Month: August 2013

My son’s school does not have air conditioning. Normally this is not much of an issue since Chicago is more famous for its icy winters than for its broiling hot Septembers. That said, this has been a very hot September and, despite the best efforts of everyone at his school, it has been very hot in there. Now he drinks cold water all day, but as any runner will tell you, if you sweat enough water isn’t the entire answer. You need something that will replace all the salts you are losing through sweat as well. So after a day like that, sports drinks like Gatorade seem like a great option. After all the drink was invented to properly rehydrate the football players at The University of Florida which is in Gainsville which, in August, when they are practicing is typically hot, humid, and sweat inducing. The problem is that most sports drinks contain less of they electrolytes than you might think and they also contain dyes and other scary ingredients some of which are restricted if not banned in other civilized nations. They also contain a lot of sweetener, typically sugar. So not wanting to trade one problem for another, I discovered a few other options. 1) Coconut Water Drinks – We drink Zico chocolate because my son will drink it, but there are other brands and other...

I had no intention of writing about this but I think it is so important that I need to share this post from Scary Mommy. I had always assumed that if you used the EpiPen then went to the hospital and got the steroids and the drugs and everything was OK after several hours you were released and that was that episode. Apparently it only works that way MOST of the time. Sometimes the reaction comes back. Allergies are painfully personal to me. Many years ago I had allergies so severe that I carried the precursor to an EpiPen everywhere I went. Everywhere. I was the girl at a frat party with a good sized purse that I never ever locked up anywhere. It held keys, money, two inhalers, and a big red box containing an adrenaline shot. Allergies like mine, allergies so severe that they might cause me to stop breathing were so unusual that the only kit they made was a prefilled hypodermic which came, hilariously, with an alcohol pad as if while I was unable to breathe and attempting to get the air out of the needle without losing the medicine I might be inclined to clean the area first. Um, no. I no longer have such scary allergies. I have not even used a rescue inhaler for years, but I remember. I remember what it...

Where I live, there is a large concentration of new immigrants from India. One told me that on her trips back she had noticed a pattern. Families with several children, none of whom had any autoimmune conditions of allergies, would have say half of those children leave India and raise grandchildren in nations like Australia, Canada or the United States. The grandchildren born and raised in these countries get autoimmune conditions. Their cousins back home in India do not. I recall years ago reading a study that noted that allergies and autism seemed more frequent in affluent families. The study thought it was due to over diagnosing these conditions. I don’t know the provenance of that study but anecdotally I can tell you that my experience is that when I attend parties with more affluent and educated people, especially teachers and medical workers, there are more food allergies to be aware of. When I attend parties with my more working class relatives and friends, especially those who may be quite well to do but who work in professions where they get dirty (plumbers, contractors of any kind) my child is one of two with issues or he is the only one. Both of these observations fit well into what is known as “the hygeine hypothesis” which says that an absence of exposure to microbes and parasites early in life...

One of my friends posted this list on Facebook about ten foods that are banned in other countries but are allowed here in the United States. The issue with these lists is that often there is something in them which is misleading or reaching. So I decided to take the list apart a bit and find out not only whether or not these foods and additives are actually banned, but also to find out why they are banned. The answers may surprise you. Here is the original list as reported on MSN. http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/10-things-americans-eat-that-are-banned-elsewhere#12 Now some of these are well known. I am not going to go over food colors, rBST, BHA and BHT. Yes they are banned and just look them up if you want to know why. Those have been covered ad nauseam. That said, some of the items on this list were new to me so I went out and tried to find out some more about these bans. So here is what the research showed. Farm Raised Salmon – There is plenty of evidence that farm raised salmon is an ecological problem and that the fish are dyed since they eat a diet that does not contain the krill that normally cause the pink color in the flesh. However, banned? Well the list says that they are banned in Australia and New Zealand. This is NOT...

In college I routinely ate something referred to as a Harold’s Half, which if you live in Chicago, you know is half of a chicken (about three pounds of meat) buttermilk batter dipped, deep fried and then slathered in hot sauce and barbeque sauce. This is then mounted on a pile of fries which are on top of two slices of white bread. I used to eat the entire thing, every thing but the bones for dinner (two thighs and two drumsticks and Harold did NOT skimp on the size of those parts) and wash it down with beer about three times a week. During this time, I played NO sports and could not have run a mile even if I was chased by a lion. That….is…NOT…..normal. Based on what I ate, my butt should have been applying for statehood. I was endlessly looking for tapeworms which seemed to me the only explanation as to how a person could eat like that and have 34 inch hips. My life of effortless thinness lasted until I started trying to get pregnant, but the truth is that I have always eaten a freakish amount of calories compared to my actual weight…until I went gluten-free. Now once I went gluten-free I started eating less. A LOT less. As in about one third to one half of what I ate before. My husband...

While on the road to our annual family vacation I got a vivid reminder of why reading labels is so important and why looking past marketing is SO critical. We were at a truck stop seeking snacks that were gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free and GMO-free. We were hopeful of finding something vegan, without scary ingredients and that was maybe nutritious but we were at a truck stop and we were being realistic. So we found bananas, and then suddenly my husband came out with this bag of chips which he had found. I read the label and was shocked. The chips were nothing but blue, white and sweet potato sliced fried in expeller pressed sunflower oil and with salt, so totally free of the entire big 8 plus corn and sesame. Score 1. These ingredients are always GMO free. Score 2. Then I read the nutrition label and just about fainted. One bag of these chips contains 30% of the RDA of Vitamin A, 12% of B6 and of Manganese, 20% of Vitamin C, 8% of Vitamin E, 6% of Iron, Magnesium and Phosphorus, 4% of Thiamin and 2% of Calcium. These are not added vitamins, these are naturally occurring. In a 280 calorie bag of chips, at a truck stop. I defy you to find that level of nutrition per calorie in any non-vegetable non-fruit vegan snack food. Check...

About year ago I did a post called All Natural and Gluten-Free decrying how the statement “gluten-free” meant very little because there was no standard for what could and could not be called gluten-free. Some things contain no gluten ingredients but are packaged on the same assembly lines as products containing barley (wheat must be disclosed on packaging, barley and gluten do not have the same requirement). Oats do not naturally contain gluten but can be presumed to be cross contaminated, and some scientists studied supposedly gluten-free flours only to find that some of them were far over the 20 ppm limit. However, that is finally going to change. The FDA has set a standard of 20 ppm as gluten-free. Once it goes into effect it can be enforced and questionable products can be seized for claiming to be gluten-free if they do not pass the test. Historically the only assurance we really had was the GF symbol which meant that a group of celiacs had ensured batch testing and certified that the product was indeed gluten free. That is why this is a big step forward for those of us who need to eat gluten-free. If you would like to read the original article in the New York Times you can find it here...