Abstract
Background: Schoolchildren who have not acquired tolerance against food allergy require food elimination even in school lunch.
Objectives: We intend to understand the present conditions and issues of measures against food allergy in school lunch.
Methods: We distributed questionnaire to 555 dieticians who had attended to the conference held by Japanese school dietician association. The reply of the questionnaire was 100%.
Results: Dieticians who had taken care of food allergy children were 76.0% (422/555). School meal providing facilities with special menu for food allergy children were only 68.7%. The most common food allergen was milk products followed by hen's egg, shell, selfish, fish, and peanuts. Dieticians who had faced food allergic reaction of schoolchildren after ingestion of school lunch were 27.2% (151/555). Among these cases, medical cares were necessary in 46.4% (71/151) of the cases.
Conclusions: Countermeasures against problems of food allergy in school lunch seem to be unsatisfactory judging from our survey. With increasing number of schoolchildren with food allergy, it is necessary to provide special menu for these children in each school lunch providing facility.
