To email school about them banning any food that "may contain traces of nuts"?

[PartyGoose]

Had an email last night from DD's school (it's a school that goes right through from 3-18 so covers all age groups) saying that as of today give us plenty of notice why don't you no food can be brought onto school premises that contains nuts or "may contain traces of nuts" due to a child with a severe nut allergy starting there.

I can't see how this is workable. It rules out about 50% of bought food, and 100% of food made/prepared in my kitchen as we eat a lot of nuts at home.

Obviously I am more than willing to avoid sending any food that actually has nuts in, and I'm going to take extreme care to check labels etc going forward.

But...surely they can't expect everyone to avoid anything that "may contain traces of nuts"? That's just not doable for most people.

Schools often seem to go for this with both feet. We had a child with a 'severe' nut allergy so banned all food that wasn't labelled 'produced in a nut free environment'. Now said child (who it turns out wasn't allergic after all, but never mind) has left, they are maintaining a strict nut free policy as they say it's 'good practise'.

It is very limiting and I expect it's going to end up being ignored as it's clearly just a rule for the sake of it.

If you could just make out a fortnightly menu for packed lunches that don't contain any foods that say 'may contain traces of nuts' that would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.

In fact the danger is that by making the restrictions so onerous, people just ignore them completely - its quite tough even if you are highly motivated, and the vast majority won't be. So potentially the risk for the allergic child actually increases if very strict exclusions are attempted.

Exactly this.

There is massive difference between a Nutella sandwich and banning foods that are labelled may contain traces of nuts @Nocutenamesleft . That's the whole point.

Our school is "nut free" all it means is you don't send in actual nuts or things known for containing nuts eg nutty cereal bars. There's traces of nut in lots of things, there's no way you can police what's in every child's lunchbox, I suppose they just trust parents. I think it's sad when children have such a severe allergy but short of reading every label like the parent of the allergy child does you can't be sure there isn't traces in things.

I'm aware of that

That's just what parents used to send them in. Not realising they contained nuts is what they said. SMH.....

I remember looking a the print on a bag of peanuts and it saying warning may contain nuts

@BigFatLiar I know that seems really stupid but it's necessary. Peanuts aren't a nut; they are a legume. There are people who are allergic to tree nuts but not peanuts, and vice versa. Often both are produced in the same factory, hence the risk of cross-contamination and the 'may contain' warnings. People with allergies to either legumes or tree nuts are often encouraged to maintain their exposure to the other as it is thought this might help to stop them developing further allergies. These are the people who need to know if they can eat peanuts without a risk of exposure to tree nut traces.

Quite. When I was growing up I had a friend with a significant nut allergy who was quite happy to eat things that "may contain nuts".

The warning was so widespread that it had just become meaningless to her.

I would definitely email the school and ask for a list of what foods children can bring to make them think a bit harder about this.

This happened in my DCs school and it turned out that it came from an overzealous risk assessment maker in school rather than the child's parents or doctor so it was quietly overturned.

Well - just send your child in with something containing nuts and the problem of the universe revolving round them would instantly be solved by bumping off these pesky people with allergies.

I am governor at a primary school - we have a child in this situation - every one is very happy to do everything they can to prevent nuts coming into school because - guess what? - we care.

I have a DS who has a life threatening allergy to all nuts and sesame seeds. Parents who do not have a child with allergies can have no idea how stressful it is to leave your child at school not knowing if another child will have a nut product in their lunch.

However, I agree with OP that it will be impossible to expect the contents of packed lunches to not have the warning ‘may contain nuts, or traces of nuts’ as almost every item has this on the label.

Personally, as long as there are no nuts in the actual ingredients we accept this as being safe. Some items, particular chocolate cause swelling of his mouth and tongue, but generally most things are okay. But if we paid attention to the ‘may’ or ‘traces’ he wouldn’t be able to eat hardly anything at all.

I would contact the school, to be honest they would have a much better response if they were just to ban items that contained nuts in the ingredients.

Yes, agreed Zoya.

I used to make my own Nutella type spread as my dc is only allergic to peanuts.

There was only one brand of hazelnuts that did not say 'may contain traces of peanuts' so that information was very useful to me.

It’s really not that hard at all. Our school has always been nut free since my children have been there. I presumed all schools were.

But several posters which children who are allergic have said they give food that says "may contain traces of nuts". So it clearly wouldn't be all. My DH has an anaphylactic allergy to nuts and peanuts and we don't have a house that is totally free of all products that say "may contain".

Nut free is not the same thing at all. Absolutely nobody's thinks nut free is hard.

It’s frustrating to have to check all your food, but YABU to email the school and also this shouldn’t be bothering you. I’m guessing your children are allergy free? Having children with allergies needs to be taken seriously

Thing is, there are different levels of allergy.
Some people can get an anaphylactic reaction if they eat nuts, others who are severely sensitive/allergic can go into anaphylaxis merely by walking past someone in the street who is eating nuts.
There are numerous cases of people having anaphylaxis on a plane because another person ate nuts in another part of the plane.
Do you think the child with the severe nut allergy is deliberately doing it to make your life harder?
Yes, it’s fair bit of effort to avoid food with may contain warnings, but it’s perfectly possible - how else do you think people with severe nut allergies live.
It is truly awful to say you can’t be bothered to make the effort to save a child’s life by looking at the food labels for lunch/ snacks. The affected child’s family have to do it for every single meal for the rest of the child’s life.
I think it’s great the school are doing it - it might give people a little insight into what it is like for the child with the severe allergy.
Have some sympathy for the poor child who is affected. Save their life. School will have more information than you do on their sensitivity to nuts. It’s no point people saying, “I know so-and-so and they are allergic but they have may contains” each child is different - if this one has extreme sensitivity that even a trace of nuts may kill them, then you just have to think of others and pit in the effort. It’s not asking much compared to the stress that the affected child and their family face every day.

The more everyone avoids nuts, the more nut allergies there will be in the future. The worst thing that ever happened was telling women to avoid eating nuts during pregnancy to avoid giving baby a nut allergy- completely nonsensical advice and now proven that the opposite is true.

As you are not the child in question it really isn’t relevant what you do.
Everyone is different and some are extremely sensitive and brittle in their allergic response.

Actually, for the sake of the child with the allergy, I'm rather appalled at the lack of reading comprehension shown in this thread.

It's vital for people with allergies that people know about crosscontamination, and how something that does not contain the allergen as a main ingredient may contain traces of it.

If the child is genuinely unable to be in the same building as something that may at one point have been in the same building as a nut, it's absolutely vital that the rules are followed properly, or the child will be put at risk.

And if their allergy is not that severe, then they need to reword the instructions, for all the reasons stated by other people.

My DD has a severe nut allergy and I have noticed more and more companies are just using the label "may contain nuts" which is so frustrating.

I completely agree that there is almost nothing left that doesn't have this label...

As long as there are no actual nut products I think that is the best they can hope for-my DD would be fine with that. We do have nut products in the house that her brothers eat but as long as we are careful it's fine.
I also know some ppl have airborne allergies and wouldn't be ok and that everyone is different but that is my experience.

She did have a terrible reaction at an ice cream place where they didn't clean the scoop enough between orders and some cross contamination triggered a reaction.
Now she just doesn't eat anywhere like this-sad but not worth the risk.

I would also like to point out that giving an adrenaline injection (eg epipen) does not make everything ok - it simply buys you about 15 minutes to get the patient to hospital. Many still die despite adrenaline being administered.

And as many others have pointed out most products come with the may contain traces warning and unless she keeps her home completely but free all the food she prepares at home may contain traces of nuts.

Have you looked at labels recently? Pretty much everything has a 'may contain' label. It's simply not reasonable to expect everyone else to have to buy specialist food that doesn't have this label, especially when alternatives are often more expensive. No nuts in the ingredients is fine, and people shouldn't be complaining about that. But no 'may contain' is too difficult and not acceptable.

i think it's all about spreading liability. doubt most parents will put much effort into this long term.