Students with Food Allergy Surviving in Glasgow
Imagery by Blue Linden

Only 8.9% of the students who have or may have food allergies have actually had problems at Glasgow that have arisen because of their allergies. Some of these problems include no allergy-friendly breakfasts, lunches, or afterschool snacks at Glasgow. In comparison, 32 million people, out of the 7.9 billion people in the world, have food allergies. Glasgow’s students with food allergies communicated through the survey that the breakfast, lunch, and snack are all food allergy problems. According to various observations, the meals served by the school have alternative options or options exempting allergens for nine out of the nine most common food allergies, however, there weren’t many alternatives for dairy (milk), wheat, and soy product allergies.
Food Allergy Awareness Month, which occurs from May 1st until May 31st every year, is a month where people may be wearing teal during that month because teal is the color of food allergy awareness, which can be seen as the primary color of the Teal Pumpkin Project. The Teal Pumpkin Project is where owners of a house will place a teal pumpkin outside their house on Halloween. That teal pumpkin means they have food allergy-friendly options and will not serve candy – only toys, stickers, etc. In school, students with food allergies are qualified as people with disabilities, and therefore can be eligible for a 504 plan. A 504 plan outlines what the school will do to help the child’s allergy in the school setting.
Food allergies surround the people at Glasgow and the support for the students with food allergies continues to grow. These students bring necessary traits into their lives from their experiences with food allergies. Students with food allergies showcase the perseverance, confidence, and determination needed to push forth in life.
For more information about food allergies, visit https://www.foodallergy.org.
Sources:
Facts and Statistics | Food Allergy Research & Education

Katarina Sochurek (she/her) is an 8th grader at Glasgow Middle School. She was born and raised in Northern Virginia, but her great grandpa on her dad’s side was an immigrant from the Czech Republic and her great grandpa on her mom’s side is an immigrant from Mexico. She loves flying on airplanes and is considering being a pilot one day. She is a true Drama Queen and has been acting since 3rd grade. Her new hobby that she picked up over quarantine is writing poetry. One fun fact about her is that she was voted “Team Mom” of her swim team.

Blue Linden is a web developer, designer, writer, and artist from Falls Church. Her pronouns are she/her. She was born at an extraordinarily young age in 2007, and is the oldest she's ever been as of 2022. She didn't know what aesthetics she liked, so she simply chose to blend them all together and ingest the results. She is a control freak and will stop at nothing to get administrator-level access to whatever she is involved in.
In her quest to design the Panther Post website, she has accidentally learned HTML, CSS, and little bits of PHP. She would like you to believe her work does not involve dark magic, however the validity of her statements on that subject is questionable at best.
She is an avid collector of glares and will annoy you endlessly for her own enjoyment. (As long as you're cool with it, though!)
Do not annoy her, because she can and will change the font of any articles you write to Comic Sans if you bother her enough.
She was the art editor from 2021 to 2022,...
Ayesha Gulzar
Mar 6, 2022 at 1:01 pm
Hi Katarina!
Thank you so much for writing this! I knew that this was an issue, but thank you for educating me even more! Keep up the amazing work!
Ayesha