about finding razor-blades in your candy, meanwhile I'm out here checking mine for a damn peanut.
2. Giving away all of said candy to your family
Me watching my parents eat all my Reese's that I probably would have otherwise thrown in the trash.
3. Ignoring the allergy warnings on food labels that say "May contain peanuts"
So like, does it or does it not contain peanuts? I usually just assume it will be fine and eat my Twix bar anyway.
4. Choosing a candy from a bowl that you don't like over one with nuts in it
Every Halloween, there's always at least one house that leaves a bowl of candy out on their front step so you get to pick which one you want, but when the only options are Snickers, Reese's, and jawbreakers, I'm gonna go with the jawbreaker.
5. Being paranoid that someone who just ate candy with peanuts touched your candy before washing their hands
Call me crazy, but this is a genuine fear I have, and not just on Halloween. Sometimes people forget that cross-contamination can cause allergic reactions, too!
