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Comment by sclarisse | Hacker News Reader

We started with a regime where “free from sesame” products existed, sesame products are allowed, and other products are allowed that may contain trace amounts of sesame.

We are now in a regime where the same “free from sesame” products exist, and all other products must contain sesame.

It’s not clear that this has increased or will increase the number of products free from sesame. It is clear that it has increased the number of products with sesame and the amount of sesame. It sounds like we would prefer a regime where fewer products have sesame.

Assign whatever merit or import you want to the issue of sesame in food, but it is not at all clear that this new regime is actually better for anyone.

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A young relative has a sesame allergy with a pretty bad reaction. Trip to the ER type deal. We were super pumped that the new labeling standards were coming out - way easier than reading all of the ingredients. Woohoo, right?!

Now there is exactly one brand of bread at the store without sesame. Kings Hawaiian, if you're curious. Every. Other. Brand. now includes sesame.

It's like that with so many things now. Hot dog buns. Cereal. Super frustrating if the store is out of the one brand without sesame. Guess nobody makes sammiches this week.

I totally get the companies trying to find the cheapest way to comply. But for people trying to feed allergic folks it really sucks. Hopefully enough people buy the sesame-free products to make it worth the effort for the companies actually doing the work on this one.

> bread ... hot dog buns ... cereal

Without regard to this particular policy, those are all foods that your young relative is better off avoiding along with sesame seeds. I have been forced to avoid them for many years now due to different health issues, and it turned out to be a blessing that was hard to appreciate at the beginning.

This is such a vague comment to be useless for GP.

Do you have some issue with carbs? High calorie foods? Something against processed foods? Gluten? Plastic sensitivity? Why was it a blessing? What made you start appreciating it? etc. etc.

Diabetes 2, morbid obesity, gastroparesis, i.e. usual effects of Metabolic Syndrome. These have become shockingly common in children in recent years. Several years ago the gastroparesis got very bad and I was forced onto a low residue, low carb diet. The result was a 90% resolution of the gastroparesis, a 75% resolution of the obesity and complete remission of the diabetes. And a much higher quality of life.

I wish I had started younger, but nothing short of that kind of compulsion would have made me. Few kids need to go to such extremes, but most would benefit from the absence of flours.

I'd bame the massive amounts of HFCS that every food is pumped in the US instead of "flours" first

Now that I think of it I wonder how much of 'gluten issues' is actually due to all those foods having excess sugar added to it

It's really a peculiar take to blame "flours" for all these modern childhood ailments, given that the poor largely subsisted on flour-based products (bread, pasta, etc.) for centuries prior to modern times.

https://chriskresser.com/10-ways-refined-flour-can-damage-yo...

IMO flours have been damaging people in many of these ways for centuries. Since the agricultural revolution. That damage came along with a nice perk -- not starving. But if now we're affluent enough to not starve without it, that's a good thing.

I know that it sucks this would be necessary, but I recommend taking up the habit of baking your own bread. It's really very easy and takes very little active time (the time it takes consists of just waiting, not doing stuff).

And even a substandard load of homemade bread is much nicer and tastier than store-bought.

I disagree. I have been making homemade bread almost weekly for over 10 years now and making good homemade bread is not easy and the cleanup alone adds a ton of active time that needs to be addressed quickly lest you end up with cement-like dough crusted on things.

It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say, "this is too much work, I need store bought bread."

I wasn't talking about good homemade bread. I was talking about decent homemade bread -- which is still better than store-bought. Yes, if you want to rise (no pun intended) to the level of truly good bread, that's more involved. Or truly great bread -- my best bread is a process that takes two days and a fair amount of active work.

I disagree about cleanup being a big deal, though. You do have to do it immediately, but there's not a lot of it to be done. When I make bread, I need to clean a bowl, the bread pan (or dutch oven, if I'm making sourdough), the large cutting board I work the dough on, and a couple of utensils. That's not a big deal.

> It is perfectly reasonable for someone to say, "this is too much work, I need store bought bread."

Indeed it is! But I was giving a possible alternative to someone who struggles to find store-bought bread they can safely eat. I was not saying "everyone must make their own bread".

(I'm also a long-time home baker. I've been making my own bread for 30 years now).

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