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Turns Out, Peanuts and Milk are Racist too

The race-related secret behind allergies no one told you

Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi
3 min readOct 14, 2022
Photo 82558627 © Chaoss | Dreamstime.com

Since I moved to Hong Kong from India five years ago and interacted with a lot more diverse set of people, I suddenly realized what seems to be a plain and simple fact for many others.

Especially, when I became a parent in December of 2018, I figured food allergies were really a thing.

Like, so seriously, that I was supposed to check for adverse reactions every time we fed our son a new type of food.

Is there a rash?

Is there any swelling?

What could he have eaten? Damn — wasn’t I told to only introduce one new food at a time.

Idiot!

Luckily for my wife and me, our son didn’t get any significant food allergies.

Safely navigated the eggs, the nuts, and the berries too! Phew!

All of this when I’d hear one colleague talk about his kids’ nut allergies and how even if he ate a bar of nutty chocolate or cake and went near his daughter, she’d have a swollen face.

And then there was this other friend whose daughter couldn’t afford to eat any gluten or consume any dairy as she was very intolerant of those two things.

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Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi
Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi

Written by Pranshu "Maverick" Dwivedi

Stay-at-home-dad who "retired" from a 12-year career in finance at the age of 35. Curious thinker with an opinion on nearly everything and is here to share it.

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