Food Allergies

More pesticide residue allowed on citrus, rules EPA  (click link for full article)

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has increased the tolerated level of pesticide residue for citrus fruits and oils, following a petition from Dow AgroSciences.

The EPA conducts random tests for residues of the insecticide methoxyfenozide at the grower, food manufacture and retail level. If they are found to be too high, ingredients can be withdrawn and growers face fines as well as the loss of income from crops that may have cost them thousands of dollars to produce. Although food manufacturers are not held responsible for ensuring that pesticide levels are acceptable, they are susceptible to disruption if the EPA withdraws an ingredient found to have excessive pesticide residues.

The agency said that as a result of the petition from Dow AgroSciences, which produces the insecticide, it has reviewed the available scientific data for methoxyfenozide, and has increased the maximum tolerance level for citrus fruit from two parts per million (ppm) to ten ppm, and the tolerance for citrus oil from 70 to 100ppm.

In its final rule, it said that the pesticide is “not acutely toxic” and that studies show “it has few or no biologically significant toxic effects at relatively low-dose levels in many animal studies and only mild or no toxic effects at relatively high-dose levels.”

No comments were received in response to the filing of the petition prepared by Dow AgroSciences. Objections to the rule or requests for a hearing can be filed prior to November 2.

Further information on the EPA’s final rule can be found online here . "

EFSA clears raising permitted aflatoxin levels in tree nuts by 150 per cent

I have to wonder if any of this has an impact as well.
This was reported 7 Jul 2009 by NutraIngredients.com

"Aflatoxins are toxins produced by fungus from the Aspergillus genus. The toxin is carcinogenic in humans and can also cause other health effect, particularly liver problems. "

There seems to be a connection with all of this and the toxic load that a person heaps onto their livers to "clean up" for them.

Add to this extra hormones from xenoestrogens etc., pollution of any kind, the waste products in the medicines that we take, the chemicals in our soaps and shampoos, makeup...  It reminds me of a comedy movie I watched a long time ago, but in reality it's not so funny.

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

Related news from NutraIngredients.com (click link for entire article):

China approves allergy-battling probiotics

According to GenMont, the approvals for its strains GM-080 and GMNL-33, mean it can make anti-allergy claims as well as oral health claims for products it hopes to launch on the Chinese market this year.

These would most likely be in the form of probiotic yoghurt drinks or infant formula milk powders. The company is in negotiations with major Chinese dairies but said negotiations had been stalled to a degree by the melamine infant formula crisis that erupted on the Sino peninsula last year.

Chinese approval

But in China, under its Management Method for Food for New Resources, the strains have only been approved for foods, not supplements.

“The Chinese have now approved 15 probiotic strains,” GenMont spokesperson David Silver told NutraIngredients.com this morning. “But these are the only ones relating to anti-allergy and bad breath benefits.”

The company said phase-2, clinical trials backed the benefits of the allergy strain – GM-080, although NutraIngredients.com was unable to determine whether these studies had been peer-reviewed at the time of publication. Twelve papers involving its products had been published, the company said.

Anti-allergy

The company said GM-080 could reduce allergic symptoms by 40-50 per cent after a month of consumption and the risk of allergy recurrences after six.

Those who suffered from the likes of asthma, allergic rhinitis, ectopic dermatitis, allergic conjunctivitis, urticaria and food allergies were the target market as well as well as seasonal allergy patients and expectant mothers.

Its other probiotics include products marketed on anti-arthritis, and cholesterol lowering potential.

for posting that info, DL.  The beneficial effects of pre/probiotics--it just makes me think of all those antibacterial products many people use.

ETA: heh, and of course all the antibiotics in what we eat...

Hey... Someone here at work gave me that same link.

Apparently sometimes this guy has a series of articles on this and posts his recipes every now and then too.

Both asthma and allergies seem to be the bodies response to removing pollutants from our system.

Though we may find a pill for one symptom for one genetic type now, what's going to happen when we have to find the right pill to take for breakfast?

I posted an article here on the Asthma page talking about the increase in allergies.  It's now being addressed by the British because it's finally hitting them in the pocketbook.  America will get there too, if you want my opinion.

My son may be the extreme case right now that the FDA literally doesn't have to consider with their safety regulations, but it won't be so easy to ignore when the law of averages catches up.

In any case, this is part of my motivation to buy organic food whenever possible.

The main allergy researched is peanut because it is usually the most lethal and long lasting.  I can only hope that anything they find in relation to this can be used for any food allergy - including milk.

Some peanut allergy studies: 

Though the allergy can last a lifetime, another 2003 study indicates that 23.3% of children will outgrow a peanut allergy.[16]

Peanut allergy has been associated with the use of skin preparations containing peanut oil among children, but the evidence is not regarded as conclusive.[17] Peanut allergies have also been associated with family history and intake of soy products.[18]

Canadian researchers are part of an international team that claims to have found clues that could identify those at risk of fatal peanut allergies. 

The study found that nine people who died of peanut allergies had significantly lower levels of an enzyme which normally breaks down the chemical that causes bronchial spasms.

They also had high levels of IgE antibodies that are activated during an allergic reaction.

There is no concrete evidence to explain the rising number of peanut allergies in industrialized countries over the past decade.

Some children who are allergic to peanut may actually outgrow the life-threatening allergy, some American researchers have reported.

"Although we once thought peanut allergy was a life-long problem, we now believe certain children, namely those with low levels of allergy antibodies, may outgrow it," Dr. Robert Wood, pediatric allergist and immunologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, said Thursday.

You'll find a link below this text to an article I think you should read. I need to say in advance that it is not focused on the subject matter here, although I think it's a really good article to read. The relevant portion:

What about peanut allergies?

"We just don't see it," Shepherd says. "In developing countries food allergy
is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries.

Context: Malnourished children are being given a food that is essentially peanut butter with added nutrients.

Link to full article

This makes me wonder what studies will be kicked off by revelations like this. The whole "Back to Sleep" campaign was in a studied response to the question of why children in third world countries are less likely to die of SIDS than children in the US. The two biggest differences found were that children in third world countries sleep on their backs and with their parents. Overcoming the co-sleeping taboo in the US is still proving to be an issue, but getting parents to put their children to sleep on their backs wasn't too tough. It has made a noticeable impact on the frequency of SIDS. But, then, no one was all that invested in the concept of having children sleep on their stomachs, either. Just seeing how formula companies try to squelch all indicators of the superiority of breastfeeding and downplay what does get out might be a good indicator of what all the industries getting rich off keeping Americans fat and sick might do when their cash cow [pun intended] is threatened.

ESi,

I'd be interested in what you've read on co-sleeping preventing SIDS as when I was practicing it I heard very much the opposite claim from many. Thanks.

I talked it over with my wife and got some more of the skinny. No study has been published with any believable indication that co-sleeping causes SIDS. The problem here is that because no one knows exactly what causes SIDS, it's still means "death by undetermined causes". So, what has happened is that some infants have died while co-sleeping, and because no one could be certain exactly what killed them, the cause of death was listed as undetermined, and other people called it SIDS.

Also, people co-sleep for various reasons. In our family, it's because we desire that powerful emotional bond it gives us and because we feel that there are definite psychological and physical benefits to co-sleeping. However, some parents co-sleep simply because they can't afford a crib or otherwise have no other place for their baby to sleep. These parents are unlikely to have attained the knowledge of creating a safe environment for co-sleeping, since that big stack of literature the hospital sends you home with doesn't cover it at all and lots of people just don't think there might be more to it than just tossing the baby in the bed. Just imagine a mother who has a glass of wine and a couple of cigarettes before curling up with her baby, then wakes up the next day with a dead child. SIDS might get the blame, and at one point in the not-so-distant past it almost definitely would have.

Because the cause of SIDS is undetermined, nothing can be considered a "cure" for SIDS. For instance, doctors know for a fact that a woman who consumes 80mg per day of protein throughout her pregnancy absolutely will not suffer pre-eclampsia. However, they don't call it a "cure" for pre-eclampsia because the true cause of pre-eclampsia isn't known, and consuming less than that amount of protein doesn't mean a woman will suffer from pre-eclampsia. It's kind of the same thing with co-sleeping and SIDS. Just like there are theories on what causes SIDS, there is a theory on how co-sleeping might help prevent SIDS. Because the breathing response is not triggered by lack of oxygen but by build-up of carbon dioxide, adding the mother's carbon dioxide to the mix of air the infant is subjected to might encourage the infant's system to continue breathing. Also, as I said in my other post, the infant's regulatory systems do appear to take cues from the mother's.

I'll have my wife get out whatever she found. She did all the real hard work on this one.

Basically, there's no proof, and I'm not sure an in-depth study has been done. It started with a basic question: Why do infants in the US die of SIDS more often than infants in undeveloped countries? The two factors they found different were that infants in those countries sleep on their backs and sleep with their parents. Americans have been told to put their babies to sleep on their backs for a while now, and the instances of SIDS have been reduced dramatically. The instances of SIDS deaths in this country is still higher than in those undeveloped countries however, but that's not proof that co-sleeping would make up the remainder of the difference. There are still other factors that may contribute to SIDS, such as smoking, general environment, undetected allergies that affect the respiratory system, and other things that could distinguish the average American baby from a baby in a third world country.

I don't know of anyone who has ever had a compelling reason to say that co-sleeping causes SIDS. Unsafe practices during co-sleeping has caused infants to die, but I think ruling those deaths as being caused by SIDS was to protect well-meaning, traumatized parents who unintentionally smothered their children from being charged with involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide or something of the like. There's a fear that a mother will roll over on the baby, which has pretty much zero chance of happening except with very heavy women. Mother and child have a special bond and something in that prevents Mom from ever doing such a thing. It's not a proven thing either, I guess, but in countries where co-sleeping is the norm, they don't have the slightest concern over it and have the statistics to back them up. Unfortunately, only Mom and baby have that bond; Dad and anyone else who winds up in the bed need to be shielded from hurting the baby. Extreme caution must be taken to ensure that the fitted sheet is very tight, and all cover sheets, pillows, and blankets must be kept away from baby. These precautions only cover the smothering hazards of co-sleeping. As you well know, there are a host of other things that have to be considered for safe co-sleeping. I'd imagine that a lot of the anti-co-sleeping attitude is just a general distrust of people to know what the right thing to do is or to actually do what they know the right thing is.

I won't say that co-sleeping prevents SIDS, although it is my opinion that it does at least contribute to its prevention. For one thing, Mom wakes up whenever she senses something isn't right with baby. A lot of times, SIDS seems to happen when a baby's system malfunctions and just stops sending the command to breathe too long. Any sort of stimulation seems to reset that system. When Mom 'senses' something isn't right and wakes up to check the baby, that alone could be enough to get the baby going again. Also, being in such close proximity to Mom also means that baby's system has a perfectly functioning one to emulate. It has been shown that baby's heartbeat will come in tune (not necessarily sync'ed) with Mom's during co-sleeping, so it seems rational that other functions, such as breathing, might take cues from Mom as well.

Unfortunately, this "Rich Man's Disease" isn't prevalent enough for most people to care.  Here are a few articles scratching the surface of that:

Allergic children may break out in hives if they so much as kiss someone who has eaten a peanut or if they merely touch a surface -- like a table or doorknob -- where peanuts or peanut butter have been. Peanut protein survives for six months.

Not only is the peanut protein long-lived, but the peanut allergy can survive death. A man who received a liver and kidney transplant inherited a peanut allergy from the donor, a 22 year-old who had fallen into a coma and died after eating satay sauce.

Several months after the transplant, the recipient suffered a skin rash and difficulty breathing after eating peanuts. Doctors traced the newly developed allergy to blood cells primed to recognize the allergins that were passed along with the liver.

Yet many parents and teachers, even after hearing this, remain cavalier toward peanut-allergic children and their parents.

One illustrative anecdote involves a peanut-free day care center where an aide spotted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the hands of a 4-year-old. Turns out the mother had been making her child's sandwiches with a 2-inch circle of peanut butter in the middle, then surrounding it with jelly to hide the peanut butter.

When told her child could not remain in the program if she didn't abide by the school's rules, she replied that her child's rights were being subverted by "this peanut allergy nonsense."

Unfortunately, parents with such attitudes can convey them to their children, thus fostering a ten dency to tease the allergic child. In another few years, the smiles and compliance that Ezra encounters today when he announces his allergy may change to peer scoffing, teasing and harassment ("Ha, ha, you're the peanut kid!").

**This happened to my son in daycare.  He was called "allergy boy" and beaten up by a group of kids regularly.  He told me about the teasing once.  I talked to the daycare staff and they told me they would handle it.  They handled it by threatening my son and telling him "not to go crying home to mommy" everytime someone said something.  He stopped telling me about it.

Exaggeration? Tell that to the 7-year-old St. Louis girl who had to be hospitalized for two days after having crumbled peanut butter crackers dumped on her head by a boy on her school bus who was harassing her about her allergy.

**The culmination of the teasing at this daycare resulted in the main bully splashing my son in the face with milk from his breakfast cereal.  My son had to be taken to the ER.  This kid saw my son's face - it looked like it'd been whipped by a cat-o-nine tails.  I lectured him - the bully cried - and 2 days later gave my son a bloody nose on the playground.  There was no remorse.

Banning peanuts from schools....

RUSH LIMBAUGH: But isn't this a typical liberal solution? You've got 440 students and 1 of them has a peanut allergy. What do you do? You ban peanut butter from all 440 of the children, spread the misery around, deny everybody the right to eat peanut butter in order to protect the 1 child who cannot.

LEE HOCHBERG: Some parents are angered by accommodations made for other allergies. When a preschool in Virginia banned milk, cheese, and yogurt to protect a student with an allergy to dairy products, some parents pulled children from the school and withheld tuition. Critics also have lashed out at a recent ruling from the U.S. Justice Department that obligates school teachers to treat allergic reactions. Peanut-allergic children could need a life-saving shot of adrenaline but La Petite Academy, the nation's second largest child care provider, said it would not take on the liability of administering it. Parents of allergic kids said the school was violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires schools make reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. In an October settlement with the government the Academy agreed to administer adrenaline. Like many schools, St. Ann's Episcopal in Denver, has begun adapting to its peanut-allergic children, like nine-year-old Caroline Curtiss. Though Curtiss brings her own peanut-free lunch, the school stopped using peanut oil in its cafeteria food to reduce her risk of reaction.

Though most teachers at this training session seemed to embrace their new duty, one wondered why she was suddenly being asked to practice medicine. 

PEGGY JOHNSON, State Representative, (R): I think that it's going on beyond what would be expected of any teacher. A teacher is trained to teach. They expect to walk in the classroom and teach. They do not expect to be technicians, medical technicians, or health care providers.  To assume the responsibility for the total well-being of the child in the classroom, I don't think so.

The chairwoman of Washington State's House Education Committee, Johnson says teachers already have enough to do as educators without becoming, as she puts it, social workers.

Food Allergy Network: This is a medication that will save someone's life. It's the only medication that will turn around an allergic reaction. How can we honestly sit there and say, I don't know if I want to do that?

I am again faced with this as the school year starts and I have the myraid of papers to present to a new school in order to help my child survive the year. 

This somewhat political debate is still ongoing...

I'm constantly amazed at the lengths some parents will go to in order to insure that they don't have to deal with other family's problems within their community.

(Article highlights below)
Peanut Butter Bans

More schools than ever are banning peanuts and peanut products as the number of kids diagnosed with the potentially life-threatening allergy has climbed dramatically in recent years.

The main worry for Searles, like many parents, is that her son would have a reaction without actually eating a peanut product. It's possible for Matthew to have a reaction from touching a table or utensil with peanut butter on it and then putting his hand into his mouth or rubbing his eyes, Searles said.

It’s a legitimate concern, Sampson said. That’s why he supports peanut bans in preschools and kindergarten classes, where students are prone to putting their hands in their mouths. As children grow older, he favors carefully cleaned peanut-free tables in the cafeteria, hand washing and other common sense precautions.

“As children get older and more responsible, you don’t have to have anything like a ban,” he said. “You want them to learn to deal with the situation.”

“People were extremely rude,” she said. “They just thought it was a ridiculous request.”

People left nasty posts on local message boards. One online writer suggested ending the issue by putting all the allergic children in a room together and feeding them peanuts, Searles said.

Alternative to food bans
Parents opposed to the bans have an unlikely ally — an advocacy group for people with food allergies. The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network in Fairfax, Va., recommends schools treat each student's allergy individually and adopt plans that emphasize continued vigilance rather than food bans.

The statistics today
It is, said TODAY medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman, a growing problem in the United States and in other developed nations. An estimated 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies, with 6.9 million allergic to seafood and 3.3 million allergic to peanuts or tree nuts. Eight foods — milk, eggs, nuts, wheat, soy, fish and shellfish — account for 90 percent of food allergies.

While doctors try to figure out the reasons for the rise, the situation pits parents against each other and puts school districts in the middle.  Between 1997 and 2002, the rates of peanut allergies in children under age five doubled, said Dr. Hugh A. Sampson, president of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

I wonder what I can do in order to make things easier for other allergic children down the road.  My son can't eat school lunch - the district won't even try to feed him unless he's declared disabled (no matter what the doctor or his blood work says).   Years ago he qualified for disability but this was based upon him being sent to the ER on a regular basis.  When we had his allergies in control with medication he was determined ineligible.  I was told with an attorney I could get this status reinstated because it was an area where the law was vague, but I wondered "why should I do this" when I wasn't confident that going through all this effort just to qualify for a school hot lunch would have resulted in a meal that wouldn't kill my boy in the first place.  And now...  They recently scaled back disability laws -- it's hard to even think there will be legal recourse for families that carry this kind of future.  I almost feel like the government is saying "let's lock them all in a room..." 

All my ranting aside... I agree with the The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network .  A ban would be creating a whole host of problems of its own.  For instance - peanut butter is one of the few things my son actually can eat without dying.  How do you determine which child has more of a right to live? - You just can't.   Should these children be forced to attend home schooling because the government/community does not want to have to deal with it?  Even if such a thing could be funded (tell me how single parents could do this and keep a job that would support a family) - this might work only until the allergy rates are keeping everyone at home. 

This is something that could be taken care of by people just paying attention to what is going on and acting in a responsible manner.   But beyond that... the health care system in this country is really getting scary out of control.  We need to focus on preventative medicine in order to find out what's causing this phenomenon.  Here's the Catch 22 - the pharmeceutical companies make their profit and living off of our ailments and have a vested interest in keeping us "just sick enough"... but if they don't make a profit off of our ailments, where will the cutting edge medical research come from?  How do we find an altruistic company?   If the government got involved - what could they really do except narrow and restrict the power to people on their payroll that aren't necessarily any less corrupt? I don't even know what the answer is.

MOD: Duplicate as anonymous again... sorry :(

I can't believe people are getting so crazy about this. The peanut allergy, among others, is extremely deadly, but the treatment is excessively simple. Teachers are required to know CPR, and I'm fairly certain they have to occasionally update that training. Most people with these intense allergies are well aware that they have them, including the kids, so they carry around one of those little pen things that they can use in an emergency. Those are WAY easier to use than administering CPR is. I'm generally sensitive to the issues that America's teachers are confronted with, but teachers who whine about having to deal with this sort of thing remind me of those people who sign up for the military and then complain because they have to do military things. Whether they like it or not, being a teacher in an American school also means they are daycare providers, with all the responsibilities that go along with that, and whining about those base expectancies earns no sympathy because they had the freedom to choose the line of work they went into.

This is one of the things they are considering.  Potentially the way we process peanuts may cause the complication.  Here are excerpts from 2 different articles:

Roasting enhances allergic properties in peanuts Another new study found that roasting may play an important role in enhancing the allergenic properties of peanuts. Soheila J. Maleki, PhD, from the United States Department of Agriculture discovered that roasting causes the major peanut allergen, Ara h2 to become a stronger digestive enzyme inhibitor and more resistant to digestion. The study is the first to show that roasting alters the functional characteristics that directly influence the allergen's allergic potential. These findings have important implications for studies of other allergens, where research has previously focused primarily on structural characteristics. This may explain why peanuts are such a potent allergen.

A theory of the development of peanut allergy has to do with the way that peanuts are processed in North America versus other countries like China and India. Peanuts are widely eaten in China and India but peanut allergies are almost unheard of there. According to a 2003 study, roasting peanuts (vs. boiling), as more commonly done in North America, causes the major peanut allergen Ara h2 to become a stronger inhibitor of the digestive enzyme trypsin, making it more resistant to digestion.[15] Additionally, this allergen has also been shown to protect Ara h1, another major peanut allergen, from digestion - a characteristic further enhanced by roasting.[15]

That will be interesting to see where this goes. I can see where it would make an impact, but you have to wonder how widespread it will be. Are peanuts that wind up as oil generally roasted or boiled first?

What I'd like to see done are conclusive studies that follow the age food is introduced to a child and food type. For instance, our daughter was exclusively breastfed until 6-1/2 months of age. I was thinking about pushing until 7 but it started to seem that my wife's supply couldn't keep up with our daughter's demand. We began introducing solids slowly, and are gradually see-sawing from breastfed as primary nutrition with solids as supplements to solids as primary with breast milk as a supplement. Foods were introduced based on how allergenic they are known to be. We started with avocados, then went to rice, then bananas, and then we opened it up to things like sweet potatoes. We are absolutely not allowing her to have any cow's milk until she is over a year old (I'd have to check our calendar for when it's OK). I think our schedule prohibits all nuts until she's over two years old. Our gamble is that she'll never have any food allergies of any kind, and, as I illustrated in another post, she may also have a dramatically reduced likelihood of non-food related allergies as well.

The thing is, I certainly want my daughter to experience all the wonderful things in life, including good food. I'm a peanut butter fanatic myself, and I certainly don't want to deprive her of it. That said, I know for a fact that a human being can live out a full, happy, healthy life without ever tasting peanut butter. So where is the harm in keeping it away from her for a couple of years? I don't see any. Some of the other allergenic foods are harder to keep her away from just because they are so prevalent: wheat, cow's milk, etc. exist in so many foods targeted for infants that I'm sure someone somewhere is cooking up a conspiracy theory over it. I was in the infant's section of our local grocery store last week and saw a box of zwieback crackers, which I remember as being a big hit from experiences around other babies. With my recently trained eye, I scanned the ingredients list and almost went into cardiac arrest on the spot. I can't believe that the big-name company who made them would pack so many highly allergenic foods into a cracker intended for kids less than a year old! But, there it is.

Organic Dairy Report/Ratings Arranged by Cow Star Ratings.

Moo.