<p>For students who are attending college and have food allergies, how do you manage eating safely when you have to live in a dorm and use a meal plan? My s has a food allergy and will be attending college next year. We have found on our campus visits that some schools seem to have no problem dealing with this and others have no clear plan.</p>
<p>What is your experience, are larger schools better or smaller schools? Any tips would be helpful</p>
<p>I go to a larger university (30k+), and our food court looks a lot like a mall food court: Burger King, sandwich shop, etc., along with some small stores to buy ingredients and packaged foods. I think it would be simple enough to get along without a major problem if he can survive out in the real world already (like going out for dinner). At least, I’ve gotten along with with my lactose intolerance and allergies to mushrooms and olives.</p>
<p>Talk to the disability services office to see whether (a) the food allergies can be accommodated in the regular food service or (b) he can be exempted from the meal plan and be permitted things like a microwave and toaster oven in his room even if in general students are not allowed to have them, so that he can prepare his own food. </p>
<p>He may have to prove that he has a disability, as defined by law, especially if his allergies are not life-threatening (life-threatening food allergies are pretty easy to demonstrate are a disability), so he’ll want to check out the websites of the disability services offices on the campuses he’s looking at to make sure that he has the paperwork they will require ready to go. If the website doesn’t have the information you need, I’d call. If you still can’t get anything specific enough, I’d recommend checking out the sample guidelines at Live Draw SGP: Togel Singapore Pools Live SGP Prize Result SGP Hari Ini Live – that’s a site run by a consultant who is extremely well-respected in the postsecondary disability services world.</p>
<p>You’re right that some campuses have a lot of experience with this sort of thing and others don’t. However, disability services offices do a lot of communicating back and forth, so even a campus that hasn’t really dealt with this before has access to information about how to accommodate such a student successfully.</p>
<p>However, it might be worth looking into how good or bad the disability services offices on the various campuses are in general. A lousy disability services office can have a huge impact on a student’s life, and there are some out there. They’re (almost) all required to comply with the same laws, but unless your idea of fun is documenting everything and then filing a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights or finding a lawyer and suing the place, the fact that they are required to ensure that your son has food he can safely eat while he is living in a situation where they control the food isn’t necessarily enough.</p>
<p>PM me if you want to talk about this more. </p>
<p>And good luck with it either way. Schools are supposed to have been doing this stuff since the 1970s, and there really is no excuse for it still to be as hard as it sometimes is.</p>
<p>I had to talk to the nutritionist at my school, the cafeteria has one on staff. She makes sure that I am aware of what I can and can’t eat, and makes sure that there is something I can eat at every meal even if they have to make something different for me. I had to talk to my roommate ahead of time and make sure she was aware of the situation and what foods couldn’t come into the room. If I had been worried about eating in the cafeteria I am sure they would have let me take food to my room. I go to Umich, it seems there is a benefit to it being a larger school because I have tons of different cafeterias to choose from anyway and it’s not a huge deal for them to do something extra for me to make sure I have something to eat and to make sure I can meet my nutritional needs with the choices they are making available for me.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of having to get disability services for an allergy. They do not handle food issues at all here, that is done by housing and dining.</p>
<p>I have found it very helpful to contact dining services to find out if other students are already being accomodated; makes it easier for them to tell you what is done…</p>
<p>Responses have run the gamet with big and small schools…no rhyme or reason…</p>
<p>When my daughter has narrowed down her choices, we will investigate further.</p>
<p>Disability services are useful when housing has rules regarding microwaves/toaster ovens/storage facilities that need to be “gotten around”…and I do think that most accomodations need to be verified by disability services anyway, especially if the dining services are purchasing special items (like gluten free)</p>
<p>This is an interesting topic because I’ve always wondered how that is handled. I have no allergies and I have consciously thought, for the first time, gosh, it’d be hard here if you were allergic to something!</p>
<p>If you have an extreme food allergy it seems like it’d be difficult to get by on a dining plan - all the food is so close together and there’s no ingredients list and the people who serve the food honestly don’t know what the heck is in it (well, I’m sure they’d ask the chef if you said you had an allergy, but still). </p>
<p>But, it being a college campus, I’m sure they get it all the time. I suppose you just have to use your common sense and ask, like you would anywhere.</p>
<p>“If you have an extreme food allergy it seems like it’d be difficult to get by on a dining plan - all the food is so close together and there’s no ingredients list and the people who serve the food honestly don’t know what the heck is in it (well, I’m sure they’d ask the chef if you said you had an allergy, but still).”</p>
<p>We do have an ingredients list for a lot of the items, and if you tell the cafeteria staff they have a printed list they can give you. For us, thankfully, the food isn’t close enough together to cross contaminate.</p>
<p>For me it sucks because I am allergic to preserved fruit. So the only time I can eat pretty much any of the desserts is if they made it from fresh produce-- no cans, no freezer, no bag, nothing. Half the time they’ll say it’s “fresh” because the bag it came in said it was fresh. Brilliant.</p>
<p>Twistedxkiss
I wanted to ask you a few questions. My son has been accepted to umich and it is one of his top schools for engineering. We are oos (eastcoast) and are planing a visit in March. Will also see univ of Ill u/c If he decides to attend umich are there certain dorms with cafeterias that would be better suited to deal with this? He is allergic to milk which eliminates alot of foods but at this point it’s not a life threatening allergy. He gets Gi symptoms mostly.
do the cafeterias lable the food for allergens?
Are there many choices at each meal?
Will they make something special if there are no other safe choices?
Can you have microwaves in the dorm rooms?</p>
<p>Thank You so much for your help</p>
<p>Any other students out there with food allergies that want to provide info?</p>
<p>I have a food allergy with broccoli of all things. My face gets very puffy, and I start to itch all over. Does your son carry his epi-pen around with him? Make sure he does…personally, I just know what I can and cannot eat. I stay away from things that are in the gray…</p>
<p>Candyl, I’ll PM you.</p>