I’ve been allergic to peanuts and tree nuts my entire life. When I was a kid, it was relatively simple to stay out of trouble. I would ask if a food I wanted to eat contained nuts, get a "yes" or "no" and base my decision on that information. Through trial and error, I learned about cross contamination and to this day avoid any food that is the same shape and size as another extruded food that contains nuts and is from the same manufacturer. Similarly, if I want a bagel or bread in a shop that makes the bagels and bread on the premises, I ask if the nut products are made at the start or the end of the process.

I take my nut allergy very, very seriously because people die from anaphylactic reactions every year. It’s horrible and, because it's preventable, it's especially upsetting to those of us with extreme nut sensitivity. Because of this, good information is essential. Unfortunately, it's increasingly difficult to come by.

Today, the conventional wisdom seems to be to keep nut-allergic people safe. That's nice but it translates into people preparing or serving food feeling entitled to let me know it's really not safe for me to eat what they have because—you never know. Upon further questioning, I invariably learn that they have been advised by their lawyers to give this reply as a way to to cover themselves from potential liability. It’s maddening.

I don’t need to be kept safe if the true purpose of keeping me safe is to reduce the liability of the business preparing the food. It does me no good to go to Georgetown Cupcake and find a beautifully crafted note in a very nice font, urging me to err on the side of caution and refrain from eating their cupcakes. Neither does it do me any good to go to Balducci’s and find nut warnings on every surface from the dessert area—where there might be good cause for a nut warning, to the butcher counter where they cut steaks.

It's maddening because it limits what I can do because it is "safer" for me. In actuality it is "safer" for them. It's not such a big deal when I’m at home and know where I can go to get what I need. When I travel, it’s a nightmare. I can’t carry food for two weeks. And I shouldn’t have to.

Since it's virtually impossible to get a straight answer about ingredients or process, I propose a simple solution: If a food establishment has such poor control over the ingredients in their kitchen that they can’t tell if something contains nuts, they should be shut down. There’s no way they can be that lax and still be clean enough to meet the needs of the rest of the public. If a food provider isn’t sure of the ingredients in the foods they sell, they should be shut down. It’s not like I’m asking them to tell me how to do an oil change and gap the spark plugs on my car. They should be able to tell a customer what is in the food they sell.

An alternative would be to use the same burden of proof in a nut-related law suit as is used in medical malpractice suits. If a food provider or manufacturer is following industry procedures, shouldn’t that be enough to indemnify them? Expecting them to be more vigilant than the industry standard is only resulting in less and poorer information being given to the person who is most able to decide to take the risk—the person with the nut allergy.

Either way, I'm fed up with companies using fear of future legal issues to skirt their responsiblity to the consumer. In the case of foods and food allergies, that responsibility is not to "protect" me from a danger that may not even exist. It is to provide me with truly useful information that will allow me to make a decision.