One of the problems with living the Year of No Processed Foods experiment is it often takes so much time JUST to live it that I don't have as much time as I had hoped to do research into topics that come up. Like allergies.
Spending as much time as I do reading labels this year, I regularly see allergy warnings--usually the nuts, wheat, and gluten issues. Sometimes it will actually say that the product doesn't contain any allergens, but was processed in a plant that processes other things that contain allergens. And this seems to be necessary.
When I was in first grade, it was discovered that I am allergic to milk. Know how they discovered it? My mother took me to an allergist, he gave us a list of common food allergens, had her remove all of them and then introduce them in serious quantity one by one, and when I reacted we would have found the one I was allergic to. We didn't question this, it worked like a charm, and I was only sorry that we started with the onion week and didn't get around to the strawberry week. Even given the fact that my recollections of all this are colored by a six-year-old's reflections, while I remember that not being able to drink milk or have ice cream was a serious blow, there was never any real cause for concern. Sure, it was a pretty big bother, and our experiments to try to find something to replace milk were often pretty disgusting, such as apple juice on Rice Krispies which is possibly more disgusting than it sounds, but we never had to check labels to search for trace elements of milk. It wasn't--and still isn't--that serious, nor that dangerous. Nobody has to make adjustments for me, I have it down to a science how much ice cream I can have without a reaction, and even having an all-night fling with Ben & Jerry's wouldn't send me to the hospital. It's just something to work around, and for most of my life, my having a food allergy made me odd or unusual. True food allergies, they say, are extremely rare. NOW, however, it seems that my food allergy is odd or unusual for the simple reason that it doesn't try to kill me.
Looking up allergies, I found that they are classified as an exaggerated immune response to a substance that is typically harmless, but that the body mistakenly identifies as a threat. OK, that makes perfect sense for hay fever and the like--you breathe something in, your body doesn't like it, so you sneeze your head off to get rid of it. Fine. I, however, get blistering headaches from too much milk, which I have to say is pretty pathetic if this is the best my immune system can come up with to protect me. Ah! Foreign invaders! Code red! Code red!--launch severe cranial pain!!!!!! We are under attack! Code red! Code red!
But the ones that really surprise me--and the ones that are becoming so widespread--are the deadly allergies, which I believe are usually peanut or other nut allergies. I won't even cook with peanut oil just in case one of my guests might be allergic. And what is the point of such a severe allergy? Why would so many people's bodies choose death over a peanut? I mean, I've tried plenty of foods I hope to never encounter again, and if I had to choose between death and eating liver I might have to think about it, but it seems like having such a vicious immune system should be very, very rare....and yet it seems to be becoming more and more common. So, my question--which needs more exploration--is why? Could it actually be because of what we are eating, and if so, would we be willing to change our eating habits?
And in the 12th and final month of a food experiment, is it normal to get philosophical about peanuts, or have I finally cracked under the lack of cinnamon bears?
4 comments:
Good questions, Toni, especially in light of the idea that living in too clean of a house may contribute to childhood asthma. My kids never had to worry about THAT, but there are a lot of allergies in my family, and I went out of my way to avoid cow's milk (literally out of my way, because buying goat's milk involved a trip to a farm back then) and grew most of our vegetables, baked our bread, avoided pop and junk food, etc. My son was tested for allergies at one point, because he had developed this funny little cough, and he had NONE (and the cough went away by itself). My daughter, on the other hand, has problems with molds and tree pollen and some other things we've never identified. I've always wondered if my efforts helped or not, but I pretend they did. Besides, my kids continue to eat healthy as adults. I'll be interested in seeing how your diet evolves once you are off the-year-of. My memory of the taste of a donut is much better than the actual thing!
Isn't it "funny" that Wright is allergic to fruit -- something that is very very healthy for the body, his body feels the need to mount a response to. There's a wire crossed there somewhere! Also strange is he wasn't born with that allergy, it came on when he was around 12. If we have kids, I certainly hope they don't get his fruit allergy and my hives!
My (as far as I know) unproven theory about allergens actually has a great deal to do with the processing (and growing) of foods.
Take dairy. Back in ye dayes of olde, milk would still have had active enzymes in it. And no hormones or antibiotics. I'm allergic to penicillin, and was not surprised that, as I got older, milk gave me nasty heartburn. I finally discovered that non-fat organic milk works for me, not because it still has enzymes but probably doesn't contain anything that offends me.
Industrial scale agriculture has not only introduced chemicals into our food, but has reduced the varieties of food. Blue corn? For whatever reason, didn't enter large scale agriculture until it became chichi. How many varieties of potato, pea, beans, apples, berries, grains, have been weeded out of our diet in the last 150 years?
Anyway, some food (ha!) for thought on the subject.
Our school nurse told me that they think the widespread and relatively new phenomenon of high-risk peanut allergies may have spread like some sort of genetic virus. When the CDC tracks / models the data of people, usually kids, with peanut allergies, it began on the east coast and worked its way west, which isn't how you'd think an "allergy" would work. I haven't researched it myself. but I know I've had more and more kids each year who have deadly anaphylactic reactions to peanuts and I sure know how to use an epipen.
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