Schools monitor allergies to food
Yvette Yatskis is a pro at examining food labels in the Jamestown (N.D.) Middle School lunchroom.
It’s a drill she’s mastered because her sons Andrew, 13, and Tygh, 12 are allergic to eggs, shellfish, fish, peanuts and other nuts.
Without proper vigilance, the two could experience anaphylaxis – a severe allergic reaction that can cause hives, swelling or other severe medical issues.
That means Yatskis regularly scours school lunch ingredients and communicates with cafeteria employees to make sure her children are well-informed about what’s on the menu,
“It’s not necessarily a challenge as long as we take care of things up front,” said Yatskis, a seventh-grade English teacher.
Yvette Yatskis of Jamestown, N.D., stands recently with her two sons, Tygh, 12, left, and Andrew, 13. The boys are allergic to eggs, shellfish, fish, peanuts and other nuts. John M. Steiner Forum Communications
Yvette Yatskis of Jamestown, N.D., stands recently with her two sons, Tygh, 12, left, and Andrew, 13. The boys are allergic to eggs, shellfish, fish, peanuts and other nuts. John M. Steiner Forum Communications
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“With the severity of their food allergies, we don’t leave anything to chance.”
Area school districts say they do their best to make sure students with food allergies have safe lunch options.
Schools are required by law to provide alternatives for students with special dietary needs.
Jamestown School District Administrator Bob Toso said his district works with families and food service employees to make sure students with allergies eat properly.
In particular, he said district officials keep an eye on peanut allergies, and have worked to eliminate peanuts from lunch menu ingredients for the benefit of students with peanut allergies.
“That’s one allergy that can be particularly dangerous. We really pay attention to that one,” Toso said.
Jamestown – as well as the Fargo, West Fargo and Moorhead school districts – asks students to provide a doctor’s note outlining a student’s food allergy situation.
The Fargo School District keeps a dietitian on staff who examines physicians’ requests and determines special food items that need to be purchased for students with allergies, said Deb Laber, the district’s director of nutrition services.
Gluten-free bread, soy milk and other products are available for students with allergies, Laber said. The district also posts lunch ingredients on its Web site.
Laber said the district serves about 50 students with special dietary needs. There may be more who who for their diets without reporting the information to the school, she said.
Mary Bonemeyer, food service supervisor for the Moorhead School District, said students with allergies usually take care to eat the right foods. The district’s array of lunch offerings allows students to avoid trouble foods, she said.
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“Generally, if they are allergic to shellfish or nuts, they just avoid those items on the menu because we do have other choices available,” Bonemeyer said.
Numbers increasing
Schools are seeing an increasing number of children with food allergies, said Anne Munoz-Furlong, CEO of the Fairfax, Va.-based Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
Many don’t have the resources to respond to students who suffer an allergic reaction, she said.
“Schools currently are struggling to reinvent the wheel in managing food allergies from one school to the next, and they have limited resources,” Munoz-Furlong said.
“Some schools have comprehensive plans; other schools have plans that could be greatly improved,” she said. “The goal is to give them the roadmap and customize their needs (for responding to students’ food allergies).”
The nonprofit organization estimates that more than
12 million Americans – or one in 25 – have a food allergy.
For children with food allergies, going back to school creates stress over knowing what’s safe to eat, Munoz-Furlong said.
Laber said the number of students with food allergies has quadrupled in the past four years in Fargo. Other districts say they’ve also seen anecdotal evidence of more students with food allergies.
“It seems like it’s more prevalent,” agreed Jan Sliper, director of food service for the West Fargo School District.
She said the key to managing student food allergies is communicating with parents, most of whom are good about letting the school know of their child’s dietary needs.
Lobbying to do more
School districts take special precautions for students like Andrew and Tygh Yatskis of Jamestown, but a group is lobbying Congress to do more.
The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Management Act, if passed, calls on the federal government to establish “voluntary national guidelines for managing students with food allergies.”
The legislation calls for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Education to create and distribute a “voluntary policy” to schools on how to manage food allergies and anaphylaxis.
Such a policy would include information on parents’ obligation to provide schools with information about student food allergies, strategies for schools to work with emergency medical personnel, ideas to reduce risk to exposure of allergens in the classroom and other suggestions for handling student food allergies and anaphylaxis.
The legislation, now in House and Senate committees, also asks the U.S. Department of Education to provide incentive grants for local schools to adopt and implement specific food-allergy management guidelines.
Yatskis said the Jamestown district has accommodated the food allergy needs of her children.
When they were younger, she’d pack their lunches so they didn’t have to guess whether school food contained harmful ingredients.
As they grew older, Yatskis looked through the school freezers to study ingredients. So far, neither boy has had a severe allergic reaction tied to school food.
“The biggest thing is to just be aware,” Yatskis said.
“There can be scary situations.”