To think this 'nut free policy' is OTT for a school

[MerryMarigold]

So, letter home about next term's 'nut free' policy and I think it's a bit extreme but tell me what you think. In packed lunches (I will have 3 having packed lunch next year), we are not allowed to include:

• Fruit and cereal bars which contain nuts
• Sesame seed rolls
• Nutella
• Peanut butter
• Cakes made with nuts
• Muesli bars
• Baklava/ Nougat/ Turkish Delight
• Any packets of nuts

I would assume we are not allowed to give them pistachios in a Tupperware box either.

Anyway, my point is that how can they police it this closely? I know some kids cannot come into ANY contact with nuts, but for example, my kids would have nuts in granola at breakfast and probably not always wash their hands before school (if they remembered to clean their teeth when they first get up). I also refuse to check the ingredient list of everything I put into a packed lunch for 3 children so there are bound to be nuts in something they end up having.

Nuts are very healthy and nutritious, so we basically need to swap nut based products for something less healthy. I am most upset about the Muesli bars and no cakes made with nuts. Ds1 is a major food-refuser. He has never managed school dinners and food at home is an issue too. He nearly always has a muesli bar in his lunch, which I suppose I will need to substitute with biscuits. And sometimes I would include cakes made with nuts just to up his nutrition at lunchtime a bit. He doesn't like any form of meat, fish or cheese in his sandwiches.

I do sympathise that there are (a very few) people who have a 'life threatening reaction to nut products' (quoted on the 'nut free policy' letter). However, I would assume they do carry an epi-pen as it is impossible to create a completely nut free environment in a large school of children who are eating nuts at least at home. So, in reality it is not life threatening unless there is a child who has an unknown severe nut allergy. I would even be compassionate if it was stated that a child (without mentioning names) had had a reaction several times in school, but I very much doubt a child has reacted at school, and there may not even be a child with a severe nut allergy, so this is just scare mongering really.

SO, I do need to feel more positive about this and the extra work it will cause me, the extra moaning from my child and the reduction in nutrition. Please tell me off gently! I've had a bad night with not much sleep though, so please bear with me.

OP my DS and I both have an allergy to nuts. I'm very allergic and once ended up in intestine care for days due to a reaction. The secondary school where I work has a nut free policy not because me as does my ds's primary. Yes it is a PITA but line others have said primary aged children often swap and have close contact.
It will take you seconds to check and things don't change that often.

My DCs' school had a nut ban because of a child with a nut allergy.

My child at the time was the only one in the school with an allergy bad enough for an epipen*. Their worst allergy was to milk. Catch them banning that!

Most of the time it's ridiculous. There are a lot of people who believe that nut allergies are by default the worst allergies. Countless people have said to me "well at least he doesn't have a NUT allergy" and you should see their faces when I say that he does have a nut allergy but it doesn't bother us much and I hardly bother to mention it, because nuts are so much easier to avoid than eggs and milk.

*having said that, maybe they needed to have the ban because they didn't have an epipen

Our school has over 600 children plus a nursery, we are a no pork and no nut school. It's been like this for years and everyone just follows the rules. My kids eat nuts and pork in the remaining 16 meals each week plus snacks, holidays etc it's not a big deal it's just 5 meals a week ...

It could well be ineffective. But do you know why that is....because people can't be arsed to follow the policy for the sake of someone else's child.

So you didn't read the links from Allergy UK and the Anaphylaxis Campaign as to why they consider bans ineffective then

four - of course, all illiterate parents, and those who can't read English just "can't be arsed" to learn, can they?

Not all parents have the skills to exclude all nut containing products from their DCs lunches; so then what?

WannaBe Thu 21-Jul-16 14:55:01

"Do any secondary schools ban all but products?"

Yes. DS2 & DS3's school has blanket ban on them. I just asked DS3 (15) if the nut ban ever bothered him and he looked at me as if I was some kind of loon He then said there are several children in the school with nut allergies and the very few people with packed lunches know they aren't allowed to bring any nut containing products in.

I am a tad unclear as to the bickering/'baiting' going on in this thread about OP school introducing ban 'versus' the advice from from some Allergy Orgs.

School has introduced ban, end of.

Ferociously stupid argument vis child 'needing to learn' as manifestly the parents will be ACUTELY aware of that fact and doing utmost to raise child accordingly, but that does not negate the need to provide as risk-free possible an environment for when the child - and peers - are way too young to wholly self-protect.

Also, OP - just be frickin grateful that your child/ren do NOT have allergies of any kind.

Likewise that you can book holidays and days out without a care in the world - that is not the case for those of us with a family member who has a nut allergy or coeliac disease; it is an omnipresent presence in all of our lives.

But poor you having to check a few labels

Ferociously stupid argument vis child 'needing to learn' as manifestly the parents will be ACUTELY aware of that fact and doing utmost to raise child accordingly, but that does not negate the need to provide as risk-free possible an environment for when the child - and peers - are way too young to wholly self-protect

Quite!

It gets worse as they get older too. We were at a funeral recently and the wake was held in a pub, everyone and their bloody dog was eating packets of nuts and wanting to shake ds's hand!! I spent the whole day on high alert and realised now ds is not far off pub age it'll be another thing to keep me up at night

if you have ever seen someone having a full anaphylaxsis you wouldnt wish it on any one.....the child might not even have to eat a nut,(maybe its a teacher) it can be near you and it can cause you to have a full on attack, causing your airways to swell, you are unable to breath and death is imminent EVEN if you use your epipen....you need to be resusitated in hospital....thats if you make it there....so while it might be a little OTT for you, it saves a life!

for what its worth, i carry an epipen for an allergy....im very careful about what im allergic too......others may not be!

So, given nuts should be banned according to some, so should eggs and milk. Is everyone in agreement with that? No thought not.

It would be easy to ban eggs and milk in fact if all children had to have school meals, therefore the school would be responsible for keeping eggs, dairy and nuts away from their kitchens.

I therefore propose a campaign to ban packed lunches from all schools in order to facilitate entirely allergen free zones.

The reality is that it's easy enough to remove nuts. but only removing nuts very much does send the message that only nut allergies are important, when this is absolutely not the case.

Lemonlady
Being near someone eating a nut wont cause anaphylaxis. Even a nuts touching skin wont cause anaphylaxis. It has to be injested or touching mucas membrane.
My ds has nut and seed allergy i have seen anaphylaxis,but i do believe there is a lot of over reaction due to ignorants. There are no allergy specialists that agree with nut bans, last time i looked.

I believe Allergy UK advise against creating an environment where the allergens don't exist and instead they campaign for Epipens to be an obligatory part of the school's first aid kit and for education of kids and teachers which includes factual info on allergies, what to do to avoid reactions happening, how to deal with them if they do happen and how to be empathetic towards those with allergies.

Sadly, none of those things are evident in DS's school so a ban works for me. I'd far rather the charity's full approach was implemented in all schools.....but I think we are a ways off that still so a protected environment with our own teaching to our child and those he comes in close contact with.

And ds at 4 was more than capable of telling people about his allergy. None of his schools had nut bans, because they took a sensible approach.

I don't pretend to be an expert in whether or not nut bans increase safety but reading the list of banned products I don't see how it would be at all hard to do a packed lunch avoiding everything on the list.

YABVU

To slightly adjust your child's lunch to prevent another child becoming seriously ill is not much to ask... Give your children nuts for breakfast, snack or dinner instead!!

My son is one of I think 4 at his primary with a nut and or peanut allergy, some have severe allergies and have epipen, others are less severe like my son and use antihistamine. There is also a child with a severe fish and shellfish allergy and a child with multiple allergies.
No foods are banned from packed lunches for allergy reasons. There are no foods on the school dinner menu that contain nuts or peanuts.
If my son has packed lunch the staff ensure he is sat at a table with children whose lunch is peanut free. The same goes for the other children with allergies.

My dd has always had a severely but allergic person in Class and so I have never packed any nut products. There are muesli/ cereal bars without them and although I would have liked to include them it hasn't been all that difficult.

My son is very, very allergic to eggs and all dairy, has epipens but there is no way the school would ban all dairy products and as scary as it is I do get that.

He isn't allergic to nuts and as his diet is quite calorie/fat light I wish I could give him more nuts in school or nut spreads. All very well saying have that stuff at home but it doesn't always work that way. Not sure what he answer is but we are so extreme about nuts even though so many allergens can cause the same life threatening results. But I refuse to wrap him up in cotton wool either.

To the person who made the comment about an adult needing to remember - yes, and he will.

However, this has come out of the blue, he's still waiting for the appointment to give him his epipen and he has about a 100 other things in his head, including that fact that the allergic rection may finally have crashed his kidney function to the point of needing dialysis. I think he can be forgiven if he hasn't got it all squared away yet.

In the meantime, we've all chosen to avoid nuts. It seemed the kind thing to do.

I agree it is better to have other policies in place. Perhaps nut banning schools are just lazy or have other priorities to concentrate on? DS's school has no such exclusion for eating lunch, could not provide any allergy safe food for him to eat for school dinners so I know they are full of any and every allergen going. I even had to ask them to stop putting the milk in Yr R on his group's table (no need to ban it from the classroom, or him, but seemed daft to put it on the table he sits at).

OP in light of the info on this thread perhaps instead of complaining about the ban, perhaps complain to the school that they are not doing enough to help allergic children have a rounded, empathy-filled, included experience at school and you'd like to get some other parents together to work on what could be introduced to make the school a safer, kinder place. There are a few companies out there like Allergy Adventures that can come in and give lessons to the school.

A ban, understandably, is not the perfect answer for either the allergic child (or teacher), nor is it ideal for the rest of the parents, as you have pointed out. Sounds like some other methods may work far better. Now's your chance to improve things.

So what can be in a school lunch?

And, fwiw, I would support a school in banning dairy and eggs if they had children with life threatening allergies if that ban might help save them.

It's five meals a week, only part of the year. It's not the end of the world!

Yabu. I hope by now you've read about epi pens, they are for emergencies. And they can't save every life - might be too late / too sever a reaction. You've said yourself there are children with severe allergies, I'm sure if it were your children you'd hope that they were being made safe by people not bringing in nutty things. It won't take many shopping trips to get used to what brands you can / can't buy

Beedoo
It is a stupid list.
My ds is allergic to tree nuts and sesame seeds( and probably other seeds)

Why have they only included sesame seeds on bun, when a hummous sandwich would be just as dangerous to him as a peanut butter sandwich would be to some with peanut allergy. The list is meaningless.
A peanut butter sandwich is only dangerous if ingested just as a hummous sandwich is only dangerous to my ds if he ate it. No schools ever include hummous in their allergy lists but if they are going down the stupid route they should. The should also ban all dairy products, all seeds, all nuts, all lugemes, strawberrys, potatoes and seafood etc etc.