How Real Families on Real Budgets Can Afford Organic

Written by Robyn O’Brien , AllergyKids Foundation

In a world in which we are constantly worried about the health of our families, the stability of our jobs, paying the mortgage, and all of life’s responsibilities, the simple act of trying to eat healthy often becomes a challenge.

Not to mention that if your family is anything like mine, then you’ve most likely got some picky eaters, limited time and a limited budget with which to pull all of this off in a world of soaring food prices.

So here are a few tips for those who want to start buying organic food but don’t want to pay the high price:

• Go Orgo-Generic: Major grocery store chains like Safeway and Kroger, and big box food retailers like Costco and even Wal-Mart, now carry their own organic foods.  And all foods labeled “USDA organic” are created equal, no matter where you find them. No need to upscale your grocery store when Wal-Mart gets it done.
• Buy Frozen: Frozen foods (like strawberries and fish) are cheaper than those that are delivered fresh. So if the prices on fresh produce are eye-popping, cruise on over to the frozen food aisle for a discount.
• Eat with the Season: Retrain your taste buds to think like your grandmother did.  She didn’t eat strawberries in the middle of winter.  Locally grown foods are usually cheaper than those flown in from another hemisphere so if you eat with the season, you’ll be eating more affordably.
• Skip the Box, Embrace the Bulk: Food that comes in boxes costs more because of the packaging costs associated with designing those pretty pictures!  When you buy in bulk, you’re not paying for all of the packaging, you’re paying for the food which is what you want anyway. So slide on over to that bulk food aisle in Safeway and look for noodles, cereals, rice and beans in your local grocery store.
• Support the US economy and Buy Local: You can save money by becoming a member of a local farm (just like you became a member at Safeway or Costco!).  How do you find a local farm, you ask?  Well, thankfully, the USDA now has a list of online sites to help you find the closest farm near you, so click here to log onto the USDA site.
• Comparison Shop: You wouldn’t buy a car without comparison shopping, so before you even head out the door, you can compare the prices of organic foods at different retailers from the safety of your own computer at www.eatwellguide.org
• Coupons, coupons, coupons: Organic bargains are everywhere so click on About.com’s Frugal Living page where you will find All Organic Links.
• Grow One Thing: If you’re as busy as we are, there’s not a chance in creation that you are going to be able to feed your family off of your home-grown harvest, but you will find that growing a tomato plant can be incredibly inspiring.  And it’s not as intimidating as it seems.  So pick one thing to grow - you can do it (we all grew lima beans in cups as kids, right?).
• Find a Friend: It is way more fun when you share this adventure with someone else, so be sure to find a friend, share this link and get back to us with your success stories (and if you have a tip that you want to add, please post it in the comment section below!).

Good luck!

Remember Erin Brockovich? Here’s another one…600 yards from a school

Written by Angie Nordstrum for AllergyKids, introduced by Robyn O’Brien

We’ve all seen (or at least heard of) the movie “Erin Brockovich” in which a bold and fiercely determined mom takes on a chemical company for exposing a small town and the families and children that live there to toxic chemicals that have been linked to cancer.  It’s Academy Award winning material.

And it’s happening again.

In a small town in Colorado, 600 yards from three elementary schools and a childcare center, the natural gas industry is about to drill wells and expose hundreds of school children to chemicals that have never been proven safe, for which there is no accountability when it comes to their safe disposal and for which there is no clarity on who would assume liability (and future medical bills) for the health of these children should they become ill.

It’s an unprecedented situation, because in the haste to drill, no regulations and no long-term human health studies have been conducted to assess the impact that these processes and the chemicals used in them might have on the health of  children.

According to the Denver Post, “the American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and thousands of drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush for natural gas.  Drilling companies have developed techniques to unlock these enormous reserves, and energy companies are clamoring to drill.

But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.”

Given that the American children have already earned the title “Generation Rx”, due to the rates of asthma, allergies, autism, ADHD, diabetes and the fact that cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 (source: Centers for Disease Control), perhaps it is time that we stop and learn a little bit more.

Angie Nordstrum, a mother of a young child with multiple food allergies and asthma, sheds light on what is happening at her child’s school.

My son attends the new Red Hawk Elementary in Erie, Colorado. This state of the art green school is a LEED certified building which means that it is complete with geothermal heat system, super insulated building envelope, skylights and displacement ventilation. The mission of the school is to focus on math, science, technology and integration of the arts by fostering a sense of environmental responsibility by taking care of one’s self with healthy eating and exercise and reducing environmental waste. Students begin each school day outside.

The school also has a 1500 square foot garden space. Students and staff will be an integral part of the gardens, with beds for each grade level.

In the news recently, you may have heard of something called “fracking” or “hydraulic fracturing”.  It is a drilling process used by the natural gas industry to extract natural gas from beneath the ground.

And there are health and safety concerns about it. Despite provisions in the Clean Air Act, there is something called the Halliburton Loophole that allows the gas companies to inject proprietary mixtures of methane, ethane, liquid condensate, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the wells. Some of the VOCs that are used in the mixtures have a significant impact on health and include benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene. Health effects of exposure to these chemicals include neurological problems, birth defects, and cancer. Other symptoms may include bloody noses, asthma, GI distress, diarrhea, dizziness, migraines, nerve pain, neurological disorders and skin rashes.

These health risks pose a potential threat to children.

Yet despite these concerns, drilling is beginning on eight natural gas wells less than 600 yards from our school, Erie Elementary, Erie Middle School and Exploring Minds Childcare Center. Yes, three schools and a childcare center are about to be exposed to an unprecedented experiment in children’s health.

Will the school nurse will be seeing dozens of sick children in her office. What health issues will these students have in 5 years? In 10 years?

The companies will begin the drilling process in the next couple of weeks. It will be visible from my son’s classroom. The only access to the site will be from the road which runs right in front of the school. Let me repeat that, “The only access to the site will be from the road which runs right in front of the school” because while there is another road that is actually closer to the drilling site, this road cannot be used for drilling transportation because the chemical-carrying trucks are not allowed to cross railroad tracks on the course of their path.

At what point are children more valuable than railroad tracks?  The trucks transporting the chemicals cannot cross the railroad tracks but they can transport toxic chemicals right in front of the entrance to our school?

Erie is an old coal mining town. There are parks and ball fields built on top of these mines for kids to enjoy all over our town. Our school garden sits on top of an old mine. We don’t want our children to be the canaries in the natural gas coal mine.

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To learn what you can do to protect yourself and your family and how to prevent the drilling of these wells near children’s schools, the following pages and resources provide information about:

• The drilling planned for your community
• The harm drilling can cause
• Steps you can take to limit the dangers to yourself and your family
• Resources in each state in which drilling is or is likely to occur.

Please visit:

Natural Resources Defense Council : Steps to Keep You and Your Family Safe from Fracking

Sign On: Request a Moratorium on Oil and Gas Drilling Near Schools in Colorado

“What You Need to Know About Natural Gas Production”

Gasland: The Movie

Blue Green Alliance: Chemicals in the Environment

Fracking Across the United States: Learn about “Fraccidents” and How to Protect Your Loved Ones

Nut-less and Grateful

Written by Daniella Knell for AllergyKids, introduced by Robyn O’Brien

This week brought the tragic headline of a 7 year old girl who suffered an allergic reaction at school that resulted in cardiac arrest and her heartachingly premature death.  As she left for school that day, fully aware of her life-threatening condition, she turned to her mother and said, “I love you, Mommy, I’ll see you later.”

In light of that story and the countless others, including the story of Emily Vonder Meulen, which gave us the courage to move forward as an advocacy group several years ago, we can not emphasize enough how important it is to take food allergies seriously.  School should not be lethal.

At AllergyKids, we can not emphasize enough how grateful we are for those working to protect the health of children nor emphasize enough the importance of each and every one of us when it comes to protecting the health of our loved ones from the dangers in the food supply.  It is our collective talents that will create the changes we want to see.

I have had some incredibly positive experiences throughout the past year.  However, the one which has impacted me most profoundly included my first allergy bullies.

Above and beyond everything else I have learned, is the understanding that we can all benefit from more knowledge and education about managing food allergies.

I have come to realize that unless allergies are a part of your personal world, they can be quite difficult to understand, especially when one is being asked to make accommodations for someone else’s child.  Although milk is the most common allergy out there, to date, nuts are the most life-threatening.

‘Keeping nuts out of the classroom’ is just one small part of managing food allergies, particularly once children are of preschool or kindergarten age. Every person is different. Some have sensitivities; some have intolerances; while others have systemic reactions, meaning one or more systems in their body will react strongly to an allergen they should be avoiding. This is where the life-threatening aspect can come in, and the worries increase ten fold.

For parents of children with life-threatening allergies, here are some common anxieties:

• Will other adults in charge take his/her allergies seriously?
• Will the adults in charge see my child’s allergy as just an intolerance or sensitivity? Do they understand that ‘lactose intolerance’ is NOT the same as a ‘milk allergy’?
• Will the adults understand the difference between a mild vs. serious reaction? An itchy mouth may not mean the need for an epi-pen but multiple systemic reactions just may, ie, itchy mouth, hives, coughing or the obvious, projectile vomiting and/or labored breathing
• Will other adults be too quick to give an epi-pen? It’s always better to be safe than sorry, but these kids can be easily traumatized, especially the younger ones
• Will other adults be too slow to give an epi-pen? It’s a no-win situation, isn’t it?!
• Food exposure in the classroom and the cafeteria; let’s NOT forget the computer keyboards, doorknobs and playground equipment, for those whose children are allergic by ‘touch’
• The emotional toll of being so different, especially for those who have multiple food allergies
• Will my child be forced to sit at a table alone? Will they be able to participate in classroom activities or can they be included? Will there, again, be ingredients in the activities that they can’t touch?
• Will my child be made fun of by his/her classmates? by his/her classmates’ parents?

Without a doubt, managing food allergies starts at home with education and awareness.

However, the youngest ones with life-threatening food allergies often don’t even realize the gravity of their situation, NOR SHOULD THEY. Truly grasping what a life-threatening allergy is, is an age appropriate concept. The day will come when they understand.

We do not want to raise fearful children who are afraid to go out into the world. Just like most parents, our hope is to raise happy and self-confident human beings. The surprising benefit of having these challenges so early on in their lives, is that I have found a majority of these children to be more compassionate and understanding of other’s differences. More so than many adults.

Parents, educators, peers and other classroom parents are all part of the village members who help influence how well our children will or won’t be accepted. With your help, we will help these children to successfully be able to take care of themselves.

On behalf of so many parents like myself, THANK YOU.

• Thank you, for your simple kindnesses, such as sending in treats ALL of the children can eat safely. This means a lot to kids who often can’t participate in school activities and bake sales because of their allergies.
• Thank you, for being so understanding as to why accomodations have been made to help keep ALL of our children safe in the classroom. We understand the concessions you have to make in possibly not being able to send in your very favorite treats to share!
• Thank you, for your phone calls late at night and early in the morning to let us know you will be sending in something so that we have time to also send in alternatives for our children.
• Thank you, for your compassion in NOT making fun of our children.

To all of you, thank you for making sure ALL of our children know they and their needs are equally important. If we work together, it won’t be so difficult in ‘keeping nuts out of the classroom’ .

May 2012 bring you continued good health, happiness and much goodwill!

Daniella Knell, B.A., is the owner of Smart Allergy~Friendly Education. As an allergy awareness educator and consultant, she is actively involved raising allergy awareness via school and hospital presentations for children and adults, national telephone workshops and one-on-one consulting.  She also partners with the Boise CO-OP promoting allergy~friendly products which can be found locally.  Her children are allergic to 6 of the top 8 allergens plus a few extras.  Looking for allergy~friendly ideas for your household?  Be sure to follow her via her blog, www.smartallergy.blogspot.com, Facebook, Linked In or Twitter

Seeing Red: One Mother (A Medical Writer) Investigates Food Dyes

Written by Amy Kilgore, a medical writer and healthcare public relations specialist who has a daughter with extreme sensitivity to dyes, for AllergyKids

My daughter was two, and I was seeing red. A lot of red.

I wasn’t angry. I was horrified. I had just discovered that the rash my toddler would get after certain candies was not in fact caused by chocolate, that the hyperactivity was not from too much sugar, that her uncontrollable bouts of crying and angry behavior were not because I was doing a lousy job of being a mom.

My little girl Monica was reacting to food dyes. Most specifically, Red 40 and Yellow 5. I can’t recall which friend suggested it and what exact moment I realized it, but by the time she was two I was certain. I had (painfully) tested my theory by giving her things with red and yellow food dyes and logging the reactions. Yellow: rash, hyperactivity, trouble sleeping. Red: hyperactivity, followed by (really) mean behavior, followed by shaking and crying; trouble sleeping. It was exhausting and heartbreaking to witness her little body’s reaction when invaded by these dangerous and unnatural additives.

Even more frightening was the realization of how many foods contain dyes.

I’ll never forget one specific call from my mom. She was watching Monica, her firstborn grandbaby, for the day while I worked from home and caught up with life. I was putting clothes in the dryer when the phone rang. I could hear her concern in “Hi.” Followed by, “What has happened to our sweet girl?”

Mom explained how Monica had been behaving – not listening, running around wildly, screaming, crying. I told her that the day before had been a bit trying as well. But we were perplexed, because we were so very careful with keeping her diet dye-free and had been the only ones feeding her for days.

Then my mom, a registered nurse, gasped. “Omigosh. Her antibiotic is pink. You don’t think…?” I called the pharmacy. Yep, the liquid antibiotic we were giving Monica to treat an ear infection had Red 40. I had dosed her twice a day for four days with Red 40! Several calls to the pediatrician and pharmacy resulted in a prescription for an antibiotic without any artificial coloring, a note in Monica’s chart and pharmacy file, and a little girl who within a day was calm, cool and collected (albeit exhausted).

I needed to know more about food dyes, and Mom and I dove into researching how and why they could “flip the switch” in Monica and, I assumed, most children. The more I learned, the sadder I felt for our children. Not only are food dyes causing hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, aggressiveness, sleep problems, increased symptoms of autism and ADHD, among many others, but they are known carcinogens. They cause cancer.

Here’s some food for thought from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“Back in 1985, the acting commissioner of the FDA said that Red 3, one of the lesser-used dyes, “has clearly been shown to induce cancer” and was “of greatest public health concern.” However, Secretary of Agriculture John R. Block pressed the Department of Health and Human Services not to ban the dye, and he apparently prevailed—notwithstanding the Delaney Amendment that forbids the use of in foods of cancer-causing color additives. Each year about 200,000 pounds of Red 3 are poured into such foods as Betty Crocker’s Fruit Roll-Ups and ConAgra’s Kid Cuisine frozen meals. Since 1985 more than five million pounds of the dye have been used.

“Tests on lab animals of Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 showed signs of causing cancer or suffered from serious flaws, said the consumer group. Yellow 5 also caused mutations, an indication of possible carcinogenicity, in six of 11 tests.

“In addition, according to the report, FDA tests show that the three most-widely used dyes, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, are tainted with low levels of cancer-causing compounds, including benzidine and 4-aminobiphenyl in Yellow 5. However, the levels actually could be far higher, because in the 1990s the FDA and Health Canada found a hundred times as much benzidine in a bound form that is released in the colon, but not detected in the routine tests of purity conducted by the FDA.”
Source: www.cspinet.org

Monica’s diet is completely dye-free, as are those of her little brother and my sister’s three boys. Not all five kids react the same to dyes – two react more intensely – but we still see significant behavioral reactions if they accidentally ingest food dyes, especially Red 40 and Yellow 5.

Of course, maintaining dye-free diets becomes a great challenge once they hit school age and are not always under our watchful eyes. At the suggestion of my pediatrician, we list food dyes as an “allergy” on their medical forms. Listing as a “sensitivity” just didn’t garner the same attention and adherence to avoidance. Yet there are slip-ups, such as when a well-meaning teacher gives orange punch, saying it’s okay because it’s not red or yellow (sigh). Or when the treat handed out is a “safe” white cupcake with white frosting, yet the inside is “confetti” with pink and red candies.

A recent incident sent the same shock through me that I had felt when I started investigating Red 40 eight years ago. I was having lunch with Monica, now age nine, at Eat’n Park. As long as we ate plain burgers and fruit for a side, Eat’n Park was one of the few restaurants I had tested and actually deemed “safe.” As a general rule, we reserve dessert as an occasional treat. That day I didn’t see any reason why Monica couldn’t have a slice of pie while I enjoyed another cup of coffee.

We spent a long time looking over the pie menu. Lemon meringue? Nope, looked too yellow. The same with banana cream. Strawberry? Not a chance – way too red. Together we narrowed it down to apple or chocolate cream. She chose chocolate cream and was thoroughly enjoying it when I noticed the crust had a pink tint on the top where the chocolate cream was sitting, as did the white whipped cream topping where it touched the brown chocolate. I couldn’t imagine it had red dye (chocolate pie?!), but I strongly urged her not to eat any more. Much to her dismay, she stopped eating the pie about halfway through the slice.

We had been having such a fantastic day – she’d been in such a good mood. Fast forward about one hour post-pie. She’s sitting in my car in her grandparents’ driveway, screaming at me and refusing to get out of the car because she wants to go home to change clothes. Even forceful prodding from her dad didn’t work. Exasperated, chalking it up to pre-teen hormones, I take her to change her clothes. As I’m telling her how inappropriate her behavior is and asking what in the world is wrong, she’s so busy yelling and talking angry to me she doesn’t hear a word I say. She even got so mad at one point that she hit my seat.

Following these completely out-of-character temper tantrums and verbal lashings, she starts pacing and bouncing and can’t even stand in front of the closet long enough to focus on what clothes to change into. She can’t make even the simplest decisions and can’t stand still long enough even if she wanted to. Still not making the red dye connection (forgetting about the pie), I head to the couch to sit and ride it out.

Monica ends up on the couch next to me, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably and asking me to make whatever is happening to her stop. Squirming and itching and rocking and crying, “Just make it stop, mom!” Finally exhausted, she lays her head on my lap in exhaustion. The whole episode lasts about an hour.

I call my mom and share the whole incident with her. Mom asks what Monica ate, starting with the previous day. Needless to say, I had déjà vu when I got to the Eat’n Park meal (“Omigosh. The chocolate cream pie. You don’t think…?”). Sure enough, one call to Eat’n Park and a pie ingredient check proved it – the chocolate cream pie had Red 40.

It’s certainly a challenge to avoid these dyes and many of the food preservatives I now don’t let anywhere near our mouths. I have a significant number of food allergies and have become very well educated on eating “clean” (whole, natural, organic), so I’m sure it’s easier for me to stay focused on living this way. But we absolutely cannot continue to ingest these dyes, especially children. If we could eliminate these dyes from our foods and our bodies, I am completely convinced that cancer prevalence would lower as well as the occurrence of ADHD and autism, among other cognitive, behavioral and emotional disturbances. The world would seriously be a better, much healthier place.

Amy Kilgore is a medical writer and public relations specialist in Akron, Ohio, and mom to Monica and Chase. Living on a restricted diet for the past 15 years due to multiple food allergies, Amy is strongly dedicated to whole, natural and healthy eating as well as providing education and sharing experiences about the ill effects of processed food, additives and dyes.

Rapping in the New Year

At AllergyKids, our primary concern is protecting the health of those with food allergies, particularly from the hidden dangers and foreign food proteins now found in our food supply.

So when we learned about genetically engineered foods, their foreign proteins, new allergens and the fact that not a single clinical, long-term human safety trial on genetically modified foods has ever been published, despite the fact that these ingredients were introduced into the American food supply in the 1990s without labels, we felt that it was vital that these foods carry labels.

A mother has the right to protect her unborn baby, a father has the right to protect his son, and we all have the right, as Americans, to know what’s in the food we are eating.

So we were thrilled when a friend shared this new rap video. Because when it comes to teaching others about the dangers in the food supply, it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of project.

So if you want to help teach others about genetically modified foods and why you are concerned, but haven’t yet found a way, this little rap just might help.

And remember:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~Margaret Meade

To learn more about requiring the labeling of these genetically engineered ingredients in the American food supply, please visit: www.justlabelit.org