Why can’t kids take nuts??

[Kungfupanda67]

Genuine question, just had a booking form for a school trip and had the usual reminder to not put anything containing nuts in lunch boxes because some children are allergic to them. I was just wondering why this is such a blanket rule when some children are also allergic to eggs, cheese, wheat etc? Anyone know?

My first has multiple allergies and was diagnosed at 4 weeks. Runs in DH's family and they all have allergy issues - hives, urticaria, asthma, eczema etc

80% of the risk of allergies is inherited

My second is totally fine.

Whatever the reasons for these allergies ,the fact remains that nuts are dangerous for people with a bad reaction to them.Surely its not too much to expect people to use a different sandwich spread?.W/O
peanut butter ,cheese,or egg?.Ham,salad filling ,Marmite ,tuna to name but a few!.My friends son has had a bad reaction to nuts and has to careful everywhere they go!.

Nobody is saying that allergies didn't exist. Just that they weren't nearly as common. Believe that or not as you please. And yes, I'm well aware that they can be life threatening. A niece had one serious enough that she couldn't go anywhere without an epipen.

It's often been suggested that excessive hygiene and the obsession with dirt-and germ-free everything may well have something to do with it, not to mention all the chemicals used for the purpose. And judging from some of the uber-clean-freak posts on MN, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

dottie exactly! I think the fact that there’s more children being severely affected is another discussion; the point is that as human beings shouldn’t we give a shit about other people?

I’m still waiting for the people who insist it’s all over the top/mollycoddling and that their children should be able to eat what they want at school to come here and explain that if their child took a Nutella sandwich to school, despite being requested not to (and you know, the fact you can eat a bloody Nutella sandwich literally any other time you want; bathe in the shit if you like), that if that CAUSED the death of another child, that they’d be totally fine with that. Like, 100% fine. Not even a smidge of guilt. Because that’s what we’re talking about here... people thinking that their rights to feed their child whatever they like, trumps the right of another child to life.

Obviously nut free policies in primary schools make sense. Nobody wants a child to be severely harmed or even killed if it can be so easily avoided.

@dottiedodah Whatever the reasons for these allergies ,the fact remains that nuts are dangerous for people with a bad reaction to them.Surely its not too much to expect people to use a different sandwich spread?.W/O
peanut butter ,cheese,or egg?.Ham,salad filling ,Marmite ,tuna to name but a few!.My friends son has had a bad reaction to nuts and has to careful everywhere they go!.

But you’ve highlighted the original question- schools/scouts/holiday do not ask you to pack a lunch not containing egg or cheese, they ask you not to pack a lunch containing nuts. My question was why nuts, and not other allergens?

I wasn’t debating the wrongs and rights of banning allergens, or saying that my child’s right to eat a peanut butter sandwich trumps your child’s right to not have an allergic reaction to my kid’s lunch - my kids only eat peanut butter at home for this reason. But they do take cheese sandwiches out, on seeded bread, both of which could cause an equally severe reaction but aren’t talked about.

Jesus, Sherlock. Is the Daily Mail doing bots now?

@jennymanara but why just nuts?? I didn’t realise people just read the title of a thread before commenting! My question is why can’t the have nuts but they can have seeds, fish, egg etc etc. Who decided that nit allergies trump other allergies, and why?

I wonder if its because of mob rule? If a kid had a nut allergy mob rule would be up in arms saying how nuts are banned everywhere else and it's easy to avoid nuts (which in general it is) however if it's dairy there would be a mob rule uproar saying we couldn't stop using dairy as it's in so much/my kid would starve/we produce dairy as a country? So if a kid had a dairy reaction mob rule would say 'it's sad but can't be helped we can't all not have dairy'

Good thought donkey - I can’t imagine anyone being overly pleased if they banned dairy... someone up thread was unhappy about no being able to send strawberries to school and there’s lots of alternative fruits you can send in, and replacing yoghurts and cheese would require more effort

I'm deathly allergic to all types of seafood (not just shellfish.)
My allergies have never been taken seriously in the way that nut allergies are but the ultimate result is still the same.
I've never understood that.

@Kungfupanda67 My kids have CMPA. I get what you're asking. It's something that pisses a lot of other allergy parents off. That nuts are seen as the only dangerous allergen.

Milk can kill, kiwis, coconut etc etc can kill on contact. But you'll never see a school banning those.

If a child has an allergy to something that could kill on contact; the school should ban it until that child has left the school. Secondary school is different because the child with the allergy is usually able to take more care of themselves and is more aware of the severity and can look for warning signs.

If another child at my son’s school was allergic to dairy; I would happily comply with not giving him yoghurt/cheese/whatever. There’s TONS of other stuff I can give him. Same with any other allergen.

Also; dairy is one of the easiest things to find tasty and low cost alternatives for!

DS1 had CMPA and egg allergy and a soya intolerance as a baby.

As a few posters have previously commented, the particles from nuts are more likely to become airborne compared to other dietry allergens which would require contact to trigger a reaction. Nuts are simpler for a blanket ban than many other "basic" ingredients.
There was no evidence to sugggest DS1's nursery need to ban his allergens, and with other children having allergens too, it simply wouldn't have been viable to impose a ban-all approach with the evidence for serious harm being so low.

I once chatted with someone who had a colleague who was anphylactic to oranges. Oranges could be taken into the workplace if they were peeled at home; it was the spray of oils becoming airbourne and inhaled that was so dangerous to him.

We have a blanket nut ban at the DC's school. There is a child with nut allergies in one DC's class. The reminders cite staff and pupils being affected. The difficulty with a blanket approach is that it isn't made clear which are the specific triggers (e.g. not including sesame).

DM seems surprised about DS's history of dietary problems and that I've identified my own intolerances from our experiences. I'm not... it now makes perfect sense why I so often struggled with my digestive system including when doing DoE expeditions... that was the soya mince . Her own digestive system has been terrible for decades, as was her mother's. I think we are much better at identifying such issues now and not lumping them in with other conditions or being sickly/ failiure to thrive.

Diets and environments are much more complex now with much more interference with our natural fauna. We've also deviated a long way from our indigenous diet which was lower in some common allergens, for example the growth of dairy in the Far East is problematic to a large proportion of the population.

OP I suspect it is because nut allergies are relatively common.

At what age do we have to trust allergic children not to touch/taste other children’s food?

Nuts aren’t banned in workplaces, surely? So how do allergic children manage when they are adults?

It's not just touching and testing other people's food though. Ds2 has coeliacs disease, it's taken a while for ds to have the knowledge and the confidence to ask what foods are in the dinner they have prepared, if and how they have avoided cross contamination and a certain amount of guts to walk away if the answer isn't good enough.

Just a side note on the later weaning thing. Eldest child started baby cereals at 17 months, has severe GI issues, extremely restricted diet and deathly allergy. Second child not weaned til 7 months, loves food no food allergy.

Sorry! 17 weeks!

escapade By the time children will no longer be in adult supervision they need to be able to manage it themselves. So secondary school in general. Of course we don't ban nuts in workplaces. Adults are different from young children.

@Straysocks of course the late weaning theory isn’t going to apply to everyone with an allergy, but I think there’s been quite a few studies challenging the advice to hold off on allergens, because generally children are less likely to be allergic to something if introduced to it before 6 months.

There loss of studies now across the world that are showing positive results after exposing babies to allergens before 6 months.
My children's dietician said she wouldn't be surprised if the 6 month weaning rule was changed eventually.

EAT study

Very interesting. Also interesting data on nut allergies (lack of) where pregnant/breastfeeding women are encouraged to eat nuts for health or milk production - I believe peanut soup is recommended in Uganda. Low incidence of peanut allergy. However, ate loads of cashews during pregnancy and ds allergic to them. Hard to piece all this information together.

Thanks for posting that link, bruffin, It's really useful