Nope, it wasn’t a movie! It was an informative, call to action Keynote speaker presentation at the Nevada School Nutrition Conference. The title of the Lars Johsnon, The Food Safety Guy’s Keynote presentation:
So, what’s the big deal over The Food Safety Guy, Lars Johnson anyhow? Using our Community Outreach grant, generously provided by the Food Allergy Research and Education (FARE) and a lovely private grant from the Briggs Family in Reno, NV, my local support group hosted Lars Johnson, the Food Safety Guy at this learning event. Our goal was simple: complete the circle of ensuring all parties involved in managing students with life threatening food allergies in Nevada have been given the information they need for success.
Here is how it all worked….
- I was lucky to observe a Food Safety Guy training session of many school nutrition directions while visiting Minnesota last summer when I attended the National Conference of State Legislators, (with Senator Debbie Smith to discuss Protecting People with Life Threatening Food Allergies)-which included managing food allergens in the kitchen, from ordering storing, to prepping and serving.
- The Nevada School Nutrition (NSN) program develops a form for food service to use to help manage food allergic students.
- AAPE past group co-leader, Dori Chelini, quickly puts two and two together and brings together NSN, AAPE and the Food Safety Guy.
- The magic happens: I was invited to present the food allergy need in the community and our suggested solution of bringing in the Food Safety Guy.
- I was able to share my story of how a food service director at a facility in California (my child was going on an overnight field trip) thought he had been serving nut free foods to students until he label read to me and we realized that the retail box of what he was using had a “may contain” label and his comercial box did not. The end result was that he was serving food that “may contain tree nuts”. My school district was horrified along with the facility. Everyone thought they understood how to handle food in the kitchen, but did not.
- FARE kindly offers community outreach grants and AAPE applies to bring in the Food Safety Guy.
- The Food Safety Guy flies to Reno and presents a very informative and eye-opening presentation and as food allergy parents, I could not have been any happier!
My personal hope is that other states, districts and schools all require this kind of training and information to be shared!
One of the hardest things I find about managing both life threatening food allergies and asthma is talking to others. I hate to be the one that might be perceived as demanding, pushing or for asking too much. What I now know, fourteen years later, is that honest, clear information presented with kindness works!..