Good Lord, what is wrong with people? Can they seriously not avoid some fairly unnecessary foods in their child's diet for 6 hours to avoid a potentially fatal reaction in a classmate? That's a meal and a snack or two.
My husband is in the "allergies unreasonably trespass on the right of the non-allergic to eat food X ad libitum" camp. Excuse me, but in what parallel universe is the right to eat peanuts more important than the right to life?
I grew up in high school with two friends with life threatening allergies: peanut and sesame. I saw first hand the needless threats to their safety on a daily basis. Never would I want that for my child, or someone else's.
What are most common severe allergies anyway--tree nuts, dairy, and wheat? IIRC, dairy and wheat allergies are usually less common as airborne allergies, which lowers the required degree of accommodations. If you can't come up with an alternate menu for a meal and 2 snacks for your child, maybe parents need to band together to support an allergen free cafeteria at the school, because the remaining choices are plentiful. Let's consider for a moment the remaining available menu items based on the assumption that all the foods I listed above are off-limits: meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, legumes, most oils and fats, most grains (rice, bulgur, quinoa, amaranth, etc.). In my diet, that would mean I'd substitute some avocado for nuts in a salad at lunch. In the other 8 or 9 waking hours of my day, I'd eat dairy, nuts, and bread.
I can think of three friends who are fashionably on an allergen-free/restricted diet. One is a "celiac" who eschewed gluten-free pancakes I made at a brunch in favour of farinaceous ones. Another is "lactose intolerant" but ordered a grilled cheese the last time we went out for lunch. The third is "vegetarian", but ate steak at my wedding despite being offered the vegetarian meal of her choice. This kind of ridiculous posing undermines the perceived legitimacy of real allergies.
