or have the school gone bonkers?

[ohballs2013]

got a letter last night, in the new teacher info pack.
the school have said that as of the new school term a few more items have been added to the not allowed in lunch box list.
we already had the normal,
no nuts
no fizzy drinks
no bars of chocolate

now we also have

no bananas
no berry fruit, including anything containing berry fruit, such as smoothies, youghurts, cereal bars etc
no fish
no eggs
no crisps
no citrus fruits
no peices of meat, ie chicken legs.

now i get that you have to protect as many kids with allergies as possible..but WTF. is it not going a bit mad?
my own child has coeliacs, so i know all about limited diets, but im astonished at this.

The school are being ridiculous.

Even if they do enforce a ban, there is no way that the school will be entirely free from all those foods. There will be parents that choose to ignore it, forget by accident, make genuine mistakes, and there will be times that someone else is making the lunch that doesn't know.

I'd have thought a child was at as high a risk of coming into contact with food that could be a problem even with the ban, because if that's the only precaution that is taken, it ignores all the other risks.

My child simply wouldn't eat fruit at school if they weren't allowed orange, satsuma, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and banana, and that's not acceptable.

Are mango and pineapple allowed?

Just found the post you referred to by Ohballs
That is very different from DS's case. Our school would only act on diagnosed allergies, and we had to have documentation from the hospital and GP that proved his allergies were true allergies.

I think that the school would be better sitting the 2 affected children away from the others until they have a definite diagnosis, then look at banning the items that are true allergies if it is a sensible request. It sounds from the head teachers response that the children are yet to be tested by allergy clinic.

Are they also going to ban school trips? What if another school were eating in the same lunch room?

Seems a really ill thought out way of managing the issue. There is no way that all parents will always follow all these rules for the rest of the year. Much better to manage the environment around the particular children.

Also less isolating to sit on a particular table at lunch than to be known forever more as the child that stopped everybody else from eating their favourite lunch.

It is a calculated ploy to get more kids to take up school dinners. They won't ban packed lunches because there will be an outcry but they will make it difficult by extendibg the banned food list. That is what I believe, lots of households are cutting back so packed lunches for families who just miss out for free school meals work out cheAper. School catering companies are making a loss so they have to find a way to recoup costs. I might be very very wrong but I can't help wondering sometimes.

It doesn't sound as if this has been thought through at all.I particularly liked the idea that school dinners will not be affected because the children won't be eating school dinners - presumably they will be eating other peoples packed lunches then??
As many other people have said if these children are so allergic that being around other children's food is a risk,then school dinners are equally a risk.
And I think it is unreasonable to restrict the diet of every other child in the school so much.And even if it was reasonable,it'll never work,and if it doesn't work it isn't safe.

HelgaHufflepuff, my ds has a child in their daycare that can get an anaphylactic reaction to even touching an egg carton. They have to be extremely careful. Egg is one of the more common allergies.

Oh, can completely understand if it's down to allergies (I suffer from an egg allergy myself) but it didn't say in the OP that the 'banned list' was due to allergies, just that they weren't allowed?
If my kids came home with that list, I'd be going in and asking what the reasoning behind it was.
If it was all allergies, then fair enough, I'd have no problem.

The HT's reasoning sounds a bit off.

If these kids have allergies severe enough to justify banning the listed items from lunchboxes, surely the listed items should also be excluded from school dinners, as you've said that the kids all eat in the same room anyway. If the kids had the sort of very severe allergic reactions where they get anaphalactic shock from simply being in the same room as the allergenic food, surely the school dinners would need to change also?

If, on the other hand, they'll only have an allergic reaction if they actually eat the food, then the reasoning about not changing school dinners as the allergic kids won't be eating them would apply equally to the packed lunches - provided that the school implemented and enforced a policy banning kids from swapping food from packed lunches.

OP, you really need to do something about this, for the sake of your kids diet, and for any dairy intolerant kids in the school. The list is limited for the kids with no restrictions, but for those who have other needs???

And with a list like that, I wouldn't be reading every packet for all ingredients, so might end up sending something in that looks like it should be safe, but actually continuant something banned. What then?

What did the head reply when you asked what you are supposed to do to accommodate coeliac into that list.

Utterly ridiculous.

YY to asking governors to come up with varied, healthy balanced meals that fit into their ridiculous guidelines.

Also up for asking the suggestion that gluten is also banned, that would show them how impossible it would be to ban every foodstuff.

Crazy reaction for allergy with as yet, unknown cause.

my ds has a child in their daycare that can get an anaphylactic reaction to even touching an egg carton
Wow. Really?
That must be a bit of a bugger at supermarkets with checkout girls touching all the foods
or restaurants
and why is a kid in daycare touching egg cartons?
sounds like hysteria to me
not science

talkin - I assume the use egg cartons for junk modelling?

Talkinpeace, allergies that severe may be rare, but they do exist.

The kid in question may have touched egg cartons at home or elsewhere before anyone realised just how bad the allergy was.

Just because it's rare doesn't make it hysteria or unscientific.

I'm sorry but banning stuff from the vicinity of kids is NOT the answer.
All of the medical professionals now agree it is not the answer.

The answer is to support and supervise the child until they are old enough to learn what they can and cannot be near.

And frankly, a kid whose allergy is so severe that touching an egg box a week later could harm them will get sick when they are in any public place.

And how did they narrow it down to the egg box : it could have been the carpet ...

Fucking hell, that's all a bit over the top.

We have a pupil with multiple allergies, and the only thing we banned was aerosols - and tbf, that is to stop the little gets sniffing them.

When DS tested as allergic to eggs we were advised not to let him play with egg cartons by the paediatric consultant. We were told it is because of the risk of egg residue in the box.
I think that is standard advice for anyone newly diagnosed with an egg allergy, or it was 3 years ago when DS was first tested.

It's bonkers and inconsistent (with regards to school dinners). The head should be challenged on this. I very much doubt you are the only parent reacting with horror (although your children would have a tougher time than most because of their own food limitations).

The proposed restrictions mean that your child - with a diagnosed condition - would have to have a very limited and unvaried diet, whilst other children are shielded from foods that they might or might not be allergic too. It's unfair and very silly.

Fgs lets not get cuntish by calling us cunts. We understand allergies can be deadly but with the new list op has been given, i only suspect some of the pupils need a bubble with the amount on there, and crisps, seriously??

I understand the eggs, peanuts, citrus but crisps & chicken the world has gone mad

How old are the children? Perhaps they have banned tuna because the teachers don't want the children smelling like tom cats . I expect the packed lunches are not refrigerated at school and cooked chicken not cooled properly could cause an upset stomach same wih eggs which are smelly. With regard to citrus fruits do they mean the whole fruit, fiddly for little fingers, or segments? Bananas, again fiddly for little fingers or perhaps some are overripe. I gag at the smell of black overripe bananas. Crisps are just bad for you says me who bought hula hoops the other day

Ask the school to come up with a weeks' worth of packed lunch suggestions following the new rules to show it can be done and watch them squirm Why can't they just have the children with the allergies eat their lunch in the medical room/some other form of isolation away from the main lunch hall, that's what they do at DD's school.

But what are they supposed to eat?? Mind boggles.....

That's pretty ridiculous, especially as school dinners will contain those foods.

They actually may be putting your child's health at risk, as because they have coeliac and will be limited in their diet, they risk becoming malnourished and unwell.

Why can the other children not just have allergy testing to identify the cause and severity. Very unusual to have an allergy that is triggered by other people around them eating it (nuts being the most common example, although I did once do some work experience where egg was not allowed as another member of staff was severely allergic). School dinners would be no less of a trigger than packed lunches.