As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, when you have to pack lunches for Pescatarians, a trip to the deli counter no longer solves the ‘what do I give them for lunch?” dilemma. You would think that a simple solution would be to pack them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. Well, it used to be so for the post-boomers and before then which I fondly recall as the ‘good ol’ days’. I remember being happy to open my lunchbox and see a yummy peanut butter and jelly sandwich within and also being able to sit among my friends. Alas, those days are gone. Strangely enough, it seems that children self-reporting peanut allergies doubled around the turn of the Millenium (thanks again, Wikipedia) . Our local school district, reacting to the surprising rising number of self-reported peanut allergies, instituted a new lunchroom policy, something that could only occur in this bizarre era we live in: children bringing peanut butter (jelly is guilty by association) sandwiches must sit in a peanut designated section to keep the remaining tables in the cafeteria peanut free. Obviously, having the allergic students sit in a clean, peanut free area was discriminatory. And so my children, when I offered to make them a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to take to school, would look at me as if I was about to banish them to Siberia. Bringing PB&J would mean leaving their friends behind to sit with other children of unenlightened Moms, subjecting them to the scorn of the peanut-free lunch eaters who would view them as uncaring and insensitive. Oh the horror! Might as well rename the ‘Peanut Gallery’ , the ‘Peanut Gulag’. And so peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches are no longer a school lunch option for the Pescatarians. Ironically, a tuna fish sandwich is an acceptable alternative, allowing them to eat lunch among the general cafeteria population. The laugh is on us all because seafood allergies are more prevalent and dangerous than peanut allergies (according to Wikipedia). Shh, don’t tell the school district powers that be otherwise there will be children unhappy enough to have a stinky tuna sandwich for lunch who will then have to suffer the further humiliation of being separated from their peers. Now that’s just fishy!