At which point you have absolved the teacher of any responsibility/accountability for a kid being killed by peanut exposure because of it being illegal to inform the person most likely to intervene quickly.
The 9th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution kind of protects the rights we have that aren’t necessarily enumerated in the document. So yeah, I have a right to have a PB&J even if there’s no law saying I do.
Marc
Hi all. I haven’t read through all of the posts, but thought that I could give a unique view as a lifelong peanut allergy kid. Yes, I was/am that kid.
In kindergarten I had to go home because my classmates were making bumps on a log (celery with peanut butter and raisins) and my eyes swelled shut and I was apparently gasping for air. I was on the other side of the room. I didn’t touch it.
Yes it is possible to have a severe reaction without a kid swallowing an entire spoonful peanut better.
I’ve outgrown this to an extent. I can be in the same room with peanut butter and peanuts mostly. If I stick my nose right into the container, without touching it, I get a reaction. I also can’t go to restaurants like Texas Roadhouse because the extreme amount of peanut dust gets to me quick (I started having a reaction within 3 minutes my first/last time there).
I can still tell when my husband eats peanuts/peanut butter. If we kiss (just a peck) my lips will start to tingle and swell. This can happen hours after he has eaten the peanut product.
As for guarding against other allergies, I have those too. I’m also allergic to all dairy products, eggs, bananas, and recently chicken. Each are of differing severity (with dairy and eggs being the worst) but none are the same as the peanut allergy. Being in the same room with a cup of milk has never given me a reaction (unless of course I accidentally poured it over my head…whoops). I assume the difference is the peanut dust that can travel through the air, while milk doesn’t have the dust.
It seems odd and overblown, but it’s really not. The reactions really can be that severe and without direct contact.
And two more points: 1. To those who suggest a separate lunchroom, are you freaking kidding me? Aside from the few posts that I skimmed that brought out the legality issue of separating kids based on allergies, thus highlighting confidential medical information, what a great way to make a kid who is already different feel even more isolated. Can you imagine telling your 2nd grader that they can’t eat lunch with their friends because their parents are too lazy to send something other than a peanut butter sandwich? Do you really want to be that parent?
- For the the individual who said that some families can’t afford anything other than peanut butter to send to school for their kid, this is why god invented the free lunch program in schools. If the family can’t afford anything other than peanut butter for lunch, I can guarantee that they would qualify for the free lunch program.
Sorry this is so long. Just lots of thoughts on the topic. If you have any question for someone who’s lived through it, let me know!
The government didn’t provide alternatives to peanut butter.
Idaho didn’t have food stamps back then. They gave us peanut butter, five pound blocks of moldy cheese that most people were smart enough to toss, powdered milk and flour that had bits of dried corn and other unidentifiable items in it. What we had for breakfast was something called “milk mush”, which was made up of reconstituted milk heated to almost boiling, with flour mixed in slowly until it turned the consistency of Malt-O-Meal, and served with government-issued corn syrup. Sometimes lunch was 3-day-old bread and government peanut butter from three pound tins, no jelly. Sometimes lunch was a book from the library for a half hour.
A lot of kids today are in even worse situations than this, and a lot of schools do not have hot lunches available. Alternatives like sesame butter, almond butter and Nutella sound great, but are way out of the price range of a lot of families. Cheap bologna is nothing more than fat and salt laden slices of mystery meat with dubious nutritional value.
Why do you hate America?
Because red, white, and blue really wash me out.
The teacher’s responsibility is to make sure there are no peanuts in his/her classroom, regardless of whether or not they have reason to believe there is an allergic student there - assuming we’re talking about a total school ban.
'Though I agree with alphaboi867 that a parent - who CAN share this information without violating the child’s legally protected right to medical privacy - who doesn’t share this with her kid’s teachers is a total moron.
I rather suspect, with all the peanut and nut allergies nowadays, that there are no longer government programs supplying peanut butter to poor families. While they may have done so previously, there were no bans on peanuts at schools previously, also.
So the fact that the government used to supply peanut butter has no bearing on what poor kids have available to eat at peanut-banned schools today.
Someone please go ahead and prove my suspicions wrong, though.
No, but its still a popular food shelf item where the food shelf is stocked by donations.
But the point is that, even if you are the recipient of government food doles, you have choices there, too. Cheese being the prime example: a good source of protein often subsidized or given away, just like peanut butter.
Again, I defy the people involved to establish that peanut butter was their ONLY option.
What about peanut OIL? I know that is used in a zillion fried items – does it present a danger to allergic kids?
Please, just once, read all of what I posted. I said we received moldy cheese that had been in storage for years, and that most people who received it were smart enough to throw it away. The peanut butter we got came in large 3 pound tins.
One more time:
Moldy cheese
Large tins of peanut butter
Flour(with bits of other stuff mixed in)
Powdered milk
corn syrup
enough money to buy 3 day old bread-sometimes
I want to hear about all those delicious alternatives to peanut butter sandwiches.
We are still talking at cross purposes. Just because it isn’t a legal right (which it isn’t, 9th Amendment arguments aside), doesn’t mean it isn’t a right. All i was trying to ask was, given that there is no legal basis for a right to send a child to peanut butter, on what kind of rights theory do you base your belief in it.
I mean, I have never heard it expressed that the fundamental human rights are, for example, life, liberty, and the pursuit of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I am guessing it falls under some kind of liberty interest in your mind, but I wanted to explore how far that went - do parents have a right to send their child to school with any product that would be legal for the child to consume outside of school? If not, if there are exceptions (gum, for example), what is it about peanut butter that makes its consumption a right, while other legal products can be prohibited?
Hope that is clearer.
I’m not sure how you get there - unless you are applying the same concept of a privacy interest to all public health matters/food regulation. Does the 9th Amendment give me a right to purchase unpasteurized milk? (Note - I am not taking a side on whether there should be unpasteurized milk for sale, just simply that I don’t think it there is a right to purchase it).
Okay, but first tell me if you want to hear about today’s alternatives or yesteryear’s. What you had is irrelevant - what today’s more allergic population has access to is far more pertinent.
You are right, of course. As you have been told, peanut butter is one of the staples provided at food banks. They tend to store non-parishables, so it’s very unlikely you’re going to get cheeses and meats. Also, you don’t get to “shop” at food banks-what usually happens is that you are asked if there are any foods you are forbidden to eat, then you get a box of whatever they have on hand. In the places where food banks are available, most will limit the number of times you are allowed to visit, so that can or jar of discount peanut butter has to last for awhile. Whereas it is possible to spread peanut butter just a little thinner to make it last longer, cheese and meat slices are pre-cut. And as I’ve mentioned before, that extra-cheap bologna is not something you want to feed your children day after day, what with its high salt and fat content.
Czarcasm, did you go to a school which didn’t provide free lunches to poor kids who demonstrated their need? Because I’m pretty sure that the majority of kids in that position today would be eligible to be fed by the school. My family had to live from food banks and welfare stuff for a long time too, but we always had free lunch at school.
:::knock knock::: Is this thing on?
Free lunch programs are fantastic, but somewhat flawed. As much effort has been made to respect the privacy of kids on free lunch, the kids know. Therefore some kids on free lunch prefer to “brown bag” their not great lunches.
Also, there are people who get their groceries from food shelves that don’t qualify for free or reduced lunches. Sort of sad really, people who have overextended themselves on their mortgage to the point where they can’t afford to feed their families - but have incomes high enough to not qualify for aid. Or sort of stupid - depending on your point of view.