To wonder what is dangerous about my child’s lunch

[NameChangeAK]

I received a message from school today saying my child’s lunch contained a prohibited item and to please review the policy “as there are children with severe allergies and it’s dangerous not to comply”

I don’t usually provide packed lunches - DC has school meals, but they did like todays meal options.

Ive responded and asked what the item was but waiting for a response, but I’m confused - it’s clearly a nut free school but I can’t see anything else anywhere about other banned foods

the packed lunch contained:

• ham sandwich (with butter) on brown bread
• apple
• frube (strawberry flavour)
• carton of own brand apple juice
• Pepperami
• babybel

any ideas what could be the problem or Aibu to think they’ve mistaken the ham as peanut butter or something ridiculous?

Cheese isn't banned, and I got the impression that normal yogurt pots aren't.

Pretty sure that most people can manage one meal without dairy in a day though, without having ill effects.

Yes, let’s make kids with allergies feel even more weird and different by shutting them away from the normal kids to eat. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

But what if the peanut allergy kid sits next to the dairy allergy kid and each of them has the other's allergen in their food? In squirty formats?

They would all have to have completely allergen free meals. No dairy, no egg, no gluten, no fish etc. Completely unworkable.

It’s unworkable to ban major allergens too though. Nuts are already banned in most schools. If dairy was banned too it would make pack lunches challenging for lots, especially vegetarians and those on low incomes. What sandwich choices would a vegetarian have that’s cheap and kids would actually eat? No peanut butter, no cheese.

It absolutely can be! I know of a lad who has an anaphylactic reaction to dairy. He has reacted to being in a room with someone who had had a coffee with milk in it about an hour beforehand.

I;m 50 and have recently been diagnosed with coeliac disease. Never ever been an issue. But my consultant said he recently had a patient in his 40s who very suddenly developed an anaphylactic allergy to wheat. He found out the hard way- when he had a beer and ended up in hospital. He said that sometimes something triggers a major allergy - his view is that in my case and his other patient's case it was having covid a few times. Major infection and inflammation and it triggers all sorts of auto immune responses.

As long as the food doesn't come in contact with them it should be ok.

Should* *be ok isn't quite good enough, it's a child's life we're talking about.

Frubes are the worse designed packaging ever.
Who thought it was a good idea to put yougart into a tube and expect kids to carefully and gently squeeze it into their mouths?

They squeeze too hard or let go at the wrong time and it's all over the tables, the chair, their hands 🙌 which then touch everything, door handles, taps.

The risk of an allergic child coming into contact with it is too great.

I know someone who took an anaphylaxtic reaction to wheat also around 40.
I think the eventual conclusion was it was under cooked wheat in a soft doughy baguette that triggered it.
But he'd been eating the same baguettes from the same shop for ages before it happened.

Something having been done years ago doesn't stop children dying or becoming seriously ill due to allergies today. Dairy is good for most people, but if you have a life-threatening allergy, it could kill you.

This isn't actually about intolerance of a food in the sense of eating quantities of something causing a bit of a stomach ache or about a dislike of it. This is about protecting children with life-threatening allergies. This is about children collapsing with anaphylaxis, or being hospitalised with severe GI bleeding from allergic colitis, etc.

Allergy protocols and other healthcare policies were factors in our choices of childcare. If they're a factor the other way for you, that's up to you, but it seems unreasonable to want your choices to trump a child's healthcare needs. If it's really important to you for your child to have dairy at lunch, send them to a school where they can.

@SusieLawson a lot of people have dreadful memories of the free school milk.
Memories of constant tummy aches, being sick, having the runs etc.
People have always had intolerance or allergies to food - it just didn't always have a label.

Bread that has seeds or nuts in the loaf. Very small and finely chopped.

I’m learning lots on allergies on this thread . I’ve always been vigilant when making breakfast for my grandchildren before daycare/play dates with regard to nut butters etc as it gets everywhere and toddlers are very “sharing” . Now I will be careful to make sure they don’t accidentally have yoghurt residue on them too

So no yoghurt at all then. Coz when you open a yoghurt it squirts sometimes. So no milk allowed in the school either. This is ridiculous. The child with the allergy needs to be isolated with one close friend until they are able to deal with it themselves.

For the rest of their school days?

And how does that solve the bullying or 'joking around ' that results in children having their allergens thrown at them? Which has been a cause of death for children.

Back in the '80s and '90s, some schools had 'allergy tables', which just further stigmatised children. Because clearly people's health needs, over which they have no control, should be a means of stigmatising children until they know better... (Or, you know, we could make reasonable adjustments like saying people keep potentially lethal items and foods for consumption in their own time).

The major issue with allergens in schools often isn't the child with the allergy. It's the other pupils who forget, don't pay attention, or think it's funny to potentially hospitalise their classmate.

One child liking yoghurts or peanut butter doesn't trump another child liking breathing.

Is this aimed at the school that op posted about?

Because she quite clearly stated there isn't a blanket ban on all dairy, just that kind because there is a higher risk of splattering.

Any product can be spread around, especially by messy young children. However, the frubes are messier than other products, so the school has chosen to ban them as it means that children can still bring in yoghurts. They will also have other measures in place around cleaning surfaces and washing hands.

It's really really sensible, helps protect a child with a serious allergy without any particularly difficult burdens on other children and their families.

The problem is the shit communication of the ban.

Nobody said no yougarts, just not yougart in stupidly designed packaging.