LAKE FOREST, CALIFORNIA — Peanut butter – as American as “baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Mom,” the mainstay of school lunches across the country – is coming under attack. Why? An estimated 3 million Americans, mostly children, now have severe, potentially fatal allergies to peanuts. Because even the peanut butter residue that is found on the typical school lunch table and playground equipment (and student!) poses a danger to these children, our schools are struggling to find a way to keep severely food-allergic students safe.

Some schools are banning peanuts and peanut-containing foods from campus altogether. Others are setting up special “peanut-free” lunch tables, removing all foods from the classroom and transforming classroom celebrations into food-free events. Many are requiring children to clean their hands after they eat and/or before they enter the classroom.

In addition to these very public policies, a wide variety of behind-the-scenes measures are also necessary to provide a safe school environment for severely food-allergic children. Everything from training the staff to recognize and treat an allergic reaction to ensuring that the classroom remains “allergen-free” and determining where to keep the child’s emergency medication must be worked out before the start of the school year.

How To Manage Your Child's Life-Threatening Food Allergies: Practical Tips For Everyday Life, by Linda Marienhoff Coss, provides parents and school personnel with detailed information about what to do. The book features a 25-page chapter on “School and Day Care,” including a 6-1/2-page checklist of issues that need to be addressed.

“Creating a safe school environment for a severely food-allergic child can be quite challenging, but it is being successfully done by schools across the country. Communication and cooperation is the key,” says Coss.

Linda Coss is also the author of the popular What’s to Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook. The mother of a teenage son with multiple potentially fatal food allergies, Ms. Coss has over ten years of experience as the leader of a support group for parents of children with severe food allergies.

How To Manage Your Child’s Life-Threatening Food Allergies: Practical Tips For Everyday Life can be purchased direct from the publisher at www.FoodAllergyBooks.com, from Amazon.com, or from various booksellers nationwide.

# # #

Click Here to return to previous page