Now more than ever school foodservice professionals are challenged with the responsibility of managing food allergies in school cafeterias. By definition a food allergy is an abnormal response by the immune system to a food protein.

The Food Allergy Network reports that, “2.5% of the US population is affected by food allergies,” while eight foods account for 90% of all allergic reactions. Included on the list are peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, wheat, soy, fish, and shellfish. By and large, a recent study estimates that a quarter of all food allergies are related to peanuts.

At Dakota Gourmet we are proud to announce that our product line is manufactured in a “non-peanut” environment. To ensure product safety we periodically test for contamination from outside sources. Only seed, soy, and cereal grain commodities are produced at Dakota Gourmet. Although many consumers refer to our products as “nuts”, they are botanically unrelated to peanuts.

We acknowledge that soy and wheat products are produced in our facility. As a service to our customers we have begun to print “produced on equipment shared by soy and/or wheat products” on our packaging and literature.

Although soy allergies are a concern, according to the medical editor at FAAN*, soy allergies tend to exist primarily in infants. By a child’s 5th birthday virtually all children “outgrow” soy allergies. This is compared to only 20 percent of all peanut-allergic children who will “outgrow” their allergy during the same period.

*FAAN; The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network