The Boy's daycare is a nut free establishment, I've blogged before. I wasn't thrilled about this, but I do realize that my access to easy and cheap lunches (peanut butter sandwiches) is not worth the life of a child. So I check my ingredients and change my recipes (when needed) to ensure that the stuff I send to daycare is nut free.
But yesterday when I opened the afterschool lunchbag, I found a note on his granola bar -- his carefully selected, nut-free granola bar, a hard-fought choice since all the ones he likes have nuts -- that said "this said it may have nuts, so we couldn't serve it."
And now I'm annoyed. Do you have any idea how many things these days say "may contain nuts"?! I mean, EVERYTHING. So they don't get SUED. So now I have to avoid not just stuff with nuts, but the stuff that might be contaminated in the off chance that my child might share something that might have nuts with the ONE kid who has a nut allergy?
Seriously??!
I'm just ... no. That's crazy. That's too much.
And I don't know what to do about it. Nothing, I guess. I don't want to be the parent who makes a fuss over this, not when children's lives are at stake. But the amount of mights that occur in this scenario make me feel like we're really taking this allergy thing too far.
1 comment:
You're absolutely right. It's the same worst-first stupid-assery that makes it impossible for parents in Toronto to send anything homemade to school for their kids to share (as well as not being allowed to send anything with peanuts or nuts to school EVER), even if it does not contain nuts or peanuts or other allergens, even if there is no child in their child's class who actually has an allergy.
I am perfectly OK with restricting actual (not possible) allergens when there is an identified kid with an identified-as-life-threatening allergy, particularly when the kids in question are really little and may not yet have the awareness and self-control to NOT EAT THE THING THAT MIGHT KILL THEM. But frankly, by the time your allergic kid is my kid's age? They should be learning that what having a life-threatening allergy means is that you have to be careful, you cannot just eat what everyone else is eating without checking it out, and the world is full of those things that might kill you. Because one day you will be a teenager, and one day an adult, and one day you will travel to other countries, or at least other neighbourhoods, and they will be full of allergens and full of people who have no idea you are allergic, and it will be your responsibility to avoid the dangerous thing. And if your parents have raised you to believe that keeping you safe from {peanuts/nuts/milk/wheat/apples/potatoes/chocolate/whatever} is everyone else's job, you are going to blithely eat at a restaurant one day and you are going to die.
Ahem.
Post a Comment