A New York TV station recently featured a brief story about the struggles schools around the United States are having dealing with food allergies. Though the primary example used is a peanut allergy, students with Celiac Disease also apply.
Today, there are nearly a dozen students in the district with food allergies, and the staff knows many of them by name. It’s just one precaution necessary to keep those kids from getting sick.
“It’s education. It’s education from my staff to the custodial staff to the nurses to the administrators and down to the classrooms,” says Crysler.
The school also has a nut-free table set aside in the lunchroom, so, if a student was to bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school, that student wouldn’t be allowed to sit there. They’d have to sit at one of the other tables.
“We can’t be peanut free because the world isn’t peanut-free; we can’t be gluten-free because the world isn’t gluten-free,” says Crysler.
Click here to read the full story.
im taeler im 17 and i have celiac disease, i've know for about a year, and am researching more about ...
I found Heartland pasta at my local WalMart and bought the fusilli. I cooked it up and combined it ...
Dr. Osborne,
Thank you for sharing that. That makes a lot of sense and explains why I can tolerate it ...
Thanks Shirley! If I go to the event, I hope to enter something with pumpkin it it...just haven't worked out ...
This is a great article that points out how difficult it is to create foods that can meet everyone’s dietary and allergy-trigger-avoidance requirements.
With so many overlapping permutations of allergy-triggers, it is very very difficult to serve foods that are “safe” to all. One thing that can help is, when possible, serve dishes that use safe substitute ingredients in a way that still meets taste-and-texture expectations of the masses, while delivering safety to those that need it.
What I mean is that, for example, it is possible to bake a gluten-free cake that is as good or better than the “real” thing. And perhaps even making it GF and dairy-free too. It surely will not hurt people without allergies to consume this allergen-reduced product, and at the same time, those people with wheat or dairy allergies find themselves able to join in with everyone else. I think that is important too (the feeling of being “normal” or “included”, especially among children).
@ Mike – Well said! Though that is especially true for children, it really applies to everyone.
The problem seems to be that schools and companies don’t want to take the time or put the effort into finding allergy free foods they can serve. Plus there is always the cross-contamination concerns.