Adam B. Kushner is the editor of Outlook.
A growing number of schools are updating their peanut butter policies in response to the rise in peanut allergies among children. The Post asked the experts to sample a few alternative spreads. (Davin Coburn, Jason Aldag, Randolph Smith and Kate Tobey/The Washington Post)

If you have kids, you know that peanuts are increasingly verboten in schools. The food-allergy rate has risen at an alarming clip in recent decades, and, according to the largest allergy-activism group, the peanut-allergy rate tripled to 3 million — 4 percent of the school-age population.

But to most of us, PB&J is a fundamental childhood experience! (Which may explain the anguished parental response school bans can elicit.) What else should our kids — especially those who, as I did at that age, eat only orange-colored foods — subsist on?

PostTV and PostEverything are happy to furnish the answer, just in time for the new school year. We recruited our colleagues’ children to taste-test the proliferating nut-butter alternatives – almond butter, cashew butter, walnut butter, macadamia butter, even sunflower-seed butter – now available at a price-gouging grocery store near you. The resulting cuteness doesn’t just melt your face; it also provides a public service for the back-to-school shopping rush.