Tips For Avoiding Sending Your Child To Preschool With Peanuts

When your child begins attending preschool, one of your duties is to send him or her with a healthy lunch and morning and afternoon snacks each day. In many cases, the preschool staff will give you some guidelines on preparing your child's lunch and snacks, and these guidelines will often mandate that you don't send your child with peanuts. Many children suffer from peanut allergies, which means that it's possible for one of your child's preschool classmates to have this allergy. The last thing that you want is to be responsible for a child's anaphylaxis reaction. Here are some tips for avoiding sending your child to preschool with peanuts.

Carefully Peruse The Ingredients

After you've read the no-peanut mandate set by the private school, it's common sense to not send your child with shelled peanuts as a snack or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You may, however, slip up and send him or her with a product that contains peanuts if you aren't careful about going through the ingredients in each prepackaged product that you buy for your child's lunch and snacks. For example, it's common for granola bars to contain peanuts — if you're shopping for granola bars for your child, read through their ingredients to ensure that they don't have peanuts or peanut butter.

Learn About The Production Of Products

Even once you've ensured that a product's ingredients list doesn't include peanuts, you should check for wording about the facility in which each product was produced. Sometimes, you'll see wording that indicates that even if the product doesn't specifically contain peanuts, it may have been produced in a facility in which peanut-related products are produced. This means that, even though the chances are small, it's possible that the product could contain peanuts. You're better off to look for products that are labeled as being produced in a peanut-free facility.

Don't Cross-Contaminate When Preparing Lunches

When you're preparing lunches for other family members in the morning, avoiding cross contamination in critical. Ideally, you'll abstain from sending any family members to school or work with peanut products. However, if you're making a peanut butter sandwich for your husband, for example, you should be sure to use a dedicated knife for this sandwich and a different knife for the lunch for your preschool-bound child. Doing so will prevent peanut butter from sneaking into your child's lunch where it could theoretically trigger an allergic reaction from a classmate.

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