The phone call to our good friend, Mike, started off the usual way: “Hi. How have you been?” The response was not so usual: “Terrible! Last week my lips and then my whole face swelled up! It must be something I ate but I can’t figure out what.” When it’s hard to pinpoint a specific food culprit, chances are it’s an intolerance to salicylates, amines or MSG (monosodium glutamate).
Salicylates are natural chemicals found in a wide range of fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs & spices, jams, honey, tea, coffee, juice, beer and wine. Aspirin is also part of the salicylate family. Amines are formed by protein breakdown or fermentation. Like salicylates they are found in more tasty food such as avocados, tomatoes, bananas, cheese, chocolate, wine and beer. And MSG isn’t just confined to Chinese takeaways. It’s naturally found in tomatoes, cheese, mushrooms, meat and yeast extracts, sauces and stock cubes.
On our most recent catch-up Mike told us he had cut out tomatoes (“I was eating heaps of them”)and thankfully suffered no more puffer fish face episodes! Tomatoes are high in all three natural chemicals so avoiding them would certainly drop the levels in your body – hopefully to under your natural threshold level.
Move over Generation-X. There’s a new generation and it’s not pretty. According to Australian clinical immunology and allergy physician, Dr Raymond Mullins, the next generation of kids should be called the A-Generation because of the number of allergies they suffer. Allergic disease has increased in the past decade and is now a major public health problem for Australia and New Zealand amongst other countries. No-one can say exactly why it’s happening. Like most health issues it’s likely a combination of factors.
In an attempt to reduce allergy risk we used to tell mums to delay giving their infants potentially ‘allergenic’ foods such as peanuts, nuts, fish and eggs. But now it seems (not yet proven) that it may have made the problem worse!
It’s a dramatic nutrition advice back-flip. The Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy says there is no evidence that delaying the introduction of potentially allergenic foods will prevent food allergy or eczema. This includes infants with a sibling who already has food allergy or eczema.
A study of Jewish infants in the UK and Israel (chosen for their similar genetics and lifestyle) found that children who avoided peanut in infancy and early childhood were 10 times more likely to develop peanut allergy than those who ate peanut from an early age. By nine months of age 70% of Israeli children were eating a peanut snack (about the same as 20 peanuts a week) compared with only 10% of those in the UK.
Researchers are studying this further and looking at the theory that skin exposure to allergens may sensitise an infant while oral exposure may lead to tolerance.
That’s great news for mums who follow the ‘3-second rule’ – if the food is on the ground less than 3 seconds it’s fine to eat. Hey, we may even be doing our kids a favour!
Want to know more? If you live in Auckland (NZ), head along to the Gluten Free and Allergy Show this weekend at the Auckland Show Grounds.
Here are some useful links:
www.allergy.org.nz
www.allergy.org.au
