Excerpted from the Summer 2006/2007 issue of Allergy Today. For more articles like this, subscribe to Allergy Today, click here.


Like many other countries, New Zealand doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to bullying. And worryingly, some food allergic children and teens have been targeted by bullies and threatened with the food they are allergic to. Inga Stünzner looks more closely at bullying and suggests some strategies to help deal with this situation.

the new schoolyard weapon: food

When six-year-old Nathan sat down for lunch earlier this year, the last thing he expected was that one of his classmates would smear peanut butter all over his arm. For most kids, this would have just meant having to deal with an unpleasant sticky mess. For Nathan, it triggered an anaphylactic reaction.

“I went to pick up Nathan and he was crying and coughing,” his mother Elizabeth recalls. “I took him straight up to the sick bay, and in that short time he lost his voice. When Nathan said a boy had rubbed peanut butter on him, the nurse there said it was highly unlikely and that he was just ‘having a turn’. I dosed him with antihistamine and Ventolin and took him to the Accident and Emergency Clinic.

“By the time we got there, he had improved slightly, so we were eventually allowed to leave.”

Thankfully Nathan survived, although he was sick for the next four days.

Like other Western countries, New Zealand shows high levels of physical and emotional bullying in schools. It is likely that at least half and maybe as many as three quarters of children are bullied at some time in their school years, and that 10 per cent are bullied weekly.

Research has shown that those who have been bullied severely tend to suffer long-term negative consequences. The emotional impact on victims of bullying may leave them feeling afraid, alienated, angry, ashamed and disempowered.

Some young people are bullied for no particular reason, but usually it’s because they are seen as different in some way, maybe because of the colour of their skin, the size of their name, or because a food allergy. This does not mean that the child deserves to be bullied, but suggests that if a child is perceived as less powerful in some way they may become a target for someone who wants to dominate others.

Situations involving young people with a severe food allergy are different from ‘normal’ bullying in a number of important ways.

“Unlike a knife or other common weapon, the danger inherent in the allergenic substance is unlikely to be fully comprehended by the bully, who knows it strikes fear into the victim’s heart, but does not really grasp that this ‘weapon’ could, in fact, kill,” writes Deena Mandell, in a paper for the Allergy/Asthma Information Association in Canada.

The crucial difference is that other weapons are dangerous to everyone and we all fear them, including the bully.

“The concern is that it could conceivably be much easier for the bully to actually follow through with his/her threats when the consequences are not understood, the dangerous substance is not frightening to look at and inflicts no visible damage, nor is it even forbidden to carry in the schoolyard.”