As of February 2010 Massachusetts will become the first state in the US to offically require restaurants to educate their staff about allergy. Under new regulations, some 24,000 restaurants statewide will have to educate their staffs on food allergies and require managers to get a certified through a food allergy training course.

Restaurants also will have to post information and instructions about food allergies in a staff area, and are required to print the warning: "Before placing your order, please inform your server if a person in your party has a food allergy" on menus.

Food safety training programs have volunteered to run the food allergy education free of charge for the state although they may charge some nominal fee for the certificate and training process, but we don't ask. Once a restaurant's managers are certified it is expected that the certification and food allergy education will be checked several times a year by local health inspections.

Patients will be encouraged to take a laminated card with instructions about their food allergies when they go out. This way they can hand the card to the waiter and the message will not be lost or forgotten by the time it reaches the kitchen.

A 2007 study by Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City showed that both patients and restaurant workers have a long way to go in learning how to deal with a food allergy. Although over 70% of restaurant employees expressed comfort in providing a safe meal, 24% thought a person could eat a small amount of the food to which they are allergic, 35% thought a fryer would destroy allergens, and 25% thought it would be acceptable "to simply pick nuts from a finished meal to make it safe." However a complementary study of restaurant patrons with food allergies found that often their communication of an allergy was unclear.

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