Pesto in lunch box - nut free school

[Franxie]

I’ve got a friend who has twins my kids class, they are reception age. She doesn’t let her kids have school lunches as she doesn’t think they are healthy.

Today I asked her daughters what they had for lunch and they told me a croissant, mum clarified it was a croissant with pesto spread inside, chicken, mozzarella and tomato slices.

The school is nut free so I said oh doesn’t pesto have nuts in it, she said it was fine, I said it’s really not allergies can be deadly and she insisted it was fine, school never pays attention, it’s healthy and if school ever do ask she will say it’s nut free pesto.

WIBU to report this to the school?

That's the same about everything 😄

The school can't physically search people, but the expectation is that you don't send your kid in with nuts and if you're found to be doing so, you'll be reprimanded

And if you kill a kid, well, on your shitty conscience be it

At least somebody is talking sense. Seeds, no allergy, my arse. Anaphylaxis for some, more like it.

Well, no, they couldn't enforce it. But were little Frankie then expire due to his TA sneezing over him because she decided that it's all nonsense and they can't stop her eating the one substance that could kill him, I don't think her future career prospects were all that grand.

OP just quietly have a word with the school so they can say something.

I find it hard to believe that a kid of reception age would eat pesto rather than spitting it straight out...

Report to the school - killing a child through misinformation or ignorance is not ok.

And so do children with dairy allergies. In fact more of them die than of nut allergies but we dont ban dairy.

I'd ask your friend what the ingredients are in the pesto.

Some homemade or alternative flavour 'pesto' recipes are red pepper and hazelnut or sundried tomato and almond or similar.

https://www.anaphylaxis.org.uk/fact-sheet/pine-nuts/

Some people are allergic to pine nuts. But then some people are allergic to basil, parmesan, chicken and tomatoes.

Schools have to specify which foods can’t be brought in.

This is the pesto we have. Only allergen listed is milk, pine nuts don't have to be listed and are not considered nuts for food labelling so I wouldn't consider it to be against the nut free policy.

Mine too. Terrifies me. He’s 4. There’s a large amount of relying on other people to follow the rules so they don’t accidentally kill him. Unfortunately people don’t really care whether they might accidentally kill him.

DS would ask at three if things contained milk as he had a milk allergy. They can and they should be encouraged to keep themselves safe.
What was annoying is the adults who lied to him about things containing milk because they believe nuts are the only real allergen.
I taught at a school where a child had an anaphylactic allergy to milk and we banned nuts (no nut allergies in the school).

A lot of shop bought Pesto has cashew nuts instead of of pine nuts.

DD had a child with an anaphylaxis allergy to milk in her Reception/Yr1 class. Part of the management process for it was teaching them, from day 1, that none of them could touch each others food, or swap food. They had to wash hands and faces after food, milk could 0nly be drunk at a certain table (as they all had free school milk as well).

Milk is the number one leading cause of fatal allergies in children so it seems somewhat baffling to worry about the pesto given it had mozzarella in too

(My daughter recently had a severe reaction requiring an ambulance because another child was eating cheese at school and spat some out and it hit my daughter)

Ditto for me too, in terms of having a nut allergy and being allergic to pine nuts. And as others have said, shop bought pesto actually usually contains cashews rather than pine nuts.

This person putting pesto in their kid's lunches is behaving extremely selfishly imho. Why the heck would you do that? I'm sure their child will survive, regardless of how much they may adore pesto, by just having it at home? Or if not, maybe actually buy or make nut free stuff? Wtf is wrong with people??!

it doesn’t matter if something is botanically a seed, it can still be included as a culinary nut for allergen labelling purposes.
Pistachio is an example.

Pine nuts aren’t included however, so you’re right about that… but not exactly for the reason you say iyswim.

Why are you asking kids what was in their lunchbox? Isn’t that weird?

As a parent of a child with both nut and milk allergies I find the constant handwringing about nuts with no apparent awareness of the greater risk posed by milk

And I am not asking people not to bring milk products into school, but I am asking people to understand that if you care about allergy safety you will focus on good allergen hygiene (eating with mouth closed, not throwing food, not touching other people's food) rather than enforcing allergen bans

Image is from an Imperial study - I can't post links for some reason!

Sometimes. Not usually.

It's hard to find pesto in supermarkets that doesn't have cashew nuts these days, several of the taste the difference type ones have recently introduced cashews to the recipe I guess to save money.

Op just tell the school,

Apologies if someone has already said this....to me, the worst thing is this parent didn't say to the OP "don't worry, this pesto has pine nuts in it and I know they're not actually nuts and therefore not part of the nut-free rule". She seemed to assume the pesto was indeed contravening the (imho very sensible) rule and was just going to casually lie about it if asked....

@CassandraWebb Ah v interesting- I take back my comment about milk being less anaphylactic then! I guess a lot more more kids have a milk intolerance, so a smaller proportion of them will be anaphylactic, but that still produces a greater number of fatal anaphylactic reactions than the ones who have the same from peanut allergies.

I wonder if that’s because peanut allergies are better known about, so it’s more likely that kids and caregivers will have an EpiPen and know what to do in an emergency? Plus of course peanuts are much easier to avoid than milk, less risk of mislabelling than if you’re trying to avoid milk which is in everything, etc.

The school has a nut ban though. Pine nuts are typically not considered part of that category in the UK (the name notwithstanding). People can still be allergic to them of course, but they’re probably not covered by this ban, though OP should check with the school.

Pesto may be made with different types of nuts (and often is) so the ingredients need to be checked in order to comply with school regulations in any case. It seems OP’s friend isn’t interested in doing this.

Can't believe no one has mentioned that shop bought pesto has cashew in it because it's cheaper. And pine nuts aren't a nut really.

OP, I was sceptical that nut bans were that important until my son became allergic to quite a lot things including most things with "nut" in the name.
Anything that lowers the risk is a good thing, but on the flip side as long as the whole class doesn't end up on bread and water. There's a balance to be had.

But the real worry with parents like that is their cavalier attitude, I wouldn't trust them a mile away. Yes epi pens could save your child's life, but you literally use the epi pen and call for an ambulance and you have to stay in hospital until you get the all clear. So it's not a magic antidote, it's just better if imminent death is less likely.
What happens if the parent in question decides to serve whatever it is in your child's food because they don't believe it.

We did ask the allergy doctor what the next steps were and the only thing is to see a nutritionist to make sure your child gets their right nutrients despite cutting out most major sources of protein. Certainly on the NHS there's no other option.