In the Wall Street Journal today, a disturbing report was released: more than half of the Americans who suffer from food allergy say that a lack of information (or perhaps worse, the wrong information) about food products they ate caused them to have an allergy attack.

It's not a stretch of the imagination: When I was a waitress, I rarely knew what foods went into the dishes -- when a customer asked if a certain ingrediant was included in a certain dish (peanut oil, for example), I'd hightail it back to the kitchen staff and ask them. Now, imagine a restaurant with cooks who might not know what food is in each dish because some of the food is pre-prepared, or a waitress who is new at the job and afraid to ask. What is the easy solution? Is it unreasonable to ask restaurants to list ingrediants next to each item?

The article continues to say that because of a "rising incidence of serious allergic reactions," the National Institutes of Health has begun to refer to food allergies as an "emerging health problem" in our country.

Tell us your opinion: are food allergies a growing problem? And what can we as a country do to increase awareness about food allergies?