Shell-shocked: as peanut allergies among students rise, college foodservices rethink training

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 10, 2003 by Paul King

The Christine Ricker Residential House is unique among the student residence halls on the campus of 19,000-student Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. It has been made into a completely peanutfree home for the 300 upperclassmen who live there -- including the junior who suffers from a severe peanut allergy.

Dining Services director Nadeem Siddiqui explained that a monetary donation from the afflicted student's parents made it possible last semester for Dining Services to pilot a program to protect the young man. The residence hail and kitchen were cleaned and disinfected, the menu was rewritten to eliminate any recipes that might use peanuts or peanut oil and foodservice suppliers were alerted not to deliver any items to the facility that may have come in contact with products containing peanuts or peanut essences.

"The first eight weeks of the program have gone well," said Siddiqui, shortly before the end of last semester. "It is indicative of the culture at Stanford, where we strive to take care of all individual students."

It is also an extreme response to a situation affecting one student and is not likely to be replicated widely. But the problem it addresses the peanut allergy, is a very real and growing concern, and foodservice directors in all on-site sectors are dealing with it to one degree or another.

The problem is of major concern in elementary and secondary schools, where students may not have learned how to manage their allergies. And nowhere is the situation more acute than on college campuses, which serve as homes away from home for hundreds of thousands of students for months at a time. Eating two or three meals a day at least five and frequently seven days a week presents allergic students with numerous opportunities to come in contact with a popular and tasty food that, unfortunately, can kill them.

"There are a growing number of students who are coming to us with food allergies, particularly to peanuts," said Patricia Bando, director of dining services at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass. "We're certainly more aware of allergies, and we will do what we can to protect students."

There are eight types of foods that are responsible for 90 percent of all food allergies, and peanuts top the list. An estimated 3 million Americans profess to have a peanut allergy, in which a person's immune system reacts to the food as if it were a dangerous substance and releases histamines and other chemicals to fight off the "invader."

Allergic reactions can include hives; vomiting; diarrhea; swelling of the throat, lips or tongue; difficulty breathing; an increased heart rate; and a sudden drop in blood pressure. If not treated quickly, the person can go into anaphylactic shock and die.

Whether the percentage of people with peanut allergies has grown, the situation certainly has received more attention within the last five years. In part, that is because research has shown that for many peanut-allergic people, avoiding peanuts is not enough. Some people are so sensitive they can have an allergic reaction simply by smelling peanuts or even touching something on which peanuts recently rested. Because of that increased awareness, airlines have abandoned the once almost ritualistic passing out of the bags of peanuts during flights.

"I don't know whether there are more people developing allergies," BC's Bando said. "I think in the past people were more shy or embarrassed and were more personal about their problems. Now, more people are saying, 'It's my life, and you're part of it. You've got to help me deal with it.'"

That was certainly the situation at Stanford. Siddiqui said his department became aware of the case because the afflicted student's parents wanted their son to be able to enjoy his campus life more fully.

Most foodservice directors said the key to dealing with a peanut allergy, or with any other food allergy, is knowing in advance that a problem exists.

"Stanford's campus life consists of residential houses in which students with similar studies or interests can live," Siddiqui explained. "This student was living in graduate housing, where students have their own kitchens. But he didn't like being segregated from his friends and classmates, and so his parents approached us to see what we could do to make his life more normal."

"We make it as convenient as possible for students to let us know what allergies they might have," said David Davidson, director of dining services at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. "We set up a table at orientation, inviting students and their parents to tell us about any food problems they may have. When we are alerted to an allergy, we have the student meet with the manager of his or her dining hall and do some one-on-one education."

But not all students reveal their allergies to foodservice departments. A recent survey of students at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., indicated that 8.4 percent of all resident students there are allergic to at least one food. But Alix McNitt, director of marketing and communications for Harvard University Dining Services, said that only about 8 percent of those students actually have talked to someone in HUDS about their allergy.