AIBU to be pissed off that the head teacher has banned nutella in the school for one child?

[eddiejo]

The story.... one boy (hers) has allergy to nuts so now nutella is banned . I totally understand the whole anaphlaxis thing but as mum to year 1 boy with multiple food allergies - i would never expect the rest of the school to stop eating what he is allergic to.

Nutella was one of the few spreads which he could eat and made the bread edible. not healthy I know but more important to get energy in him.

What do you think?

chefswife
I ate peanut butter on toast every day it was my craving (DC's are 11 and 13) one has peanut allergy, the other doesn't.

DS's last test showed that he may have outgrown peanut allergy but not treenuts or seeds.

I ate peanuts throughpout both my pg's with my Dc's. My HV was horrified, but neither of them suffer nut allergies. I think we can be over cautious, but if a child/person has a life endangering food allergy, I think it's our duty as parents to ensure that we are not responsible for another persons allergic reaction when we can. Don't you?

Eddiejo, watch out! If you have a child with multiple food allergies, the next child that may be protected by that ban is your own...

I drive my son 20 miles to his school because the headmaster of the one nearest to us (accross the road) don't believe in those sorts of bans...

Anyways, for a child with nut allergies a nutela sandwich on the table is exactly the same as a loaded gun. Thanks for your understanding.

Speaking from experience, allergens are carried on the air and perhaps contact would swell his throat closed. I can understand her doing whatever she can to try to keep her child from coming into contact with this but...eventually he may get something from a person's clothing, their breath or develop allergies to other just as dangerous things.
I hope both your children outgrow their allergies. I didn't mine and despite multiple routes to ease them I have only grown allergic to the prescription drugs.

By the way, my son is one of those kids who can develop a reaction by placing his hands in a surface that had contact with nuts.

There is a girl in his school who had an anaphylaxis last year because someone traveling in the same plane as her, who was sitting 3 rows ahead of her, opened a packet of nuts. The dust that came out of it was enough to set up the reaction.

It is Nutella. Not water. Your child does not need Nutella to get through the day. How would you feel if your Nutella sandwich caused the death of an allergic child? Happy that your child got what he wanted for dinner?

just a quick question ,nutella is made from hazelnuts ,so are children with a nut allergy allergic to all nuts or is it just peanuts ?

not necessarily tengreenbottles.

DS's worst nut is hazlenuts, I suspect this is because they are often ground up, but it was pecan's and seseme seeds one weekend that started his allergies off. He was 4 and could eat nuttella and peanut butter before that, then he couldn't. His tests show he was allergic to most the treenuts except maybe cashew. He showed up positive to peanuts as well, although his last test was negative for peanuts
Some people are just allergic to one treenut or just peanuts

Nutella is made of sugar and vegetable fat - why would anyone want their children to eat it for lunch?

i agree with o.p you cant ban a food because one child has an allergy
my ds has allergies agaianst eggs and bananas and i very much doubt the school would ban them if i asked

YABU in that maybe the reaction would be severe, however YANBU to be annoyed at the timing.

If this child's reaction is so severe to nuts, then does the ban extend to no peanut butter on toast for breakfast for anyone? If the other kids breathe on him, or touch something, or even have a smidgen of pb on their clothes, then what happens?

I had to bake cakes for a school fete at the weekend, and it requested no nuts - fair enough...but I realised that my flour is stored next to my stash of nuts. I have packets containing salami with nuts in my fridge, near the packs of butter I used. How far does one have to go to ensure that no nut products affect others?

YOu can if a child will die upon contact.

For some children, nuts are more deadly than arsenic, more deadly that gas.

Just because these children are not YOUR children, does this absolve you of responsibility of keeping that child safe?

what happens is that the child may have a reaction and his epipen will have to be used to prevent him dying.

many people seem to be under the impression (and in light of all the faddish women with 'wheat intolerence' and 'i can only eat tomatoes on a sandwich, not on my plate, cos i'm allergic') that a nut allergy will give you a bit of a rash and a dicky tummy.

and in some cases that is true.

in other cases the child's throat closes within minutes and if the epipen doesn't work, the child will Die

If you read the opening thread the child has his own allergy issues and has to have special bread, nutella was one of the few things that he could eat that makes the bread palatable.

There are chocolate spreads that don't have nuts. But, as I said, I'm not sure that a mixture of sugar and vegetable oil is a particularly good thing to have for munch every day!

yes but the nuts (13%) actually make it a healthy option.

There are (it says on the label) 25 hazelnuts in each jar. That's,I guess, 1 hazelnut per sandwich!

no they don't, that's advertising. nutella is the delicious option, it certainly has it's place in my house - let's not salve out good-mother voice by telling ourselves it's a healthy option, please! the single nut present in a portion of that stuff in no way outweighs the large percentage of sugar and hydrogenated fat the bulk of it is made of.

Sorry have not read ALL the posts, only some.

There does seem to be a belief, strongly held among many, that nut allergies are the worst you can get.

My son has milk, egg and nut allergies. I generally only mention the milk allergy - 'tis the worst one because milk is so hard to avoid. The amount of people who have said to me "oh well at least he hasn't got a nut allergy". They are astounded when I say that he hasn't. They have been led by the media to believe that all nut allergies are so bad that even nuts in the atmosphere can cause instant death to anyone with a nut allergy.

This of course is not the case. Some people ARE so allergic to nuts that nuts in the atmosphere, or in an invisible smear of nutella on a desk can cause a life-threatening reaction. But most are not. And some people are so allergic to milk that the smell of a pizza cooking, or an invisibe smear of dairylea on a desk can cause a life-threating reaction. But most are not.

If this child is very seriously allergic then the head is right to enforce a ban.

In my son's school there are children with nut allergies, but he is the only one with an epipen (for milk and eggs). When we were all asked to bring in food for the christmas party, we were requested to make it nut free. DS1 of course had to bring in his own food because no one could ever expect anyone else to go dairy free so that he could be kept safe, that would be totally .

So IMO yes perhaps you are being unreasonable, but I totally feel for you.

My son has an allergy to nuts and has to have his epi pen with him at school . I am really pleased that nuts were already banned at his school before he started as I would have hated to think people were talking about him like this .

I can see you being annoyed becuase it wasn't banned already and it might look like she has only done it because it is her son but there are ranges of allergy and it might just be his is worse than the others .

Nutella goes on crumpets on Sundays, on icecream sometimes, and out of a spoon occasionally. I'm sure the half hazelnut my dcs get each time has done them a power of good!

balloonslayer-milk allergy must be a real nightmare.I agreer that most people think of nuts as the most serious.
A little girl in my ds's school had anaphylactic reaction because someone didn't understand the seriousness of her allergy to milk.

Am I missing something or is there a world of difference between something with/which may have traces of nuts and a spread which is 13% nuts??

As for the argument of getting calories into the OP's son, about 50% of the calories in nutella come from fat and 40% from sugar.

YABU. Quite frankly, how you can think a nut spread is the same as bread which may have nut traces in it is beyond me. There are chocolate spreads which do not have nuts in the ingredients anyway.

I am highly allergic, (anaphylaxis allergic), and my children also have allergies, but none of us to nuts, and no-where near as bad as a nut allergy (mine is to milk, but I need to actually eat milk to react).

I would not expect any school to put in place something for my children, but nuts???

completely understand the fear.......nuts can cause a reaction in sensitive people just by contact with someone who has eaten them. so if YOUR son eats his sandwich, and then touches something that this boy then touches, the boy can react, it is that severe.

your son clearly only reacts to something he himself eats, otherwise the school would have set up the same policy for your son.

Well Ds's school have had a ban on peanut butter in school and sometimes it's been all I've had in, but I've never sent it in. I'd hate to be responsible for a childs serious reaction.