Is eating Peanut butter before school breaking the ‘nut free’ rules ??

[RenaissanceGraffiti]

Dd has ARFID and autism so has a limited diet . Breakfast is always peanut butter on toast.
School is nut free and one day dd last week dd had gone in and said she had PB when they’d been chatting about breakfast - after school the TA said as there’s a child in the class with a nut allergy can we give dd a different breakfast ?? Surely this isn’t breaking the rules !!

sorry i think i posted the same link from allergy uk that numerous others have already done so!!! There is a big push to change the way nut allergies are managed which includes referring children for immunotherapy.

I prefer a nut free school for my allergic son. No, it’s not a guarantee. Yes, other allergens are still present. It reduces the risk without eliminating it.

Washing hands and changing clothes are a reasonable precaution. Is your child likely to put their hands in their mouth and then touch things? That would probably be the only real risk otherwise.

My DD carries epi pens for peanut.

PB for breakfast is fine, just please kindly make sure that you wipe their mouth and wash their hands (if they're too young to have this properly covered themselves) before they go in.

A pedantic point: peanuts are not nuts they are pulses. (My daughter has a peanut allergy but can eat nuts. A nut allergy might not mean a peanut allergy... clutching at twigs here)

This is another annoying thing. DD's school is "nut free". I assume they include peanuts in this but they don't specify so who knows. It doesn't affect us, as DH has an anaphylactic allergy to nuts and peanuts, so we don't have those in the house so DD would never take them in.
They've also recently sent a reminder of the policy with the line "we've recently had a number of items in lunchboxes which may have contained nuts."
Now, do they mean that they aren't sure and the items might have had nuts in. Or do they mean the items were listed on the packaging as "may contain nuts". And if so, is that not allowed? I wouldn't assume that "may contain" products were necessarily banned in a nut free school, and neither would DH. It covers an increasingly huge amount of products. Plus anything made in a kitchen that contains nuts would count as "may contain" surely - a sandwich where all the components are completely nut free, but that was made in a house where they eat nuts for example. That's the equivalent of a packet saying "made in a factory that handled nuts".

The lack of clarity would annoy me if I had a child with allergies, or a child with other eating restrictions like the OP.

In the horrible dark winter mornings I’d occasionally have toast and Nutella for breakfast. However I stopped doing so one year as a child in my class had a severe nut allergy. Even smelling it from someone’s breath could have potentially killed her. I didn’t want that in my conscience!

@WeWereInParis Yes. It’s very hard for people to understand what ‘nut free’ should mean.

It’s also really problematic to be making a big fuss about being ‘nut free’ and policing lunch boxes when there may be children with other severe allergies in the school. Is their allergy less important? Every school have children on the roll with a mix of various allergies, health conditions and disabilities. All of them matter.

Any food can potentially and unpredictably trigger anaphylaxis. Risks of cross contamination at school can be significant. Properly managing those risks is better than attempting to ban particular allergens for so many reasons.

Is it in case child vomits or burps?

Isn't Nutella made with hazelnuts though? Are people allergic to those as well?

If an allergy is that bad, it's a worry how that person will cope when out in the big bad world.

At least working from home is a thing now.

For many people will severe allergies it must be a relief.

If he's not in school, then it's nothing to do with anyone else.

This is completely ridiculous!

Yes people can be allergic to hazelnuts, it is on my sisters long list although in her case for them it’s ingestion not contact that causes the reaction to them. Peanuts just being in the same room can trigger a reaction. Her workplace do request people not to bring peanuts in for that reason

Why is it always nuts? Surely there are kids with other allergies in school that can be just as severe. Are there even any documented cases- a quick Google suggests that there aren't but I am happy to be corrected.

Nut free schools rely on parents being able to a) read, b) read English, c) read English food packaging, d) understand which other names nuts may appear as and e) actually want to adhere to restrictions in the first place.

And for the people working in nut free schools, did you check your toiletries/cosmetics for dulcis, hypogaea, bertholletia, argania or ternifolia oils when you applied them? They're all various nut oils by the way.

Isn't Nutella made with hazelnuts though? Are people allergic to those as well?

Yes, nuts are one of the most common allergies. I think (but I could be wrong) they're the most common anaphylactic food allergy apart from peanuts.

Maybe clarify that (unlike many families) you do not eat on the way to school. Some children would then end up with it on their hands, face and/or clothes

Other than that, I echo the comments about the advice on nut-free schools not currently being advised.

It's not reasonable to ask parents to avoid peanut butter at home. What about all the other parents in the allergic child's class? Have they all been asked the same thing?

As others have said, some children are allergic to wheat (possibly not as dangerous as being allergic to nuts). Should the school ask all parents to ditch bread?

The whole nut free hysteria has got way out of hand.

The anaphylaxis Campaign actively say that nuts should not be banned because it means that children never learn to manage their allergies.

Women are now being encouraged to eat peanuts during pregnancy and to give peanuts to their babies earlier as it’s believed that this peanut sterile environment is part of the problem.

Yes there absolutely are people out there with nut allergies, but the idea that someone can die from smelling someone’s breath is pure nonsense.

More people in fact died from dairy allergies last year but we don’t have this hysteria around dairy products.

And more importantly, we need to start questioning how it is that there are now so many allergies in society. There of course were allergies previously, but the way that people talk now you’d think that every other child is at risk of dropping dead from some allergy or other.

It’s one thing to ban nuts from a school. I don’t agree with it but it’s not the end of the world not to send nuts in.

But it’s quite another to tell a child what they can and cannot eat at home. Presumably these nut allergic children do actually go out in society, among people who may have had a peanut butter sandwich or a packet of peanut m&m’s.

The teacher here is being over cautious, and OTT. I would tell her in no uncertain terms that you will not be dictating what your child, with health problems of her own, can and cannot eat in her own home.

If it were me, with a child who does not have ARFID and will eat a wide variety of breakfast foods, then I probably would stop giving peanut butter for breakfast on school mornings. Because it's no real bother and if it reduces the risk then I'd be happy to help.

But I think that in your circumstances it's a bit different. Plus you're taking sensible precautions by getting dressed and brushing teeth after breakfast. I think that you are doing the best you can.

The TA didn't do anything wrong though imo. She didn't tell you that you couldn't give peanut butter, she asked. There's no harm in asking.

Agreed. And I say that as a parent of children with multiple severe allergies (including nuts and peanuts)

Once you know your milk anaphylactic child is going to be surrounded by children munching on yoghurt /cheese sandwiches etc then you realise the stupidity of nut free schools . Out school is nut free yet the teachers looked at me blankly when I asked how on earth an experiment involving raw egg (which my child is anaphylactic to) got through their risk assessments.

Children need to be taught basic hand washing /face washing

And teachers need to all be trained to recognise anaphylaxis and use epipens and always risk assess before using food in the classroom

You can absolutely have an anaphylactic reaction to wheat. People can have anaphylaxis to any allergen (essentially any food protein)

Far more children die from anaphylaxis to milk than nuts these days.

Karanbir Cheema died when cheese was thrown at him in school. We still don't get dairy free schools.

Just let her eat the breakfast she likes. Peanut butter is a great breakfast. They can't police you.

There's a seriously allergic kid in my child's class & no one in school is allowed to eat peanut products before school.

Poor kids had to have ambulance called several times already this term. My kid loves peanut butter but he eats if after school or weekends

If an ambulance has already had to be called several times this term for the child, then it’s pretty obvious that the child’s allergies are not being managed appropriately, despite trying to control what the other children eat outside school.

Ffs no, how does the person with the allergy leave the house if they’re that severely allergic? Surely someone on the bus could be eating a snickers? Or their hairdresser had satay for lunch?

Nobody would be telling me what my child was and wasn’t allowed to eat in their own home. And for the school to think they can do that is frankly ridiculous.

In a few years time that same child will be in a non nut-free secondary environment, presumably travelling to and from school on buses/walking/making friends who have been in contact with nuts.

It’s not realistic to assume that a child with nut allergies can forever be kept in a sterile environment. They need to learn to manage their allergy themselves if they want to function in a normal society.

And the reality is that it’s easy to take this approach to nuts because nuts can be avoided easily enough.

But no school would be permitted to ban dairy, or wheat, or anything with egg, because those are staples in people’s diets.

Replace “no-one is allowed to eat nuts before school” with “no-one is allowed dairy before school,” and you can see how ridiculous and unreasonable it is.

And considering more people die now from reaction to dairy, if we’re arguing for the banning of foods, then dairy should come ahead of nuts, but nobody would suggest that was reasonable.

It’s not just peanuts. It’s all nuts including tree nuts. Our school has sent out a letter telling parents nots to take hummus to school. I think that will be the biggest one that is often taken in.

I would be very surprised if they can enforce no one eating anything like hummus, peanut butter or Nutella before school.