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.

My mind boggles at the idea that anyone would rather put a child at risk than be 'inconvenienced' by a nut ban. Just check the ingredients when you buy the food! There are plenty of things to buy and eat that don't contain nuts. And if you have three packed lunches to pack that's your choice (to choose packed lunches that is).

marynary the point being made here by several parents of children with severe food allergies that are not nuts is that this doesn't happen. schools don't make adjustments for severe allergies by banning the allergen, they only do this for nuts. Why is this?

no one has posted that their school has banned eggs or milk in foods.

Didn't someone post upthread that their child has a severe tomato allergy, and not only have the school not banned tomatoes, they're still growing tomatoes in the school playground?

I am aware of other allergies, working in a school means we are always vigilant, but I have never known non-nut allergies to be anything other than ingesting. Is it true that these can be fatal just coming into contact with the allergy food?

DH knew someone with an orange allergy who went into anaphylactic shock after someone else peeled an orange on the other side of a large room.

She recovered, fortunately, but that could easily have been fatal without prompt medical attention.

My ds's food allergy is severe, but anaphylaxis only happens by ingesting.
By contact, it's mild to moderate reaction.
Ds has other environmental allergy as well, like pollen, house dust, and pets. He just have to live with it with doses of antihistamine everyday.

Scary about the orange

Look, it's a minor PITA, that's all. Pales into insignificance against the potential risk to another child's life.

I'd love to be able to put nuts into dd's lunch because they're among the few sources of protein that she will readily eat. However, I accept that nuts would pose a risk to other children, and therefore I need to find alternatives. It might take a bit of creativity at first, but you'll quickly adapt and establish a new range of foods that can be included instead.

Some people on this thread even says they would send nuts against ban because that's their right.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that sort of attitude really is pathetic?

I just read the thread about the braless girl and for a moment thought this one was about boys being forced to wear tight underpants so their "nuts" wouldn't show ... eh, figures, boys are never policed that much.

It is a bit unreasonable to ban nuts at the whole school without giving an explanation. They should let people know that there's a child with nut allergy, at the very least.
Though I think a more sensible solution would be for the allergic child to be homeschooled - you can't ban every kind of food, and if the assumption is that children will share lunch, then you'd also have to ban bread (gluten allergy), milk, most kinds of fruit, et cetera. I don't think there's many foods no one is allergic to.

Is it true that these can be fatal just coming into contact with the allergy food?

Yes!!!! Shit loads of severe allergies can be on contact. Not just the famous peanut allergy.

I was Administrator at a pre-school with a child with a severe nut allergy - contact could cause anaphylaxis. We sent out letters ALL the time about no nuts, no nut products, etc blah blah. It was ONE meal a day, it's not difficult just don't send anything with nuts in.

Every fucking week someone sent nuts into school because it 'wasn't fair' to their DC who 'love' nuts. Well, it sure as hell wasn't fair to the poor child who had the allergy. And as for the parents who suggested the child eat alone in a separate room . . .

Not RTWT, but schools usually only do this when it is really necessary, as in reality it is a pain in the arse having to police it (I know because I was the one who had to do it) - which you have to do as a child's life is at risk.

We used it as a lesson in being caring for others, not putting others at risk by our actions if we can help it, and being aware of people outside their own little bubble. A good life lesson for children imo.

And just to add, the other children on the whole had no issue with the policy, it was the parents who did.

Well I never. It never occurred to me that my spewing on smelling peanuts (never mind eating them) could be an allergy - I thought all peanut allergies were anaphylactic!

" And as for the parents who suggested the child eat alone in a separate room "

I think this is heartless suggestion unless request came from the allergic child/child's parents.

My ds had to sit on his own during ks1, monitored by supervisor after the incident of some children trying to force him to eat what he was allergic to. He hated lunch time. We care so much so he could have as normal life as possible. But things like this stand them out from other children.
They may have illness, but they are normal children as well. They have feelings too.

In upper school we had a girl who was very allergic to pretty much everything, Nuts, fresh fruit and lots of other 'standard food'. This was not an issue to any of us kids, We were not allowed to throw skins etc into open top bins, we were not allowed to bring any form of nuts to school, if we had bake sales etc we had a list of stuff we could not bring/make. It was heavily advised that when making foods for such events, the area you are cooking in should be completely cleaned to ensure to risk of contamination. This was not an issue - and as others have already said it helped teach us a sense of respect for other people and taking others needs into consideration as well as your own.

There is also an importance to allow each child the same freedom in being able to enjoy their time at school. This is supposed to be a safe environment and kids are only able to have this freedom for a short time, why would you ruin that for another child simply because you can't be arsed to read a label? Find a few pack lunches that don't contain the forbidden foods and stick to them - it won't take forever, all food that may contain nuts is clearly labelled nowadays anyway.
FYI - even bags of nuts have this warning 😝

I was once eating an orange at work, colleague's phone rang, I wiped my hands on a paper towels and answered it, hung up, and thought no more of it until about an hour later when her face swelled up with huge red welts.

She hadn't thought to mention she was allergic to citrus fruit (something in the skin - the fruit part was OK). We kept fruit out of the office as there were only 10 of us, but in other workplaces where there's 100s of people hot-desking that could be a big problem.

BoGrainger - I once spent 4 days in ICU as a result of residual contact to my allergen.

Your lack of understanding about none nut allergies is a wide spread problem, a problem propagated by nut allergies being treated as 'special' or 'more serious'. Schools are sending the wrong message!

Sorry OP but YABU. Yes it's a slight PITA, but, really, is it that big of a deal to avoid nuts in their pack ups? There are such things as nut-free cereal bars and it takes seconds to check an ingredients list. Plus if you feel that strongly that nuts need to form a part of your DC's diet, there's plenty of time outside of school when they can eat them to their heart's content. The school may well have additional information which they're choosing not to share for whatever reason, a child starting in September with a nut allergy or one who's been recently diagnosed, in which case it seems a perfectly reasonable precaution. I agree you can never completely eliminate the risk, and allergy sufferers and their parents should never be complacent but, on the assumption that most parents will at least try to comply, a nut free policy significantly reduces that risk.

And yes, for those of us who went to school in the 80s or earlier, there were no such things as nut bans, but we also had climbing frames set straight into concrete playgrounds and communal drinks fountains that the whole class would queue up and have a good slobber over. Some things have changed for the better!

Though I think a more sensible solution would be for the allergic child to be homeschooled

Why stop there? Let's force every child with extra needs to be home educated so that everyone else isn't inconvenienced by their extra requirements eh

mummymeister
fascicle if this isn't the case, the use of box ticking, then why don't we hear of schools with dairy and egg bans then?

Given the consequences of not taking allergy management seriously, why would any school risk treating it as a 'box ticking' exercise? Why do you assume a nut ban might be the only intervention in place? The primary school local to me has a nut ban plus a range of other measures to support allergy management and reduce the risks to students with allergies.

Dairy and egg bans are presumably less common due to the difference in numbers of sufferers and because bans on these foods might be perceived as difficult/objections greater.

I don't know of any secondary schools in our area that ban any food stuffs.

Nut bans tend to be primary school interventions.

Regarding the lack of knowledge of non-nut allergies, schools only train staff and put strategies in place when they have children with specific allergies on the roll. E.g. We only have yearly epipen training while we have children in the school who carry them. We have only just been told of a nut ban in packed lunches next term as we have a child starting who is at risk from non-ingesting nuts. No doubt if a child started with a serious non-nut allergy then measures would be put in place to maximise their safety. Obviously my own lack of knowledge stems from the fact that we have never had children with this. Over the last few years we have only had maybe 4 or 5 children a year out of 300 at risk from anaphylaxis and they have all been nut/sesame related.

I agree with BoGrainger.
Non ingesting anaphylaxis seems to be less common with other food.
But if there are children, I trust school to take appropriate procedure.
Before starting school, Class teacher/HT/home school link wanted to have detailed meeting regarding my ds's allergy. I had a strong feeling they are very serious about safety of all children.
As for nursery, they banned fruit my ds was allergic to even it was only fatal if ingested.