Wait, so now sunbutter/ sunflower seeds and oils are an allergen?
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Anonymous
You got the extremes out of every single post you summarized but I guess thats conversations and communication nowadays. |
Anonymous
You act as if it’s so easy. My child has been underweight his whole life despite my best, best efforts to get him to eat more foods. He is 10 and weighs 55lbs. One of the FEW high calorie , protein and fat rich foods he will eat is peanut butter. Thankfully his school is reasonable and just has kids not share food and has an allergy table available that doesn’t allow nuts, and a second one that doesn’t allow dairy, since those are the 2 anaphylactic allergies present at his school. Kids with severe allergy where contact or breathing in particles will harm them, can sit there with any buddies who packed a nut or dairy free lunch. Problem solved- your kid can eat safely and so can mine. Without telling my kid he isn’t allowed to eat something because SOMEONE ELSE is allergic to it. |
Anonymous
m Which foods will you child die from if my child eats that food a few yards away? Let’s take a survey of all children in the state, and list all of those foods, and the no one will be allowed to eat any of them within the state of Maryland. Just to be safe. Because we don’t want anyone to die. And you’ll live if you can’t eat peanuts, tree nuts, dairy, eggs, wheat, soy, sesame, fish, shellfish, kiwis, bananas, mangoes, apples, chicken, peaches, beef, pork, lamb, or tomatoes. |
Anonymous
Thank you for saying this. My kid is also underweight and struggles with food. She actually doesn't really like peanut butter so that's not even something I want to send in with her, but if another kid with the same issues would eat peanut butter, I'd definitely want the school to find a way to help accommodate that safely because I know how hard it is. Dismissing the challenges of a child in this situation when it's really not that hard to accommodate both a kid with allergies and the kid who is at the bottom of the growth curve and struggles to eat. Both have a medical issue that needs to be addressed. I think if you view both kids' issues as valid and seek a solution that helps them both, you can usually find one. The problem is when one parent believes that only their child's issues matter and thinks any other concerns are less significant. That's how you wind up with policies like blanket food bans that greatly limit the ability of some parents to simply feed their children. It's not a reasonable solution and it's really not needed in most cases because very few kids have allergies so severe that they will have a life-threatening reaction just because someone in the same room consumed a food with that allergen. Just don't share food, problem solved. |
Anonymous
How are these the extremes? These are exactly what this poster/these posters are arguing. Look at her new response after this summary. She is still saying that her child will die because of something another kid ingests. |
Anonymous
| A tip I recently heard with respect to kids struggling to gain weight: consider sometimes making sandwiches on Costco croissants instead of bread. It’s admittedly not the most nutritious, but each croissant is a calorie bomb. |
Anonymous
Yep we do this. Well, not sandwiches because my kid won't eat most sandwiches, but I'll stick a croissant or half croissant in her lunch and she'll actually eat it. We also do muffins a lot because it's easy to load them up with calories and protein. To be honest I'm going to object to your statement that it's "not the most nutritious" and suggest trying to change that attitude. People consider a croissant lacking in nutrition because it's heavy in fat. But kids actually need fats in their diet and kids who are struggling to gain weight REALLY need fat in their diet. That's precisely why peanut butter is such a staple of a lot of kids' diets, because it has fat in it. Also, fun fact: a croissant has about the same amount of protein as a single serving of hummus. Fat and protein tend to go together. So actually a croissant can be a very healthy option for some kids, and the perception that it is "not nutritious" comes from somewhat disordered ideas about foods that many adults have, which deems high fat foods as "bad." Maybe it would be easier to deal with food restrictions from allergies if these same communities didn't often have disorders and highly judgmental attitudes about what kids should be eating, or what foods are healthy. Often the same parents who want allergen bans are also the ones criticizing foods for being "processed" or "unhealthy" because of fat or sugar content. But for a kid who is underweight or who might have a problem like ARFID, processed foods may be a healthy part of the solution because they can help overcome sensory issues to enable the kid to eat more. Foods high in fat often include protein these kids desperately need. And added sugar can be the difference between a kid consuming a high-calorie, nutrient-rich food or leaving it untouched (this is why my kid periodically gets a bit of chocolate sauce in her whole milk with dinner, because I know she's been avoiding food all day and it's a surefire way to get her fat, protein, Vitamin D, and calcium with her dinner and ensure she drinks the whole glass). So a suggestion to the allergy moms: you might be able to make allies out of the moms with underweight kids if you encouraged a more expansive and tolerant attitude towards the idea that different kids need different diets, and not to be so judgmental or critical of how other families feed their kids. Maybe I'm an ally with you on the tree nuts if you will be an ally with me on not labeling a croissant "junk food" or "unhealthy" when it might be the best way for me to ensure my kid actually eats a lunch her body desperately needs to consume. What if we all helped each other? Think how much better all of our lives could be. |
Anonymous
I’m one of the moms with an underweight kid and my kid doesn’t like bread or baked goods. Not joking!!! He eats his peanut butter out of a single serving PB cup, and spreads it on apple slices. It’s insane. I’m like dude EAT BREAD. He’d happily sit at the wheat allergy table if our school had one! |
Anonymous
It's so hard. My kid is the opposite -- bread is one of the few foods she will eat and peanut butter or hummus or cheese are all pretty hit or miss with her. But one reason allergy bans are hard for us is precisely because my kid is so limited with her food and will avoid any food for any reason. It takes so little to turn her off a food. Having a ton of restrictions on what you are allowed to send to school actually triggers her food anxiety generally, and I actually suspect one reason she fights eating peanut butter (at home, where I serve it) is because she knows it's a banned food at school and this makes her brain go "peanut butter = bad." Even the bread situation makes me nervous because she's getting old enough that she has started hearing weight loss nonsense from other kids and their parents, and if someone starts telling her that bread is "unhealthy" I don't know if we can get her to keep eating it. For this reason I really resent the entire conversation around food and health in schools and parent communities. My kid goes to therapy, hopefully we find a way through these food anxieties and can untangle it. But my single biggest fear for her is that her elementary food aversions become a teenage eating disorder and this winds up being a battle she fights her whole life. So yeah, my eye gets real twitchy when I hear people talking about "the Big 8" like it's a perp list. There is nothing inherently wrong with soy, it's actually a foundational part of many people's diets! But people don't think. They are laser focused on their own kids and will demonize anything their kids can't eat to make their own lives easier even if it creates some very harmful effects for kids like mine. |
Anonymous
Right? I'm pretty shocked by the lack of empathy on this thread. Hopefully it's only a few (or maybe one) loud people, but geez, to react that way to a child who had to go to the hospital? That's horrible. |
Anonymous
+1. Also, in that particular story, we were talking about a SIX YEAR OLD. |
Anonymous
The callous comment ("Guess that's his own problem to deal with. He should have stayed home if he was so allergic.") was CLEARLY the sarcastic response of someone parodying what they perceive to be inadequately empathetic attitudes towards kids with allergies. But not one person on this thread actually reacted that way to a child having to go to the hospital. Everyone responded with concern toward the child, but with varying attitudes on how this event could have been prevented (i.e. whether it would best be prevented by banning foods, educating others about the risks of food allergies, or supervising a child with allergies more closely). The fact that at least two of you have responded to what was obviously a sarcastic, not genuine, comment as representing how people feel about kids with allergies says a lot about how far off the reservation some of you are. No one wants to endanger kids with allergies. We just want common sense solutions, that are actually feasible, that protect kids with allergies without overburdening other kids or their families unnecessarily. |
Anonymous
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Oh no, the conversation in the thread had turned to the needs of other children for a moment.
Time to swoop in and put up a bunch of straw men on behalf of kids with allergies, who are obviously the only children who matter. |
Anonymous
I agree with this one. At our preschool, the list of banned foods for group events was so long that only the very, very worst crap was okay. But there were so many parties and events and birthdays (they loved a celebration), which was sweet, but the parties were then just the kids consuming pure, unadulterated junk, with no real food at all, all afternoon. However, there was only a peanut ban for individual lunches because there were no actual documented allergies. I am completely sympathetic to allergies and absolutely would never want to put even one kid in a bad position so think we shouldn't have done any group food thing at that age. |
Anonymous
The banned peanuts despite no One being allergic? Now I’ve heard it all! |