Food Allergies at school--No chocolate

[cijay]

The problem seems to be, and no one really has an answer for this yet, is that instances of allergic people are increasing. That means, there are MORE allergic people, percentage wise, than there were we (maybe me? I'm 39) were growing up. Food allergies in kids increased 50% from 1997-2011. Why? Scientists don't know yet. 15 million Americans have food allergies. Mathematically, that's 5% of the population or 1 in 20 and that means more people with severe allergies. Again, why? We don't know yet. I'm surprised you don't know that as an allergic person, to be honest. The reason why this didn't happen 20 years ago is because this wasn't happening 20 years ago. Somethings has happened or changed and science doesn't know what.

Actually, I don't know the numbers because I don't do the mathematics. Just can't keep the numbers in my head and run them off like that. I'm still guessing that it's becoming more and more common because the food we're producing is crap. Even organics are different because of what we have done to the air, water and soil.

You point out that some ballparks have gone peanut free beause "one sniff" and they "go into shock and die". It's not that simple, which I'm surprised you don't know.

I do know it - tell the people at the schools who tell kids to not eat peanut butter on their toast before they go to school. Nor do I care that ball parks don't sell them (I'd just as soon they stop selling beer) and airplanes don't serve them but my question remains, why weren't people dropping dead before? For the percentages, they should have been hauling at least a dead person out of each ball park or off of each plane twenty years ago until they stopped serving them. I do understand how the effects work but I don't get why it has sprung up that now kids can't have peanut butter at home (as they may touch a doorknob etc etc). If it's because someone is allergic to it at school, how does this person shop, go to theatres, go on planes (someone may have had peanut butter at the airport) or anywhere?

But it is still more MY responsibility to avoid using the tomatoey microwave than it is YOUR responsibility to not heat your lasagne. (I'm talking communal stuff...you heat your lasagne in my microwave I chase you with big stick!). And it's the same in schools. Of course it's easy to not have peanuts/chocolate around the kid but how does this kid survive outside of a plastic bubble?

 

[3Gsandme]

I answered that question above. There are more allergic people and by nature of there being more allergic people, it follows that there are more severely allergic people. The reason why you didn't hear of people dying from "one sniff" 30 years ago is that there were so few of those people. If 1 in 1000 allergic people are severely allergic and only 1 in 40 have a food allergy, it takes a LOT of people for their to be a severely allergic person in your circle, statistically. Further, if the instances of food allergies are increasing it makes sense that the severity of food allergies are increasing as well. I don't have statistics on that, but perhaps the numbers of severely allergic people have gone from 1 in 1000 allergic people to 1 in 500.

 

[monorailsilver]

I don't get it either.

BTW, I had a child with food allergies to dairy, peanut p, most tree nuts (he was just given the OK to eat cashews and almonds) and egg whites.

But I am the parent that didn't restrict other kids. I just made sure my son in elementary school) he is now in 7th grade) had a treat for parties but most of the parents knew and would bring him in something that they knew he could eat, aka a 1 lb bag if skittles...they were pretty much gone by the time he got home-he shared in the bus.

I just had a mom ask me, her son is a year younger then mine and still in elementary school, what they do at the middle school. I am not a helicopter parent and my child knows he has food allergies and he knows how he feels when he has had a slip up so he will say no, or read the ingriedients or text me a video since he can't get all the words in one picture...yep that is my son! Anyways I told the mom I have no idea because I really don't. I went to school before it started, the nurse wasn't there, I showed the bag of Benadryl and epipen to the secretary and she said ok I will put that away. Works for me as he is 12 and will be going out in the real world soon enough and I can't baby/protect him forever.

Of course when we do go out to eat I ask about ingriedients but he is aware I am doing that.

I did ask that the kids wash their hands after snack, they should before too as it cuts down on germs spread. Some times the teachers followed thru but not always. I just told him if he ever saw a red spot on his skin to go wash the area with soap and water. He used to be really allergic to dairy (he is headed for a cooked milk food challenge in November), so allergic that if it was n a table and he put his arms down he would get hives, if we had it on our hands, lips, etc...and touched him, he would get hives.

I understand wanting to protect your kid but you also need to teach them to live their life because mommy and daddy won't be there every step of the way.

 

[Christine]

I understand wanting to protect your kid but you also need to teach them to live their life because mommy and daddy won't be there every step of the way.

I'm going to say this again, probably for the third time, as it bears repeating. It's not always "mommy and daddy" who are freaking out. In today's litigenous (sp) society, it is often the schools that go NUTS when you tell them you have an allergic child. I have always gone into the schools with one purpose: To inform them of my son's allergy and hand off the Epipens. I have never made any special requests. I got the full gamut of treatment: you're on your own vs. nut free everything vs. sending out letters and making requests that I didn't ask for.

I think it's really doing a disservice to malign the parents in cases where you don't really know it's the parents. It makes it seem like people overreact when they often are quite reasonable about it.

When I used to work with the school on these things, I lost all control over how it would be handled. There were many days that I honestly just didn't want to tell them and keep it to myself but I knew that they needed to be aware for safety purposes should that rare reaction occur.

 

[phamton]

There has been a lot of speculation that we have more allergies because we have less parasites. Our body has a revived up immune system (developed over years of survival of the fittest) This strong immune system helped us fight diseases and especially parasites so that we could live to adulthood and reproduce. Now that we have fewer parasites, the immune system is still set high and so is reacting to stimuli that are not harmful and seeing it as a danger. Essentially we have a high powered hyperactive immune system with nothing to do so it is now focusing on non-threatening things like pollen or food since it has no parasites to attack.

 

[Plaid Princess]

Some people do have airborne allergies to things like peanut dust. I have no clue how they survive in day to day life since you can't really control that.

We carry epi-pens and pay attention.

While I can understand having rules like this when kids are too little to understand (although I survived school by knowing I wasn't allowed to touch other people's food), once kids reach middle school, honestly the rules are a little overbearing. I'd say a rule that all kids need to wash their hands before leaving the lunchroom is more logical than banning individual foods... and much easier to enforce. Are the poor teachers really checking each kids food?

It's important to keep kids safe from potentially deadly contamination with things they're allergic to... but there's people in the world allergic to all kinds of things. At a certain point it becomes ridiculous to ban all of them from public consumption. It's much more logical to teach kids with allergies how to navigate the world accordingly.

 

[jiminyC_fan]

Popping by to say I, too, know that a chocolate allergy is real. My cousin has it. He was taught at an early age how to deal with it. I don't agree with a ban.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

I've never heard of a chocolate allergy being an environmental allergy. Peanut allergies can be that sensitive, but chocolate? Maybe this is actually due to a peanut allergy, since many American chocolates say they may contain traces of nuts? I comply with whatever the school says. My daughter's preschool is nut-free. The school district has never said no nuts though, in fact, they offer peanut butter sandwiches as an everyday lunch option.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

Some people do have airborne allergies to things like peanut dust. I have no clue how they survive in day to day life since you can't really control that.

We had a similar situation with my little cousin and it was rough. He would only eat PBJ sandwiches for lunch for awhile. I mean flat out refuse anything else for lunch and would sit there for hours not matter what you put in front of him. It was weird because he would eat anything else at dinner but lunch nope just a PBJ. When he went to Pre-K they didn't allow him to take peanut butter. For 2 years he just didn't eat lunch. The school always sent home notes that he wouldn't eat what was packed for him but my aunt wasn't allowed to pack him what he would actually eat. I'm glad he finally grew out of that stage.

For future reference, and for anyone who is dealing with this issue also, there is a product called Sun Butter that is a good peanut butter substitute. It is made from sunflower seeds and by itself it doesn't taste like peanut butter (it's close though), but on a sandwich with jelly? A picky kid might not notice the difference and I'm not above lying to my kids when they're that age, telling them it's a different brand of peanut butter to explain away a little difference in taste. Just, if you're going to lie to your kid about the sun butter, make sure you let the preschool in on the lie so they don't blow it for you. I'm actually surprised that the preschool didn't make your aunt aware that there were acceptable peanut butter substitutes.

 

[sookie]

I have never heard of a chocolate allergy. A quick Google search seems to state that a true allergy is rare. One site said this: Allergies to cacao (the bean that is the main ingredient in chocolate) are possible but so rare as to be virtually nonexistent in recent medical literature. Therefore, if you've experienced food allergy symptoms after eating chocolate, you can safely assume that another ingredient in the chocolate is causing your symptoms unless testing shows otherwise.

I have to wonder does this child really have a severe allergy or is it like somebody that gets a rash etc that's an "annoyance" and not life threatening? Wondering if this is a mom making a mountain out of a molehill.

I also agree that by middle school a child should be able to handle their allergies well.

I would agree with this. Further, it is not likely to be airborne, nor to cause anaphylaxis. Nut allergies are more likely to cause anaphylaxis because of the shape of the peanut and nut protein.
For some reason (unknown), those protein shapes are more like to cause a more severe allergic response.

 

[Nettester]

One of my daughters attends a large public middle school. There are no bans on any foods, even peanuts. They even had a peanut noodle dish on the menu in elementary school. On the days that was being served, a small group of allergic kids ate up in the principals office to avoid the fumes. I think in all honesty, if they decided to ban even one food, they would have a mess on their hands, because then to be fair, they would have to ban everything that any of the thousands of kids have allergies to. Yet for some reason, pepperoni has disappeared from our pizza options, as that type of meat "offends" certain religious groups, hmmmm.

 

[sookie]

I've always been of the thought that, especially in elementary school, this is one of the few places that can kind of "cocoon" the allergic child and keep them safe.

Middle and High School are off limits. I mean, seriously. If they are doing after school activities and hanging out with their friends all the time... it is kind of futile when kids get to middle school (when sports and activities after school are full swing, especially).

And I'm about as zealous as they come about nut allergies. Even I knew there was nothing to do in Middle and High School. But I did request, in elementary school, that my daughter be placed in the nut free classroom and that they take steps in the cafeteria to help keep her safe... even so, they still served "Uncrustables".

 

[spinandmarty]

have no data too back this, but I think part of it is we keep too clean, not saying we don't need to wash our hands and take baths... but sometime in the early to mid 90's all the antibacterial soaps started showing up, then a few years later the lotions that can go anywhere... I see people every day using these 3 or 4 times an hour... I think we need to be exposed to bacteria so our bodies learn too fight them and build immunities.... like I say no facts just some thing I've wondered about...

 

[Shmily1]

Just plain ridiculous. I'm sorry, I know I'm stirring a hornet's nest. But those with the allergies need to learn how to survive in the real world. Having the whole school cater to one child is beyond crazy. Seriously--your daughter's Cliff bar is a dangerous weapon to this child? Really? If so, how does that child survive outside of their little plastic bubble?

I so agree with this! Teach them to adapt! How will they survive when they go to work? Will they go to work or will they have to live in their bubble forever because they haven't learned to protect themselves because everyone always catered to them? I can see someone going to a workplace and saying they have an allergy and the entire place catering to them. NOT.