to challenge the schools nuts ban

[pigglewiggle]

The school has a strict no nuts policy. Apparently this is because someone in a higher year has a peanut allergy. I can understand banning peanuts if the allergy is severe but peanuts are very different to normal proper nuts and reactions to these are not to my knowledge anywhere near as bad as peanuts. It just makes lunch quite difficult as we are vegan and would love to pop something like a nakd bar in lunchboxes.

Aibu to go to the school and at least establish if a total ban on nuts is needed / necessary?

Mistigri, peanuts may not be nuts but people who are allergic to tree nuts can also be allergic to peanuts. My daughter had a serious reaction twice, once to peanuts and once to marzipan and another, lesser reaction to walnuts. Neither peanuts nor almonds are actually nuts - one is a legume and the other is the kernel of a fruit, I believe it's from the same family as peaches though I am happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

The bit I don't understand and would like explained is (correct me if I'm wrong) that those with severe nut allergies can get a reaction from something has been prepared alongside nuts or touched nuts.

So if for instance I prepared myself a peanut butter sandwich and ds a cheese one the fact that they are prepared on the same worktop, touching or same knife etc could be fatal.

I have no issue with nuts being banned but if I am right then this doesn't wholly solve safety issues and that the more important bit is teaching allergic children not to share others food and making sure all children know about washing hands before and after eating.

Yes, I know that some kids have multiple allergies, but it's rare for them all to be equAlly serious. Of course if a school has a child who is so seriously allergic to both peanuts and tree nuts that being in the same room as someone eating them is dangerous, then a ban may be the safest route. But that doesn't eliminate risk - what if a classmate ate a bag of nuts on the way into school for example? And bans that are plainly unjustified make parents less cooperative - which increases risk to children all round.

In my experience the biggest risk in allergy is complacency - something that bans tend to encourage.

You cannot have an allergic reaction from being invthe same room as someone eating a peanut butter sandwich. They havecdone blindfold studies and those that are severely allergic cannot tell if they are in the same room or not.
there are some exemptions ie a packet of peanuts being opened in a small space where the air is circulating or in a factory where food is prepared. Cooking food where there is steam that can spread particles.

I think YANBU.

Firstly, I'm not sure blanket nut bans are really a good thing. It feels like a fairly lazy response from schools tbh.

Secondly, is the child actually allergic to all nuts or just peanuts? If it's just peanuts then I'm not sure how helpful banning other nuts is.

Thirdly, I wonder how many mumsnetters would support a school going dairy-free if a child had a milk allergy?

I think rudeness about the op's veganism is bang out of order -but some people will jump on the back of anything to belittle the choice (if it is a choice)

I have no problem with not sending nuts in.

My issues are:
Whether a blanket ban is imposed when there is perhaps no severe sufferers (ie no airborne risk)
Are we supposed to send in no nuts or nothing that has been produced in a factory that contains nuts -and doez the second matter in any cases
What are the safeguards against parents deliberately flouting the rules,forgetting,not understanding what ingredients are actually nuts,or simply not spending the time to read ingredients lists fully(ie a ban doesn't guarantee safety). I just wonder how safe blanket bans really are.

Obviously the child with allergies has to be hyper alert, but every child forgets things sometimes and temptation is a terrible thing if everyone is eating, for example, Smarties. My DD is horribly allergic to food colouring (which is even in formula milk) and even her useless father thought that just a single Smartie on Christmas Day wouldn't hurt. By all means as an allergic adult, take the chance. You can make an informed decision. But kids need to be watched all the time, and a blanket ban on nuts can help. It clearly isn't the be-all and end-all solution to the problem.

And just to throw it out there, since nobody has mentioned this yet, even using your epipen does not guarantee that you will survive a reaction. Life with allergies is the pits, even at second hand.

*GingerPhoenix" it's not lack of familiarity that is the danger - the main issue in the UK is contamination in restaurants. That said, I'm possibly less careful than I used to be because I assume that peanut-paranoia is so rampant in the UK that I will be safe - plainly not so. Last bad reaction was at a brasserie style restaurant which was happily only 2 mins from the Royal Free hospital ;)

I agree with you about complacency. You are not complacent because you have made a sensible and appropriate risk assessment about a child in your class. You might become complacent however if you didn't teach any allergic children - like your colleague.

Re airborne particles. I wouldn't want to sit next to someone opening a packet of peanuts on a plane. However while I prefer not to be in smelling-distance of someone eating a peanut butter sandwich, it wouldn't put me in any mortal danger (or indeed any danger at all, beyond being put off my own lunch).

I concede that there may be people whose allergy is even worse than mine but I can't believe they are so numerous as to justify blanket bans in all schools.

Mistigri no, it doesn't completely eliminate risk, that is why children have epipens in school but they aren't things you want to use if you don't have to, they aren't like calpol.

Sure, but does a blanket ban actually reduce the risk of having to use an epipen? Doubt it very much personally.

this and there have been cases in this country as well.

Mistigri yes, I do believe it does. My child has never had to use the epipen at all in school, I believe that is because there is a blanket ban on nuts at the schools concerned - both her primary and secondary school have a ban on all nuts.

But does a "nut ban" actually mean no nuts? I work in a school that asks for no nuts in packed lunches, but honestly no one checks past nursery age. Parents could easily send in cereal bars without knowing they contain nuts, lots of parents don't speak/read English so aren't checking ingredients etc.

We have a severely nut and egg allergic DD and it is always a relief to us when there's a nut ban as it means slightly less allergen swirling about the place. It is extremely difficult to manage and in my experience schools tend to go hot and cold over it, swinging between laissez-faire and hyper-vigilance.

I think keemanan and a few others have raised the 'ooh well however will your child cope in the real world' and once I have been forcibly restrained I will simply say that it can be very very difficult and very stressful. DD can eat out in about 2 places. She can't eat birthday cake, biscuits, most chocolate, most takeaway sandwiches...it is an endless round of policing and thinking and planning and checking in order to have a normal teenage life while dealing with something that could quite easily kill her.

A supportive school community makes a huge difference.

BMO, so you work in a school that has a no nuts policy (you say it's no nuts in packed lunches, but presumably the school lunches are nut-free), where you say no-one checks that most of the parents are sticking to this rule.

Then you say the OP's school is lazy for having the same nut policy, knowing that the alternative - asking parents not to bring nut products into school - doesn't work in your own school!

So what would be your policy for ensuring children with nut allergies stay safe?

*Queiro - Banning dairy would be all together more complicated as dairy is in so many of the foods offered.

Double standards, much? You don't want dairy banned because it would be inconvenient for you. But a nut ban is inconvenient for people who want or need, for whatever reason, to eat nuts.*

I never said I want or don't want any food banned. I am very fortunate in that neither of my children have allergies. I was merely pondering why a school would ban one allergen and not another and my assumption would be that it is more straight forward to ban nuts than to ban dairy.

Where did I say it would be inconvenient to me? How would it inconvenience me if a school banned dairy? I wouldn't personally give a shit if it was keeping a child safe.

GentlyBenevolent I'm sorry you suffer with allergies. I bet it's horrendous for you but don't make vast assumptions based on your own experiences and if you can't talk about this in a civil and non inflammatory manner then I would suggest you hide the thread.

A child my son went to school with was severely allergic to eggs. He started swelling up when a child had a scotch egg in their lunch not realising.

My son is allergic to raw eggs, cooked egg whites and peanuts. It's hard but we do manage to avoid as much as we can. But in the case of my son's classmate it really was hard for him and his mum was great at telling party hosts what to avoid for him.

Suburban - exactly, I think it's lazy for schools to proclaim themselves "nut free". Does that actually safeguard children with allergies? I doubt very much that any school actually checks every item in every child's lunch box every day.

If a child is anaphylactic to anything - nuts, eggs, milk - instead of just proclaiming themselves nut free (unlikely to be adequately policed) they should be ensuring that individual child doesn't come into contact with an allergen, or supporting the child to keep themselves safe if they are old enough.

The OP didn't say the school was "nut-free". The school would have to be 100% certain there were no nuts or nut products anywhere in the school - an impossibility, I would have thought.

What she did say is that the school has a "no nuts" policy, which to me is the school's way of asking parents to support the school in keeping nut allergy sufferers safe by not bringing nuts into school.

I am 44 and allergic to peanuts, all tree nuts, fish and raw egg yolk. I have had some pretty severe reactions over the years, mainly when I have eaten something by accident that contains one of the allergens. I also work in a school and until recently we also had a severely peanut allergic child attending. There was and is still no nut ban. Child was older in year 6 and knew how to manage her allergy including epi pen use. We have a lot of staff who are epi pen trained but we have never had to administer one. For those who are asking about living with the allergies as you get older. My allergies have never stopped me doing anything. I eat out at restaurants, go on aeroplanes, trains, buses. Mostly, I don't give it a second thought, I take no notice of food labels with disclaimers saying made in a factory using nuts etc as long as there are no nuts in the ingredients I will eat it. I must admit that I think it was easier for my parents in the 70s and 80s as there was not as much convenience foods, fast foods etc. We hardly ever ate out at restaurants as they couldn't afford it. We didn't go abroad on holiday so it was a lot easier back then to control what I came into contact with. It's funny but I find that other people worry about my allergies more than I do. Am thinking back to a wedding I went to about 10 years ago when the caterer initially refused to cater for me saying I should take my own food. They backed down in the end but how ridiculous.

OK, "no nuts" - but what does that actually mean? That we don't have to worry about allergic children because there are no nuts at school? Is it any safer than a school that doesn't "ban" nuts? Or does it just feel safer (and so is actually more dangerous...).

I can't speak for what happens in the OP's school but my guess is that schools choose to not to say they are "nut-free" because they have no way of knowing for certain that the school is a totally nut-free environment.

Better to say "no nuts" because that means the school is doing their bit (nut-free school lunches) and is also asking parents to do their bit by not bringing nuts onto the premises.

Without adding another couple of hours onto the school day due to checking everyone's bag and lunch box for nuts, I think this is realistically the best any school can do.

It's a bit like food packaging that states "made in a nut-free environment" rather than "100% nut-free". It just means the risk is that bit lower.

I think a nut ban is helpful in our case. I have no doubt that some of the kids will be scarfing the odd granola bar, but it lowers the overall exposure.

Same school attempted an egg ban and we told them it wouldn't work - not because it wouldn't be helpful (it would) but we just thought it was a non-starter. Many people have no idea about what's in their food.

Also, I think schools are trying their best. They're not lazy, they are trying to balance issues sometimes between kids who have very different allergies. Any school where DD goes ends up with a pile of extra training/planning/protocols/meetings. Nut bans can be part of that strategy.