Something Different, Something Good!

My regular readers will know I've been shifting our food consumption towards healthier, organic sources. Although there isn't really any definitive research on how this is related to food allergies, I believe in "less is more..." less toxicity, less chemicals, and less preservatives in my family's diet.

After watching The Future of Food and reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Vegetable, Animal, Miracle, I'm even more committed to giving this natural, sustainable food supply a fair shot.

So we are signing up for a CSA! What's that, you ask? Well, it's Community Supported Agriculture and it's all the rage! I can't really come up with a succinct summary quite as good as Local Harvest so I'll just use theirs:

A CSA, (for Community Supported Agriculture) is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm and to receive a weekly basket of produce. By making a financial commitment to a farm, people become "members" (or "shareholders," or "subscribers") of the CSA. The Local Harvest website even has a great national database for finding one in your area.

In the last month, five friends from totally different circles have asked me if I was interested in joining up. A couple of them subscribed last summer and truly enjoyed it. My husband asked, "Why not just go to the farmer's market?" Good question! I've decided that it's all about commitment. Several of my neighbors are religious about shopping at the farmer's market. It's their grocery store. I, on the other hand, am more easily distracted... sleeping in, a giant breakfast, cardio tennis... any number of things could pre-empt that well-intentioned trip wherein we support our local farmers. So I want to commit to the financial support portion of the equation regardless of whether I drag my family out for the cultural/PC experience or actually eat the produce.

I must admit that it's a little daunting to commit to a weekly basket of produce, not knowing what's in it and not entirely sure what to make with it. But I'm up for the challenge. What a great excuse to try something new!

Body Burden

As I watched last week's media coverage on food allergies and listened to experts report that there is no known cause or cure for food allergies, a story on CNN caught my attention. The story featured a family with two young children who agreed to participate in a biomonitoring study to measure the levels of industrial chemicals in their bodies. Also referred to as "body burden" testing by environmentalists and public health advocates, this hot issue refers to the legacy f toxins in our bloodstreams. Then eighteen month old Rowan and five-year old Mikaela had seven times the chemical exposure levels of their parents (in their thirties at the time).

"We are the humans in a dangerous and unnatural experiment in the United States, and I think it's unconscionable" said Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Transande believes that industrial toxins could be leading to more childhood diseases and disorders. "We are in an epidemic of environmentally mediated disease among American children today," he said.

"Rates of asthma, childhood cancers, birth defects and developmental disorders have exponentially increased, and it can't be explained by changes in the human genome. So what has changed? All the chemicals we're being exposed to."

Interestingly, the EPA does not require chemical manufacturers to conduct human toxicity studies before approving their chemicals for use in the market. A manufacturer simply has to submit paperwork on a chemical, all the data that exists on that chemical to date, and wait 90 days for approval.

I can't help but transpose this information with sound bites from Ann Muñoz-Furlong of FAAN who says, "We're becoming more and more allergic..."

What about GM Corn?

A few years ago, my aunt told me she had developed an allergy to corn. She was really sad about it because up until then, it had been one of her favorite foods. I was surprised, even though I knew from my "homework" on food allergies that they can develop at any age. Recently, it seems to me that the media has been giving a lot more airtime to the subject of GM foods. Genetically engineered corn, as was discussed in my Frankenfoods post, is now a staple ingredient in our food supply. Jeff Smith followed up his first report, "Genetically Engineered Foods May Cause Rising Food Allergies" with another specifically on corn and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is a naturally occurring pesticide that has been inserted into the DNA of corn and cotton plants.

Smith questions the safety of these practices in great detail, citing research that has shown harmful (and allergenic) effects of Bt sprays in humans and that several GM crops have provoked immune system responses in animals. Even the pollen of Bt corn has been linked to severe allergic respiratory symptoms, saying that these dangers were identified in a letter to the US FDA in 1998 by the UK Joint Food Safety and Standards Group.

He warns against the very idea of genetic engineering, sharing an incident wherein a harmless protein in one vegetable was introduced into another vegetable that then triggered inflammatory responses in lab mice saying,

"Somehow, the protein had been changed from harmless to potentially deadly, just by being created in a different plant. Scientists believe that subtle, unpredicted changes in the pattern of sugar molecules that were attached to the protein were the cause of the problem. These types of subtle changes are not routinely analyzed in GM crops on the market."

He follows this by stating, "Allergic reactions are a defensive, often harmful immune system response to an external irritant. The body interprets something as foreign, different and offensive, and reacts accordingly. All GM foods, by definition, have something foreign and different."

Ruth at Allergizer makes a really good point on the subject of GMO's in her recent post. She says "There is a lot of politics involved in the GMO market. Be careful, be discerning when reading articles on biotechnology and genetics, and make sure you are not being manipulated to believe something."

She is correct in that I am but a reader of reports and a concerned parent. I have no way to verify these allegations firsthand... nor do I make any money off of GMO's :). Ruth probably has a much better understanding of the scale of politics involved in this issue. Perhaps I am sticking out my neck and keyboard in places where it does not belong. All I know is that I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I eat and what I am feeding my family. From his article as well as in his role as Executive Director of The Institute for Responsible Technology, Smith is waging war against GM foods and genetic engineering.

Maybe one day, I'll be able to eat a whole bag of Cheetos without feeling guilty!!!

Would You Choose to Feed Your Kids Frankenfoods?

Actually, the question is silly because if you live in the U.S., you probably are... and you don't even know it. According to an ABC News report, 75% of all processed foods contain ingredients from genetically-modified crops.

Surely there's been some testing, right? If it's on a grocery store shelf, they've made sure it's safe!
That's what I thought too but there is a mounting case against Big Food in America today. (The disturbing truth behind unlabeled, genetically engineered food is the central message of the 2004 documentary, The Future of Food)

Are Our Kids Guinea Pigs?
Last friday, Jeff Smith released Part I of a series about genetically-modified (GM) foods. GM critics often refer to the US population as "the guinea pigs in an experiment." Smith is the author of a new publication, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods and the book, Seeds of Deception.

In his article, Jeff Smith writes about the effects of genetically modified soybeans. He links the huge jump in food allergies in the last 11 years to the often neglected consideration of the radical change in America's diet. Beginning in 1996, genes were inserted into the DNA of soy, corn, cottonseed and canola plants. Evidence has been collected over the past decade that suggests these unlabeled GM foods have contributed to higher allergy rates. In the article, Smith notes that UK researchers discovered that reactions to soy skyrocketed by 50% after GM soy entered the country from US imports.

But, little guy isn't allergic to soy!
Is he allergic to peanuts? This should be raising big red flags for you because at least one protein in natural soybeans has cross-reactivity with peanut allergies. Remember how GM soy was introduced into the U.S. food supply in 1996? Peanut allergies doubled between... oh yes, 1997-2002.

The scary part of all this is that the American public, that's you and me and our children, were not given a choice is this matter. GM foods were introduced quietly and without the mandatory labeling required in most other industrialized countries. How did this happen?!

At this point, we have few options. Smith suggests we join the organic bandwagon. He quotes Allergy specialist John Boyles, M.D. who says, "...now that soy is genetically engineered, it is so dangerous that I tell people never to eat it — unless it says organic." Certified organic products are not allowed to contain GM foods. Also, "avoid products containing any ingredients from the seven food crops that have been genetically engineered: soy, corn, cottonseed, canola, Hawaiian papaya, some zucchini and crook neck squash. This means avoiding soy lecithin in chocolate, corn syrup in candies, and cottonseed or canola oil in snack foods."

I realize that this post is rather one-sided. I'm rather mortified. Perhaps someone can play devil's advocate? Or, Crichton? :)

Peanuts During Pregnancy and Food Allergies: Is this News?

Todays' CTV Canada story reports preliminary findings by allergist Anne Desroches based out of Ste. Justine Hospital in Montreal, that showed that eating peanuts during pregnancy quadrupled the risk of allergy in a child among 200 families surveyed. Why is this newsworthy? This is not new news, people!

The folks at the Mayo clinic issued a newletter in March that included advice to avoid peanuts during pregnancy and while nursing. I found research studies from as far back as 1986 and 1999 that show a correlation between maternal diet and sensitivity.

But there is also contrary data out there as pointed out by Dr. Michael Cyr, an allergist and clinical immunologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who told Allergic Living in December 2006 that peanut exposure might actually mitigate against allergy, “It is possible that avoiding peanuts is harmful.”

Another recent article from Clinical and Experimental Allergy on the related topic of whether breastfeeding itself is linked to food allergy shows that "there was no significant association between the duration of breastfeeding or timing of introduction of solid foods and protection against asthma or other allergic disease” in their study of 513 patients.

So until there is some definitive answer to the question of what causes food (and specifically, peanut) allergies, don't you think we should be very careful about the advice we give to these poor pregnant women?