Lunch

Vivi is a great eater and for that, I am grateful. I would love to take credit for her unusual pre-school taste buds but I think she is just a curious kid and that curiosity extends to food as well. She's been taking lunch all this week and has had everything from sesame noodles to tabbouleh. Her lunch box comes home empty and I'm delighted that I manage to hit a home run in the food department.

That is until yesterday when I committed the cardinal sin of parenting in the new millennium. I sent Vivi to camp with....

PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!!!!!! (On a boring ol' rice cake, no less.)

Apparently schools today have this thing about peanut butter. If I send it in my child's lunch and another child with a peanut allergy happens to eat it and go into anaphylaxis... well, that would be a bad thing. I guess I was supposed to know this without being told.

Obviously, no one wants a kid's life to be threatened but it seems to me that banning it from an entire school because of one child seems like an over-reaction. Should we be eradicating bees for those who happen to be allergic to bee stings? Those children learn to stay away from bees, should we not teach children who have peanut allergies to steer clear of the nuts?

I'm sure I'm oversimplifying the situation but gosh, where did these allergies come from? When I was a kid it was the rare child who had a life-threatening allergy. Now it seems that peanut butter is akin to heroin as a potential killer of our children. Ok, now I'm just being dramatic.

But what gives?

On the upside of the food topic, the Turtles tried their first meal of rice cereal:





Comments

  1. SnickolletAugust 19, 2009 at 3:47 PM

    I love how earnestly Vivi is as she helps the Turtles with their food. Very cute.

    As for the allergy thing, you've got me as to what's going on. I hear that the latest research indicates that peanut allergy is something viral (?). In any case, it does make lunch packing a pain. I think by grade school the powers that be count on kids to censor themselves and set up peanut-free lunch tables and the like, but at Vivi's age, I think many feel that the kids just aren't old enough to handle the responsiblity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChristineAugust 20, 2009 at 7:43 PM

    Interesting about the allergies nowadays as compared to when we were children. Duke is doing an interesting study on reintroducing peanuts back into a child's diet, interesting stuff! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/health/16peanuts.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. AinaAugust 21, 2009 at 11:23 PM

    oh the Turtles are beautiful!

    ReplyDelete

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