Month: August 2012

I am currently working on cookie recipes in anticipation of the holidays. You will notice that I am very specific about my choice of a shiny aluminum cookie sheet. To be perfectly honest I really want a stainless steel cookie sheet, but shiny aluminum is what I have and use for now. The truth is that I avoid non-stick cookware. In addition to my shiny cookie sheet, all my pans are stainless steel lined with aluminum cores. There are two reasons for this. First, there is a culinary reason. Dark non-stick cooking surfaces tend to burn whatever is touching them, so your cookies can end up undercooked on top with the part touching the cookie sheet kind of burnt. They also make certain sauces impossible as you cannot truly deglaze a non-stick pan. You need some burnt on bits to make those sauces. Second, there is growing data to suggest that non-stick coatings may have adverse health effects specifically around allergies and tumors. I would not call any of these studies definitive, but I do think that the abstracts are worth reading. The following study from Taiwan is a bit technical but it shows altered levels of IgE in the umbilical cord blood of babies exposed to perflorinated chemicals (nonstick coatings tend to use one or more of these as part of their plasticizers). When you get an allergy...

If you have not seen today’s New York Times I will attach a link below. They now have evidence that many of the cases of what we currently call autism are actually an autoimmune disease. This is not news to many of us, but what is news is that they think that they understand now WHY this particular form of autism occurs. The trigger is when the mother has an inflammatory episode while pregnant. So lets say the mother has an ear infection and her body mounts a typical inflammatory response. Her immune response, not the illness, seems to drastically increase the odds of autism. There was a single sentence that made my blood run cold. In an analysis of over 700,000 births they noted that children born to mothers with celiac disease have a 350% increased risk of autism. I wanted to scream. While you can’t yet get prescription worms or prevent getting strep throat while pregnant, you can indeed get tested for celiac disease. This is fixable. We have the ability to stop eating gluten, dairy and corn thereby preventing an immune response. And don’t tell me we can’t do it. Celiacs do it every day all over the world. Pregnant women routinely stop drinking, quit smoking, and eat stupefying amounts of veggies on behalf of the children we have not yet met. How dare anyone tell...

Gluten-Free dairy-free milks come with compromises. Some contain whiteners (look for zinc or titanium dioxide). Most of them contain quite a bit of sugar. Soy and almond are still highly allergenic and may not be appropriate for your family. Some contain GMOs. Some contain gluten. It takes a lot of planning to choose the right one. The sugar is an issue for most non-animal milks. A glass of milk with 60 calories from sugar has four teaspoons of sugar in it. There are about 4 grams of sugar and 15 calories in a teaspoon (not very exact since one is mass and the other volume…but close). I don’t ever recall getting an 8 oz coffee with 4 sugars. The only good news is how much less that is than plain 100% juice. We cut juice out when I realized that a 100 calorie juice box meant the equivalent of over six teaspoons of sugar in that tiny box. Back to the milks… Soy Milk is high in fiber and protein. There are many options. There is no soy milk in my house right now because I am currently boycotting my favorite brand, Silk, because the parent company Dean Foods is fighting GMO labeling in California so I can’t tell you what is on the label. In general the positives of soy milk are that it contains fiber, protein, isoflavones...

The recent announcement by Johnson & Johnson that they were planning to phase formaldehyde and other carcinogens (quaternium 15 releases formaldehyde) out of their products by 2015 (out of baby products by 2013) may cause you to wonder who you can trust. There are those who would say that you should just read the labels, but realistically, without a degree in organic chemistry what are the odds that you would know that quaternium 15 releases formaldehyde? Since not one but both of my parents have degrees in organic chemistry, I will pass on a tidbit from them. Natural is not always safer. Both hemlock and arsenic are natural. There are things that are artificial and still safer than their natural counterparts. You actually have to understand the chemical. Which is where the Environmental Working Group or EWG and The Good Guide come in. EWG has a database called Skin Deep where they evaluate the toxicity of each individual chemical in a product. They also rate the product as a whole and tell you why the product has its rating. What they do not do is rate based on any social or environmental factors. They do tell you whether or not the product is tested on animals. For personal care products I like them better than The Good Guide. The main reason is that Good Guide ratings are dose dependent....

When my son and I discussed plans to eliminate corn as well as gluten and dairy from his diet, we immediately moved to lentil chips as the solution in the chip department. Like most first graders he is fond of chips but due to the food sensitivities everything from pita chips obviously) to Pirate Booty (dairy) to Doritos (where do I begin) is off limits. Everything except lentil chips. We tried a few brands. The Trader Joe’s ones were too spicy for him. Other brands were also more seasoned and tuned toward adult palates. Then we found Plentils. Now he doesn’t miss corn chips at all. Plentils are made by Enjoy Life which has a really strict big eight allergen-free facility here in the Chicago suburbs. Plentils are safe for most of the food allergic kids in the classroom. The light sea salt flavor in the blue bag has only five ingredients: lentil powder, potato starch, safflower oil, salt and turmeric. The entire four serving bag (4 oz but feels like more) only has 520 calories, or 130 per serving. And this flavor is kid palate friendly (I am not so sure about teh dill and sour cream). I do not have any arrangements for compensation with Enjoy Life! I have paid for the chips myself. I just share this in the spirit of, oh wow this is great....

I get a lot of strange looks this time of year. I am sure that people are gossiping about a lifestyle choice I have made for myself and my son, in part because of what we have been learning about controlling autoimmune diseases. We have tans. Real ones. From being in the sun without constantly reapplying sunscreen. Now, we live outside Chicago…the cloudiest city besides Seattle. And we are never, ever, even a little bit, burnt. And we aren’t all tanned up by June 5th. I have lots of photos of our pasty early season skin, but by now we have managed to get a nice slow even tan. Our faces are a bit pale still but our bodies are very bronze. Why would I do this? The link between diet and autoimmune disease is becoming increasingly clear. And one of the clearest recommendations is that adequate intake of Vitamin D is critical to preventing and mitigating autoimmune diseases. Although celiac disease is deadly if not treated, it is among the better autoimmune diseases to have. It is not crippling like RA, colitis, or Crohn’s. There is no need to monitor anything overnight as there is with type 1 diabetes. There are no tricky drugs. Vitamin D can be taken orally. Given our latitude here in Chicago, I spend the winters happily blocking the virtually non-existent sunshine (this far...

When I was a child my favorite treat dessert was Oreo brand sandwich cookies. My health-conscious mother rarely purchased them, but when she did, that was all we wanted (I was a child in the 1970s when dessert was standard at lunch and dinner). So while I knew chocolate sandwich cookies would never be a big part of my life, I did want to find something for my son. There are many stated options but if you have a lot of food sensitivitues there is really only one. Initially we tried several brands of gluten-free sandwich cookies including the following Mi-Del Schar Glutino K-toos For pure flavor, I loved the Schar cookies. They are decadent, adult, better than Oreo brand sandwich cookies. They are not the most “authentic” but if I could eat them, I would. However, like half of all celiacs we cannot have dairy or corn. This is how we get down to the one choice that is consistently in our home. The following allergens are present in each of the other brands of cookies (as of today and as of the manufacturer websites…things can change, be sure to check again before purchasing) Glutino – Contains eggs, soy, corn, potato, and possibly dairy and nuts. Schar – Contains corn, soy, milk and potato (but they are egg free and appear to be nut free) Mi-Del – Contains...

We spent the day today at Veggie Fest which was a fascinating combination of mindfulness and food. Every half hour you could take free lessons in meditation. There were lectures on healthy eating, cooking demonstrations, and snacks galore from the obviously healthy (watermelon) to the ones probably best consumed in moderation (thick cheese pizza). The best part was that even though we did a lot of walking around in the heat, my six year old son had a great time. For him, this was Taste of Chicago. It was great because so many vendors had foods that were gluten, dairy, and corn free. There were also plenty of nut free choices. We enjoyed toasted hemp seeds from Cousin Mary Jane (astonishingly healthy snack by the way…I don’t think I have ever seen such an impressive vitamin and mineral label anywhere), chocolate “ice cream” by NadaMoo as well as smoothies and juices. We could have had salads, we just got full eating all the new foods. And salad is something we were already familiar with. We did not feel marginalized or strange. There was none of that “are you being difficult on purpose?” look that can get old. The need to be gluten and dairy free was taken in stride. I have not been to taste of Chicago in years. It is a great food festival, it just isn’t much...