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.
Is there a long-term solution?
At McMaster, Waserman is running a clinical trial to desensitize – not cure, she warns – children with peanut allergies through gradual exposure.
“Basically, it’s taking peanut-allergic children and feeding them tiny amounts of peanut until they get up to a maintenance dose of about two peanuts a day. We think that in desensitizing them like this, which they appear to be, they’re able to tolerate something like 10 to 13 peanuts when we challenge them.”
The treatment has also been studied in Britain, Australia and the United States.
One problem is that if the patient stops taking the “maintenance peanuts” the sensitivity can creep back, she warns.
It offers a chance to ease the anxiety of children with severe food allergies, and their parents, and in the long run ease the way for the return of the lunch box peanut butter sandwich for everybody else.
“Once people stay on these types of desensitization measures, what you find is that if they bump into it accidentally, they’re less prone to developing allergic reactions.”
“Also it just offers them a better quality of life – they’re less anxious about accidental exposure.”
The maintenance dose can be something of a curse, Harada points out:
“Some of these kids have had a severe allergy to peanuts since they were babies or toddlers, and they’ve been told – it’s been equated to a poison, for them. You’re told ’Avoid, avoid, avoid,’ and all of a sudden someone is saying ‘just eat a little bit, and you’re going to be okay’. Some have a natural aversion to it, and that’s understandable.”
In the meantime, schools and parents are left to cope as best they can.
“Society has to decide what is the proper balance of benefit versus risk,” Chan reflects.
“There will always be, if you look at the other side of this coin, people who are uncomfortable with any degree of risk.”
For Waserman, the solution lies in compromise:
“There has to be good communication between the school and the parents, and to arrive somewhere in the middle. I’ve told my (patients’) parents this quite often – you’ve got to deal in a good way with the school, and with other parents, to arrive at some middle ground that everybody can live with.”
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?
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