no Peanut Butter for lunch in school

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
… what if PB is the only lunch another family can afford?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t buy it. Sure, peanut butter is a great lunch. But bologna is cheap - I can get three pounds of it at Aldi for the price of a jar of peanut butter; that’s about 12 protein servings of each. Soup is even cheaper, and more filling. ETA: and if peanut butter is all you can afford, surely you qualify for school lunches, anyhow, and they’ll take care of your choices for you safely.

As came up in another thread recently, your *preferences *take a back seat to someone else’s needs. A peanut allergic kid *needs *to have an environment free of peanuts. No one else *needs *to eat peanut butter.
Hmm. Y’know, this may be one of those rare debates in Great Debates which has actually changed a mind: mine. I’m pretty sure we did this a couple of years ago and I thought peanut bans were ridiculous. Luckily, no one can search right now to bring up what I’m sure were my brilliant arguments and use them against me! :smiley:

42

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
Not cheap if it’s all you can afford.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe (although I’d be interested to see the figures -is there really no alternative?), but is it really OK to be saying “I understand this might be a deadly risk to you, but it’s all I can afford”?

43

[QUOTE=Napier]
I think the ADA requires facilities to make “reasonable accomodations”, and everyone has the right to demand schools obey the ADA.
[/QUOTE]

Bah, they should keep their noses where they belong- in people’s mouths. Stick to informing kids about tooth decay and gum disease.

44

>Bah, they should keep their noses where they belong- in people’s mouths. Stick to informing kids about tooth decay and gum disease.

Very funny. I didn’t mean dentists. I was obviously talking about Countess Ada Lovelace.

45

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
I don’t buy it. Sure, peanut butter is a great lunch. But bologna is cheap - I can get three pounds of it at Aldi for the price of a jar of peanut butter; that’s about 12 protein servings of each. Soup is even cheaper, and more filling. ETA: and if peanut butter is all you can afford, surely you qualify for school lunches, anyhow, and they’ll take care of your choices for you safely.

As came up in another thread recently, your *preferences *take a back seat to someone else’s needs. A peanut allergic kid *needs *to have an environment free of peanuts. No one else *needs *to eat peanut butter.
Hmm. Y’know, this may be one of those rare debates in Great Debates which has actually changed a mind: mine. I’m pretty sure we did this a couple of years ago and I thought peanut bans were ridiculous. Luckily, no one can search right now to bring up what I’m sure were my brilliant arguments and use them against me! :smiley:
[/QUOTE]

A vegetarian/vegan can’t eat bologna, however. And there may be religious groups who won’t touch it (e.g. if it has pork in it).

Yes, I’m nitpicking, because I think the principle is more important in this case: freedom of choice.

Ban? No. If school officials simply phrase it as a a request, explaining the situation to parents, I bet a vast majority would CHOOSE to do it voluntarily. I have no problem with that.

But I think parents have a right to continue sending PB it if that’s their choice. Kids who want PB should be allowed to have it—safely away from the kid who can’t. Maybe, so long as they wash their hands and rinse their mouths after lunch etc., they can co-exist. If that isn’t enough and this child has such a severe allergy to it, I’m not sure he/she should even leave the house because I’ll say hi on the street and the 3 PB atoms in my breath will kill him/her.

I fully understand that needs should be accomodated and there are lots of reasonable people out there who would agree. I don’t agree, however, with how far people are willing to go in taking away the rights of others to achieve that.

And I’m just skeptical as hell. I wonder…we’ve all seen these “caught on tape” TV shows where a guy is getting workers’ comp because he’s faking an illness, but here he is working on a construction site, etc.

Follow them around with a camera. “Here’s the family at Wal Mart…there goes the child, walking right past bags of peanuts. And here they are at the ball game…yes, that’s a guy selling peanuts. Here’s the mother enjoying a Peanut Butter Twix before picking her up from school…”

46

[QUOTE=Napier]
>No one has the right to demand the public schools make such accommodations.

I think the ADA requires facilities to make “reasonable accomodations”, and everyone has the right to demand schools obey the ADA. There would have to be a judgement that eliminating peanuts from the school was a “reasonable accomodation”, but since so many schools are doing this and still functioning, I’d bet the judgement would be (or has been) that eliminating peanuts IS reasonable.
[/QUOTE]

Not necessarily… The ADA may require such an accomodation to be made. However, the fact that schools are doing it and still functioning does not mean there has been a judgment. The ADA does not prevent a school from doing it if it is ruled not necessary. It is possible, and I would think likely, that there has not been a judgment either way on this, or, even that there has been a ruling that says it is not a required accomodation. Neither would prevent individual schools from imposing such a ban.

47

Just a quick note, since earlier in the thread “nut allergy” and “peanut allergy” were being thrown around as if they were the same thing.

Not the same thing. Peanuts are not nuts. People with allergies to peanuts are very often also allergic to tree nuts, and vice-versa. But not always so.

(and sometimes little kids with the allergy aren’t too clear, themselves, on what they can and can’t eat. my nephew and I make a game of “what we can’t eat” sometimes, because of that.)

Also something to consider: peanut and nut allergies tend to be of the type where the reaction gets progressively worse with each exposure. Little Suzie may have had a severe but not life-threatening peanut allergy that didn’t require an epi-pen, originally. But after being exposed too many times to he’ll-only-eat-PB Bryan, her reaction may well progress into the danger zone.

Hell of a thing if it happened because the school decided against a peanut-ban. (or if she flew on Southwest, which actually still gives out peanuts – much to my surprise).

48

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
A vegetarian/vegan can’t eat bologna, however. And there may be religious groups who won’t touch it (e.g. if it has pork in it).

Yes, I’m nitpicking, because I think the principle is more important in this case: freedom of choice.

Ban? No. If school officials simply phrase it as a a request, explaining the situation to parents, I bet a vast majority would CHOOSE to do it voluntarily. I have no problem with that.

But I think parents have a right to continue sending PB it if that’s their choice. Kids who want PB should be allowed to have it—safely away from the kid who can’t. Maybe, so long as they wash their hands and rinse their mouths after lunch etc., they can co-exist. If that isn’t enough and this child has such a severe allergy to it, I’m not sure he/she should even leave the house because I’ll say hi on the street and the 3 PB atoms in my breath will kill him/her.
[/QUOTE]

But eating meat won’t kill a vegan or someone with religious reasons. They can be around it, too.

There is no such thing as a right without limits. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

And dude, it’s just peanut butter-doing without won’t kill you.

49

In my son’s elementary school, nuts and peanuts are banned. “This product may contain nuts” on the label? Also banned. “This product processed on equipment that may have processed nuts”? Not allowed, bud.

My wife found sesame butter, which looks like peanut butter, and which the kids like OK. It’s not an allergy problem, so it’s allowed…
but my son got tired of lunchroom parents asking him every day if it was peanut butter, so he doesn’t want it any more.

Here’s a FOAF story, but a women I dated in college said a classmate of hers from high school died because he didn’t realize he was eating a peanut butter Twix instead of a regular one.

50

[QUOTE=Napier]
I never heard of peanut butter allergies until perhaps 10 or 15 years ago, but now the day care center Mrs. Napier works at has a total ban, and I hear local schools do too.

I think I read somewhere that improving sanitation and vaccination programs has so reduced the frequency of infections that children’s immune systems must fight off, that their immune systems are starting to overreact to otherwise nonthreatening substances. Further, that this causes much of the recent increase in allergies and asthma. And that there was some particularly interesting consequence of this relating to a herpes virus and childhood chicken pox and adult shingles cases. And, finally, that there is some research going on to consider the merits of deliberately exposing people to a variety of infectious and contageous bacteria and viruses that are essentially harmless, to give the immune system something safer to work on than peanuts. Can anybody help me pull together or correct these somewhat connected threads?
[/QUOTE]

Where can we find those somewhat connected threads? Perhaps some of the children showing annoying symptoms would have simply died in the old days–much more convenient!

(Family anecdotes indicate that childhood chicken pox does not rule out herpes or shingles later in life.)

51

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
But I think parents have a right to continue sending PB it if that’s their choice.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t get this. On what basis is there a right to this? Do you think a parent has the “right” to send a child with TB to school?

Now I am not saying the ban is sensible. But you oppose it by showing that the benefits of a ban are outweighed by the costs, not by inventing some “right” to feed your child peanut butter.

52

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
A vegetarian/vegan can’t eat bologna, however. And there may be religious groups who won’t touch it (e.g. if it has pork in it).
**
Yes, I’m nitpicking, because I think the principle is more important in this case: freedom of choice.**

Ban? No. If school officials simply phrase it as a a request, explaining the situation to parents, I bet a vast majority would CHOOSE to do it voluntarily. I have no problem with that.

But I think parents have a right to continue sending PB it if that’s their choice. Kids who want PB should be allowed to have it—safely away from the kid who can’t. Maybe, so long as they wash their hands and rinse their mouths after lunch etc., they can co-exist. If that isn’t enough and this child has such a severe allergy to it, I’m not sure he/she should even leave the house because I’ll say hi on the street and the 3 PB atoms in my breath will kill him/her.

I fully understand that needs should be accomodated and there are lots of reasonable people out there who would agree. I don’t agree, however, with how far people are willing to go in taking away the rights of others to achieve that.

And I’m just skeptical as hell. I wonder…we’ve all seen these “caught on tape” TV shows where a guy is getting workers’ comp because he’s faking an illness, but here he is working on a construction site, etc.

Follow them around with a camera. “Here’s the family at Wal Mart…there goes the child, walking right past bags of peanuts. And here they are at the ball game…yes, that’s a guy selling peanuts. Here’s the mother enjoying a Peanut Butter Twix before picking her up from school…”
[/QUOTE]

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. While a PB ban may be somewhat inconvenient for you as a parent whose child enjoys his PB&J, the alternatives are much worse for the parents of a child with a severe PB allergy. We aren’t talking about children that are older than middle schoolers. We are talking about low level elementary school children. An elementary school lunchroom is pretty chaotic and messy. It is not difficult to see how problems could easily occur in even the most regulated situations.

Am I to assume from your post that you would have an issue with the ban that my district has placed on latex products in the junior high and high schools? In this case we are talking about 3 kids out of 3000 or so (between the two schools) that
have a severe latex allergy. Does the freedom to have balloons in school outweigh the chance of killing a classmate?

53

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
But eating meat won’t kill a vegan or someone with religious reasons. They can be around it, too.

There is no such thing as a right without limits. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

And dude, it’s just peanut butter-doing without won’t kill you.
[/QUOTE]

My comment about vegans/bologna etc. was in response to it being offered as an alternative to PB for lunch. I guess the kid will have to eat a nada sandwich.

A right without limits? That sounds like what the allergic person wants…tell everybody else how to live.

And isn’t that the crux of the argument? Supposedly one kid has the same rights as the next, no more and no less. But it isn’t 1:1 even: it’s one allergic kid to maybe hundreds of non-allergic kids. But as I stated, I think most people would be very reasonable and desist with the PB if you just ask. In fact, I suspect all would…nobody wants to be responsible for some kid dying.

I’d like to believe that I could go in that allergic child’s house and find that anything that could be problematic is gone. There are no products with the label “May contain nuts.” There’s no walnut or other wood oils in the garage. Grandma isn’t putting out boxes of Crackerjack when the family gets together at Christmas. They don’t buy granola bars that say “May contain traces of nuts.” All that…walk the walk. But ok, I’ll assume the doc has told them to watch out and I’ll go along with the plan.

FWIW if my school ever tells us not to bring PB, I won’t. Not even those yummy PB filled pretzels, which scientific studies have shown fall between heroin and nicotine in terms of addiction.

[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
And dude, it’s just peanut butter-doing without won’t kill you.
[/QUOTE]

Don’t oppress me! :smiley:

54

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
Understood. I guess the question is how far you go out of your way for one individual of the group? As someone else posted, what if PB is the only lunch another family can afford?
[/QUOTE]

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that most schools offer hot lunch for students. Poor students get this for free or at a reduced price. When I was in school I’d say about 90% of the students ate hot lunch and only 10% brought their own.

That said, there was always a huge bowl of peanut butter on the salad bar–I wonder if it’s still offered.

55

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
A vegetarian/vegan can’t eat bologna, however. And there may be religious groups who won’t touch it (e.g. if it has pork in it).
[/quote]

Oh, right. I always forget about the local community of poor vegan Jews. :wink:

I won’t go into great detail for cheap protein sources that are vegan (rice and beans, hummus, etc.), because:

I suspect this is what I hinged my prior stance on, as well. And I don’t entirely disagree with you. But here’s the thing - people can die. I know, I know, Susie’s mom is probably an overreacting shrieking harpy helicopter parent. But…what if she isn’t?

My kid can’t bring a gun to school 'cause it can kill people. If he wants to put holes in soda cans at recess, he has to find another way to do it.

I’d prefer that as well, from a freedom perspective. But from a legal perspective, that could make things *worse *for the school - they’ve acknowledged a danger, but not taken steps to eliminate it. So someone chooses not to follow the suggestion and a kid dies and now what? Personally, I’d like to see huge sweeping reforms so that people can’t sue one another over accidents, but until that happens, the school is very vulnerable. And if the school gets sued, ultimately it’s all the students who suffer, when their art and music programs are eliminated due to funding cuts because the school had to spend 1/4 of their budget to mollify a grieving parent.

Sure, but is the mother going to sue herself if her kid dies after she kisses him with peanut butter on her breath? The school has to take the most restrictive stance possible, because when the kids parent’s aren’t there, the school is responsible for them. When I’m watching someone else’s kid, I err on the conservative side, where with my own kids I might let them get away with more. I know I won’t sue myself if my kid falls out of a tree and breaks her arm. I can never be sure with someone else’s kid.

56

Sometimes it’s just one student with a known problem, who legally has to be reasonably accomoded.
Give your administrators the benefit of the doubt. They like peanut butter as much as anyone, so it’s not done lightly, but if only one person is sensitive, they may want to protect that child from taunts and worse.

57

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
You can’t segregate the allergic ones, because that would be an invasion of their medical privacy - you can’t let the other students know who’s got a peanut allergy.
[/QUOTE]

Yes you can, a separate eating area for food allergy folks is little more invasive than wearing a medicalert bracelet on their wrist. Sure everyone knows there is something different about you, dosent mean they chase you around with a peanut butter sandwitch only to find out the allergy is shellfish or something. Shellfish allergies are nothing to trifle with either. Something like 90% of all food allergies are fish, shellfish, nuts, tree nuts, eggs, wheat, and some soy products.
I went to elementary school with a guy who had serious nut allergies. He generally ate his lunch outside for this very reason. He didn’t go around advertising why he did this, he just took care of himself. Its not that tough for an 8 year old to wrap his brain around “nuts make me really really sick” and only eat the stuff mom packed for him.

I came across dozens of anaphalactic shock situations in my EMT days, some of them involving children. Yes, it sucks, but this is right up there with the rest of the zero tolerance BS.

58

@villa: I don’t have kids. But I do teach in a school, so if a ban were imposed, it would affect me.

TB has the potential to affect to affect all children, whereas PB doesn’t.

@Frosted: No, no issue. We have a latex ban at my school as well (I think I posted it back there somewhere). Latex isn’t a food, nor a requirement for people to survive. Schools can ban all balloons (latex or not) if their feeling is that it detracts from the learning environment, health risk or not. We have latex-free band-aids in the nurse’s office. We keep an eye peeled but the students know and are very good about it.

As for right to choose, Jewish students have a right not to eat pork. It goes against their religion. So it seems fair to say people have some right to choose what they eat or don’t. Vegans and vegeterians have to make up the protein somewhere and I’ve known at least one who relies on PB for that.

59

[QUOTE=drachillix]
Yes you can…
[/QUOTE]

I suspect the interpretation of the law is, at this point, left up to individual administrators, no? I’m repeating one what school principal told me when I suggested a “allergen free zone” within the main school lunchroom: he had been told by the school board that it was not an acceptable solution because their lawyers felt it would violate health privacy regulations.

Has anyone taken this to court either way? Do we have a precedent-setting ruling on the issue?

60

[QUOTE=lobotomyboy63]
@villa: I don’t have kids. But I do teach in a school, so if a ban were imposed, it would affect me.

TB has the potential to affect to affect all children, whereas PB doesn’t.

[/QUOTE]

So what percentage needs to be affected before something ceases to be a “right?”

I never said you would not be affected. But please, don’t invent some ridiculous “right” and claim it is being violated. Schools restrict the access of multiple individuals and products to the premises, whether those products are legal for society at large or not.