Science Is My Scaffolding: Why I Won’t Share That Robyn O’Brien Post

Jenny Splitter | May 6, 2016 | Grounded Parents

Recently a blog post entitled Food Allergies: Don’t Tear Down the Scaffolding caught my eye. Widely shared in online food allergy circles, the post made an impassioned plea for treating food allergy parents with kindness. I wanted to share it too but the post was published at Robyn O’Brien’s website. I’m a food allergy mom, but I won’t share that post or anything else from Robyn O’Brien, and I’ll tell you why.

O’Brien is the author of the book The Unhealthy Truth and a longtime food allergy advocate. As the food allergy community continues to expand, O’Brien has reached a kind of elder statesman status, even though she has a long and dangerous history of spreading misinformation, fear and pseudoscience.

The essential thrust of her book and her organization Allergy Kids is the argument that our worrisome food allergy epidemic has been caused by that most dreaded thing of all — “toxins.” Not unlike the Food Babe, O’Brien uses “toxins” as a catchall for everything she wants parents to fear — chemicals, pesticides, GMOs, vaccines, sugar…even processed food. O’Brien has perpetuated so many myths about food allergies that it’s hard to know where to begin. Recently, in a piece about what causes peanut allergies, she offers “some will talk about peanut oil used in vaccines.” That dangerous little aside lends legitimacy to an argument that has zero basis in fact. Peanut oil isn’t used in vaccines......To Read More.....