I like peanuts. That's why I can't help being a little bit
sad every time I sit down on an airplane and get a bag of comparatively cardboard-like
pretzels. Even knowing that the simultaneous action of 200 travellers struggling to open the little bags of
in-flight peanuts could possibly generate enough
peanut dust to kill someone with an extreme
allergy stuck in the little space with
recirculated air for the next several hours, I'm
nostalgic.
Despite looking up just about every combination of words involving
peanuts and
flight on
google.com, I've been unable to pinpoint exactly when peanuts became so well-entangled with the
commercial flight industry. Perhaps they were in fact included on those first
Boeing 707 flights in 1957. Even at their height, right before the 1998 fuss, peanut farmers acknowledge that the airline peanuts accounted for less than one percent of their total sales; even so, they were available on most
domestic flights at least.
In 1998, the U.S.
Department of Transportation issued instructions that all airlines were to declare at least three rows
peanut-free zones for all flights including any medically-diagnosed peanut-allergy sufferer. This was to bring policy in-line with the 1986
Air Carrier Access Act.
Congress failed to grant financial support to enforce the
directive, and
Newt Gingrich denounced the Clinton administration's
anti-peanut attitude, but most airlines chose to comply anyhow. Some of them even began advertising their lower
fat snack foods.
While the peanut has made a small
rally due to support from those who love it, it will probably never regain its former
ascendency. Alas for the poor peanut, but I suppose it's a Very Good Thing not to kill anyone with your snackfood.