Bans on foods, especially nuts, have become common on schools, and across entire school boards, in recent years. One consequence: the near-disappearance of the lunch box peanut-butter sandwich that the parents of today’s children remember. But it’s not hard to find experts in children’s allergies who say they’re not warranted.
Some boards have gone further, banning nut-free peanut butter substitutes like Wowbutter, which were originally produced to meet the nutritional gap that peanut butter bans had created in the first place.
(They are more expensive: in a recent visit to a grocery store, store-label peanut butter was $3.97 a kilo, while Wowbutter was $9.98 a kilo.)
“These products tend to look, taste and smell very much like peanut butter,” York Region board spokesperson Christina Choo-Hum explained in an e-mail. “While the product is nut free, it mimics a known allergen that causes anaphylaxis in some children to the degree that it is indistinguishable from the allergen. It is a convincing substitute, opening up the possibility that it can be confused as peanut butter, or worse yet, peanut butter could be confused as this soy-based product.”
For Ben-Shoshan, bans of this kind have no logical stopping point:
“It starts with peanuts, and it goes to eggs, it goes to milk. These are the main sources of protein, and children need to grow, and we risk turning our society into a society that is avoiding proteins, not necessarily for a reason, to a society that is based on carbohydrates. That has its own undesirable side effects.”
Waserman is more sympathetic:
“That’s been a bit of a contentious issue for us, as well. They’re not dangerous, but the potential for mixup is big, which is why schools have sort of gone that route, and I can see why they’ve done it, and I don’t have any big objection to them doing that.”
The trend frustrates Tina DiMelo, who organized a petition aimed at keeping peanut butter substitutes allowed in the London, Ont. Catholic board after the local public board banned them.
(Wowbutter is the only school lunch protein component DiMelo’s son will eat.)
“They were talking about isolating the children who were taking Wowbutter to school, when the product clearly has labels that mark it as peanut-free. I know a lot of people were shocked, and thinking, this is just craziness: to ban a product simply because it looks like peanut butter is absurd.”
Lesley Pharoah’s daughter had the same issue: she would only eat peanut butter or Wowbutter, and peanut butter was banned by her Guelph, Ont. school, so Wowbutter it would have to be. Bu the school had other ideas:
“She was made to sit in a separate room from everybody else to eat her sandwich, and the school called me and said it wasn’t acceptable.”
“I asked why and they said it looks too much like peanut butter, and they can’t determine the difference.”
“One of the teachers had said that if I want to have her eat that, then I could meet her in the parking lot and she could sit in my vehicle and have her peanut butter, or Wowbutter.”
“I said to them, what am I supposed to do? My daughter comes home, she’s hungry every day, she doesn’t want to eat her ham or baloney sandwich, and I said like what am I supposed to do to get her to eat, when I know that she’s going to eat this?
Food bans in our schools – Read the entire 5-part series here:
- Part 1: Why many medical experts think food bans in schools go too far
- Part 2: Why are food allergies linked to income?
- Part 3: Allergy tests full of false positives, doctor explains
- Part 4: Nut-free peanut butter substitutes are often banned
- Part 5: Is desensitization therapy for allergic kids a way out?
NEXT: “There will always be people who are uncomfortable with any degree of risk”
Comments