Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comStudy says 1 in 13 US children have food allergy
Seeded on Mon Jun 20, 2011 1:16 PM EDT (msnbc.com)
— Filed under: health
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What has changed that we have so many children now that are allergic to so many things. Are we creating a new breed of weaker humans?
Just on anecdotal experience my guess is that we are adding items to foods in the form of pesticides, fertilizers and growth facilitators that we should not be consuming directly or indirectly. Since these things have in many cases been proven to have harmful effects then it makes sense that it could go on to affect our offspring through some kind of inherited immune response as well.
Anecdote: I have a friend who breaks out in hives when she eats any pork products, however we went to a foreign country where we didn't 100% speak the language and she inadvertently ate a dish with pork as one of the main ingredients. When we told someone about our visit and the dishes we ate she mentioned that my friend had eaten pork and must have broken out severely. She had not broken out at all and we did not even know she had in fact eaten pork. We suspect that because they do not inject or feed their animals the same things we do in the U.S that she is allergic to some additive that we give the animals here.
It's not just children. The answer to their allergies may indeed be not enough exposure when young. Perhaps their lives don't have enough bacteria or germs or foods, or kinds of air or play . . . . .
My mother fed us peanut butter from the day we could eat solid foods, and we had it every day in the first years of grade school as part of our lunch. Of course, this was back in the 50's when the world didn't warn us so much about things that are bad for us, our mothers prepared all our food - and most of us grew up pretty healthy.
What I wonder about is why, when someone DOES eat a food for years and years, an allergy suddenly develops. I've had this experience with crab, and only two years ago when I had an allergy that affected my swallowing, worse than any reaction I'd had previously (and curiously enough ONLY with restaurant-prepared crab), did it occur to me it was an allergy I'd just developed - in my late 50's.
If I make it to age 90 or more, I may have to start enjoying Maryland crab again and maybe make it my exit meal! Until then, I can only salivate and miss it, and ask in every restaurant if shellfish are an ingredient in anything (including sauce) that I'm ordering. Bummer.