Nut Allergy Insanity

I fell off the posting wagon for a few days, but I'll get back into it tonight. My apologies.

My son started Kindergarten this year. Of course, there are kids with life-threatening nut allergies in his class. I've been slightly obsessive about nut allergies for a while. First, I wonder from whence these allergies came. They did not seem to exist when I was a child. Or maybe they were just always fatal, and so we never dealt with it.

My first encounter with a person with nut allergies was when I had my meal assembly business. In this business, we set out all the ingredients for meals, and the customers assembled them and then cooked them at home. We were always very upfront with our customers about the possibility of cross-contamination, and we asked allergy-concerned customers to use extra care in preparing their meals and to ask questions if they had doubts. One month we had breaded chicken fingers on one station, and almond-crusted chicken on another station. A woman called me at home one night because she had cooked the chicken fingers, and her son had refused to eat them because they smelled nutty. She wanted to let me know that we had a problem. She told me that when she was assembling the meal, she thought we had nuts out instead of breadcrumbs, but she figured we wouldn't make that mistake, and she chose to go ahead and make the meal anyway. She wanted to let me know how very fortunate I was that her son hadn't eaten the food, because he could have died, and she would have sued us out of existence.

I appreciate the severity of nut allergies, and I am fully aware that we did make a serious mistake. One of my employees had accidentally put the nuts out instead of breadcrumbs, and it was a real problem. However, I was furious at the customer's abdication of responsibility. She thought there was a problem. Instead of questioning us at the time, she chose to go ahead and make the meal, and then cooked it and served it to her son, all the while suspecting there were nuts in the food. And she held us entirely responsible for "nearly killing" her son. As a result of this situation, I of course changed our processes to lessen the possibility of error. But I also changed our policies: we did not recommend our business for anyone with life-threatening allergies. We would turn them away as customers, even if they were willing to assume full responsibility, because our liability was just too high.

I get very frustrated with the transference of responsibility for health to other people. When Ryan attended his pre-K program, we received a note the first day of school. It informed us that one student in the 700-member student body had a life-threatening allergy to peanuts. Therefore, they requested that we not feed our children breakfast products containing peanuts at home before school on any school day. Because 1 child had an allergy, 700 families were expected to change what they ate in their own homes to accommodate this child. I understand not bringing certain products to school, but this seemed completely unreasonable to me. I feel for the parents who have a child that sensitive - they must live in fear. But as sympathetic as I am, there is a point of reasonableness.

However, I do find some humor in the nut allergy situation. Ryan's teacher presented us with a note on Back to School night. It contained a list of products that we could not send with our child as the daily snack. Some products were obvious, like peanuts, peanut butter crackers, and peanut butter sandwiches. Some were surprising, like Quaker Rice Cakes. But some were puzzling:

Beer Nuts
Cocktail Nuts
Ice Cream with Nuts

I wonder:

• Who sends their kid to school with Beer Nuts? Do they send Bud instead of water?
• If you pack cocktail nuts, do you also pack a martini shaker and some olives?
• Who packs their kid ice cream as a snack? It's 2 hours between the start of school and snack time!

But it is good to know that I am permitted to send Ryan to school with ice cream as a snack, just as long as it doesn't have nuts.