Category Archives: causes of allergies

The True Journey from the Farm to You: A Review of Food, Inc.

Food Inc: Michael Pollan and Friends Reveal the Food Industry’s Darkest Secrets

The new film Food Inc. is a shocking look at the health, human rights and the environmental nightmare that lands on our plate each meal.

It turns out that figuring out the most simple thing — like what’s on your dinner plate, and where it came from — is actually a pretty subversive act.

That’s what director Robert Kenner found out while spending six years putting together the amazing new documentary, Food Inc., which features prominent food writers Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation).

Warning: Food Inc. is not for the faint of heart. While its focus is not on the gory images of slaughterhouse floors and filthy feedlots, what it does show about the journey of our food from “farm” to plate is not pretty.

The story’s main narrative chronicles the consolidation of our vast food industry into the hands of a few powerful corporations that have worked to limit the public’s understanding of where its food comes from, what’s in it and how safe it may be.

But it’s also a larger story about the people that have gotten in the way of the stampeding corporate herd — like farmer Joel Salatin (also profiled in Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma), who has bravely bucked the trend to go corporate.

Read the rest of the interview here

People think if they can’t do it all the time they don’t have to do anything. Change one meal. But then we have to stop subsidizing food that is making us sick, we have to change the national school-lunch program. If we supported local farms and got that to the school systems and spent a dollar there, we’d save a a fortune in medicine and train kids to eat right, and we’d have better communities.

To see Food Inc., find a theater near you.

Researchers Use a Small Amount of the Same Substance to Heal Food Allergies

Researchers Use a Small Amount of the Same Substance to Cure Food Allergies

There truly is nothing new under the sun.  At times when I read “medical research,” it is often only resurfaced wisdom.  I tend to think it is ‘ego’ at work, to claim your work as “new”.  When it is not new.  The idea of small doses has been in use that we know of for hundreds of years, it is a cornerstone of homeopathic treatment, homeopathy uses infinitesimally small doses.

Isopathy prescribes a remedy made from the causative agent or products of a disease from the same disease or substance. In this research, to treat the food allergies small substances were used of the allergen are used.  Hahnemann spoke of the isopathic method and credits any success due to the simillum, but argues against this approach for various reasons.

Eliminating the Aggravation

This is a brief excerpt as to how tolerance to the allergen is ameliorated.

The starting doses were very small, as little as 1/1000th of a peanut. The doses increased until the children ate the equivalent of up to 15 peanuts a day about 10 months later, and then they stayed on the daily therapy while they were monitored.

The researchers of course suggest that this is a highly refined approach, left to trained professionals.  Read the article below and check out the link to learn more about their work.
—————————————————————————-

Exposure to Peanuts May Build Tolerance to Allergy

The therapy is still experimental, and more research is needed, study says

Doctors may have found an unlikely remedy for some peanut allergies.

Teams at Duke University Medical Center and Arkansas Children’s Hospital gave nearly microscopic pieces of peanut to a group of about 30 children with non-life-threatening peanut allergies daily.

After two years, nine kids were still able to tolerate the treatment, and four appeared to be completely allergy-free.

The researchers say this is the first study to show limited exposure can help someone with a food allergy become tolerant of that food. Read more at arkansasmatters.com.