On its season closing show, Saturday Night Live included a sketch with jokes about flight delays at Newark Liberty International Airport. As someone who has recently endured hours of delays at Newark, I laughed. The chaos is, unfortunately, all too relatable.
But here’s the thing: mocking Newark’s dysfunction has led to real public discourse. Lawmakers have spoken up. The federal government has responded. Efforts are underway to address the problem.
Then the sketch pivoted, and the laughter took a darker turn. Performer Ego Nwodim, in character as ‘Miss Eggy,’ steered the conversation toward airplane food. She lamented that peanuts were not given out on her flight, saying “everybody WANTS to have an allergy.”
Then came the punchline: “Take a Benadryl and shut your a** up.” Cue more laughs.
Yet, for those of us who live with food allergies or love someone who does, there was nothing funny about it.
That’s the kicker. Airport delays spark action. Food allergies spark jokes.
One gets attention, investment, and potential solutions. The other still gets treated as a punchline.
Lazy Targeting of a Real Disease
Let me be clear. This is not about lacking a sense of humor. It is about calling out the repeated, lazy targeting of a serious medical condition that affects millions and can kill in minutes.
Would SNL mock someone having a diabetes-related medical emergency mid-flight? Would they laugh at someone experiencing a seizure in the air? So why is it still acceptable to reduce anaphylaxis to the punchline?
As a mother, I have watched the light fade from my son’s beautiful brown eyes after an accidental exposure to peanuts.
That allergen was the subject of this joke. There is nothing remotely humorous about it. I would not wish that sense of fear and helplessness on anyone.
Allergy Jokes Reinforce Myths
Nwodim’s skit did not just make light of a potentially deadly condition. It reinforced two of the most dangerous and persistent myths about food allergies.
The first is that food allergies are a lifestyle choice. They are most decidedly not. No one chooses to worry over every snack or meal. No one opts into being vulnerable in a public setting simply by existing.
The second is the myth that Benadryl can stop anaphylaxis. It cannot. Epinephrine is the only first-line treatment. As one physician once bluntly said, “Benadryl is what you take so you don’t itch while you’re dying.”
And here is the deeply troubling reality. Epinephrine, the life-saving medication needed to treat anaphylaxis, is not currently required in airline emergency medical kits.
The very setting of this skit, an airplane, is is one of the most dangerous places to experience a severe allergic reaction. Thirty thousand feet in the air, with no access to emergency help and no guarantee of the right medication. Yet somehow, we are still the joke.
Humor That Has Consequences
Mockery does not stay in the studio. It emboldens people in real life to dismiss, minimize, and even endanger those with food allergies.
At Allergic Living we’ve covered multiple disturbing incidents where food allergies were deliberately weaponized.
In one case, a high school football player was targeted in a so-called prank by teammates who knew he had a peanut allergy. They scattered peanut kernels on his cleats and uniform and through his locker. He broke out in hives after the exposure. This was not a harmless joke. It was a targeted act that exploited a known medical vulnerability.
In a devastating case in the United Kingdom, a dairy-allergic teenager died after classmates threw cheese at him as a joke. The cheese touched broken skin and triggered fatal anaphylaxis.
These are not isolated incidents, but rather part of a deeply troubling pattern. The normalization of food allergy jokes fuels ignorance, bullying, and a real potential to cause harm or even death.
I must add – I’m not against edgy comedy or free speech. Comedy can and should challenge societal norms. But when it comes to food allergies, that challenge never comes. These jokes do not lead to insight. They simply reinforce stigma.
If Newark Airport can become a national conversation because of a joke, then why can’t food allergies? Why can’t comedy open our eyes to the fact that millions live with this daily risk, and that the systems meant to protect them including airline emergency kits are still inadequate?
Why We Must Speak Up
Some in our community fear that speaking out will backfire. That calling out jokes like this makes us appear humorless or over-sensitive.
But I contend that silence has consequences. Because what begins as a joke can end in tragedy. What gets brushed off in a comedy sketch becomes the reason accommodations are denied, a child or adult is mocked, or flight crew do not take protective measures for the food allergic passenger.
I do not speak out to shut comedians down, but because someone with a food allergy might not be heard until it is too late.
We are not asking for fewer jokes. We are asking for better ones. The kind that punch up, not down. The kind that do not reinforce dangerous misconceptions that can lead to real harm.
We can and should expect more from the punchline, and from the people who write it. Humor can still be bold without turning vulnerable people into the target.
Lianne Mandelbaum is Allergic Living’s airlines correspondent, and the founder of NoNutTraveler.com.
Related Reading:
New FAA Act Set to Make Airline Med Kits Anaphylaxis-Ready
Bullied for Allergy, Texas Football Player Now a State Champ
