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Children With Nut Allergies And Halloween Article
Children with Nut Allergies and Halloween
from:For children suffering from nut allergies, it is not the ghosts and witches that are scary, it's the candy, particulary M&Ms, Snickers, Almond Joy.
These children could go into anaphylactic shock if exposed to even a minute fraction of a peanut.
According to the Mayo Clinic, peanut allergies account for 80 percent of fatal or near-fatal allergic reactions each year. Many parents, and older children, are armed with an epipen (an epinephrine shot in case the child is accidentally exposed to nuts). Baby-sitters and teachers also have to be prepared. Children are told repeatedly not to accept any food from anybody in daycare.
Children do take it on board and having had the nut mantra drilled into them continually, they learn to ask anyone who offers him a new food, "has it got nuts?" from a very young age.
Families don't eat at Chinese or Thai restaurants (too many peanuts and nuts pass through those woks) and become expert label readers at the supermarket.
Foods you may least suspect - one brand of tortilla chips, for example - is made with peanut oil. Other products do not contain nuts but were "made in a facility that processes nuts."
Cereal bars are out (except for Nutri-Grain). At ice cream shops, nut allergic children can only have Italian ice or soft serve ice cream from the machine since servers often double dip the ice cream scoopers.
Parents hold their breath each time they let their child try a plain chocolate bar (fear of cross-contamination) and when eating out, they quiz the waitstaff on the list of ingredients in the dishes.
But it is impossible to monitor a child's food intake 24 hours a day. And that's where the anxiety about Halloween comes in.
After trick-or-treating, all the contents in the child's bag have to be inspected, before the child opens and begins to eat anything. It is relatively easy to immediately remove the obvious no-nos, but then there's the "level two" offenders - those items labeled "may contain nuts."
What's left are lollipops, gummy bears, pretzels, fruit snacks and the like. These children can still enjoy Halloween.
Apart from trick-or-treat,they enjoy decorating the house with Halloween stickers and spiders webs. Most children like decorations the scarier the better, and love dressing up in witches costumes.
Meanwhile parents can take some comfort from a new encouraging statistic: peanut allergy was once considered life long, yet new research has determined that up to 20 percent will actually outgrow the allergy by school age, according to the allergicchild.com website.
So maybe in a few years time nut allergic children will be able to trick-or-treat without fear. But in the meantime, there's the epipen!