Robyn O’Brien is the co-founder of rePlant Capital, an impact investment firm, deploying integrated capital from soil to shelf in order to build soil health and financial resiliency for farmers. She is also the founder of Do Good, a strategic advisory firm, and the AllergyKids Foundation. Random House published Robyn’s book, The Unhealthy Truth, in 2009, and her TEDx talks have been translated into dozens of languages and viewed by millions around the world.
This morning, headlines announced that Denise Morrison is stepping down as the CEO of Campbell’s. What a huge loss to the food industry. Shareholders were quick to flash a chart of the share price. No surprise there. Turning around a deeply entrenched and heavily subsidized industry like the food industry is not going to happen quickly.
Unfortunately, the writing has been on the wall for the last few months.
The problem is that Wall Street still measures these companies and CEOs using 1985 metrics.
The game is changing, and Wall Street needs to get with it, too.
Quarterly earnings are a terrible metric, when a fundamental shift needs to happen to an entrenched and deeply subsidized supply chain.
Wall Street needs modern metrics if they are going to evaluate 21st century food companies. This is a big conversation that has to happen now in order to grow organic.
According to Forbes, “it has been widely reported that mothers control 85% of household purchases and have a U.S. spending power of $2.4 trillion. Within this segment are tens of millions of millennial moms. In fact 83% of new moms are millennials, according to a study conducted by BabyCenter– they give birth to about 9,000 generation Alpha babies each day.”
Adweek and Trybe have also chimed in, saying: “80% of millennial mom says that safety is a top priority for their family. They cite safety as a higher priority than value or price. Additionally, around 50% of millennial moms list that they favor pure, wholesome ingredients as a key deciding factor when comparing brands. In essence, millennial moms value the quality of a brand over quantity, and if brands can’t illustrate that, it will be hard to appeal to this segment.”
And don’t whitewash it; by the year 2020, half of all children in the U.S. will be non-white. On top of that, 8 in 10 households are now purchasing at least some organic. With a supply chain of less than 1% of all U.S. farmland as organic, something has to change.
Food companies, the big CPG brands, have been slow to meet these changing needs. Many of them fought the consumer for years. Companies like Kroger stepped in and launched private label brands and quickly won the hearts and wallets of 21st century families. At Kroger, “20 million households purchased items from its Simple Truth brand line last year, and private-label items accounted for nearly 28% of items sold in the third quarter, the company said, accounting for 26% of sales dollars”.
So what do the food companies need to be doing?
Here are 8 questions Wall Street should be asking food companies right now:
With over 80% of American households now purchasing some organic, what percentage of your product portfolio is certified USDA Organic?
What percent of your portfolio contains Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy and corn, since these genetically engineered ingredients are also an indicator of exposure to glyphosate?
In light of recent lawsuits over glyphosate use, what percentage of your product portfolio is exposed to glyphosate?
What plans do you have to grow your organic product offerings?
Less than 1% of US farmland is certified as organic. What is your company doing to convert farmland to ensure a stable pipeline and organic supply chain? Kashi has a certified transition program in place to help farmers convert. Would you embrace this model by Kellogg’s to ensure that your supply can meet growing consumer demand?
From where are you importing organic ingredients until you build out your pipeline?
What program do you have in place to help the farmers you source from convert their farms to organic?
Food security is no longer simply about calories, it is also about health. What are you doing to communicate that to your consumers in order to ensure product loyalty?
With demand for organic products far outpacing the demand for conventional, Wall Street needs to be asking these multinational food companies and their CEOs what they are doing to build out their supply chains to ensure that they have the ingredients to meet the demand. It takes just three years to convert farmland to organic. Millennial parents represent $200 billion in purchasing power. As this demographic grows, will companies have the supply to meet that demand?
It’s an important question for shareholders, stakeholders and spoon holders.
Life-threatening allergic reactions to foods have increased by five times over the last decade, according to an analysis of private insurance claims by FAIR Health, an independent nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on privately billed health insurance claims.
This condition has taken the lives of far too many children. Too many of these life-threatening reactions are occurring at school. I recently met the parents, Dina and Thomas of the gorgeous three year old boy who died after his preschool fed him a grilled cheese sandwich. Elijah had a life-threatening dairy allergy. They have another son who also has life-threatening allergies and are doing everything they can to prevent another death.
They just appeared on Good Day New York, after we sat down to have this conversation. You can see their recent appearance and call for Elijah’s Law here.
They share their concerns here:
Q. Peanut allergy often makes headlines. But in the last few years, we have lost too many children, like your beautiful boy, to a dairy allergy. The preschool fed your boy a grilled cheese sandwich, despite documentation that he had a dairy allergy. As parents, you had taken every precaution to keep your child safe. Milk allergy is still largely misunderstood. What message do you have for schools about dairy allergy.
A. Dairy is what is given to children during their meals at school. It not just in their school food program but it could be in another child snack or food that is provided for a child’s birthday party. Milk allergies are very common but get overlooked as being “lactose intolerance” but milk allergies are as serious as any other severe food allergies. Schools should be able to provide a child who has food allergies with a safe environment, they should also provide those who suffer from dairy allergy alternative meal program, i.e., alternative to dairy such as, soy milk, rice milk etc. There are so many options out there but schools are so hesitant about it. These are just some steps a school can take in the right direction. My messages to all the parents who have a child with severe food allergies are staying on top of the school educators and school nurse. keep them well informed and remember you’re not being overbearing or problematic. You are protecting your child life and that the most important thing.
Q. Rather than call 911, the school called your wife. These are preventable tragedies if procedures are followed. What message do you have for schools and school nurses who often find themselves on the front line of children with food allergies?
A. You are the first line of defense when it comes to a child who suffers from food allergies. I understand it can be scary but you will also be saving someone life when following proper steps in caring for someone who’s having a severe allergic reaction or anaphylaxis. The schools and nurse should advocate for the children in their school to keep them safe at all cost. These children are dependent on you as an educator and medical personnel to be there for them when they’re not feeling well. Don’t just assume and just give an antihistamine treat the symptoms as very severe. Know the signs. “Know when to pen” (EpiPen/autoinjector). Make sure two auto-injectors are available, call 911.
Q. In your opinion, what one thing could be done at schools, both preschools and elementary schools, to help keep children safe?
A. I believe that all staff members of early learning programs, i.e., all daycare centers, Pre-K as well as K-12, should be trained on an on-going basis. Require an early learning program. Schools or human resources managers should sign-off when their staff have watched a training video, implemented and trained on mock emergency medical drills for severe allergic/anaphylaxis and completed an exam to test their understanding of what was taught to them. This should be an issue similar to CPR training so they understanding it to be life-saving.
Q. Tell us about Elijah’s echo.
A. Elijah’s Echo is the voice that he did not have when he was suffering from a severe allergic reaction. The initiative is designed to raise awareness of the importance of anaphylaxis and food allergy education and safety in the inner city schools here in New York City and hopefully throughout the country. Elijah’s Echo has been born of the tragic incident that occurred in a New York City Pre-K school/Daycare center on November 3rd, 2017, he was only 3 years of age. The incident soon after caused my son Elijah to pass away. Despite the school having his 504 plan and well documented his severe allergy to dairy products and stated they had medically trained staff to help identify when someone is ill or suffering from food allergies, an adult employee had fed my son Elijah a grilled cheese sandwich. (My son was deathly allergic to dairy and a few other foods.) Following the incident, Medical professionals at the hospital emergency trauma room were he was rushed to, worked on my son Elijah going into anaphylactic shock. The school had failed to report what Elijah had been fed. Soon after, my son Elijah passed away. Elijah’s Echo is the initiative and The Elijah-Alavi foundation soon to help raise in hopes that we’re able to put a real name and face on the importance of severity to anaphylaxis & food allergy awareness safety. Know the signs. Treat the symptoms. Share Elijah’s story. Continue Elijah’s Echo. #elijahsecho.
Q. It is important to acknowledge that it is not just parents who lose a child, but also siblings who lose a brother. Tell us a bit about Elijah’s big brother and what the community can do to help him and other kids who have lost siblings.
A. Sebastin was Elijah-Alavi best friend. They did everything together from building blocks arguing over silly things and hugging each other afterward, Sebastin thought Elijah how to read. Sebastin taught Elijah-Alavi all that he knew, they were inseparable. What I like for the community to do for Sebastin is to continue on for his brother Elijah-Alavi who was a very strong and independent little boy and be Elijah’s voice. Severe food allergies are not just something you sweep under a rug. It’s serious and with your help, you can prevent someone last bite by saving their lives from getting informed, get trained to understand the sign and symptoms of an allergic reaction and anaphylaxis.
It’s Mother’s Day, and everything in me is swirling this year, as our oldest gets ready to graduate high school this week.
I find myself waking up in the night. Have I helped to secure in her the compass she will need to navigate this world? Have I helped her learn to silence the noise so that she can use her head and listen to her heart? Have I taught her the lessons she needs to know? To be soft to all that is beautiful and yet tough enough to navigate things when it is not?
Mother’s Day brings out a lot every year: flash backs to pregnancies, baby years, toddlerhood, funny stories, sleepless night and the friends and families that have seen us through. This morning my husband asked me what my favorite motherhood memories are: really, just the times when all of us were together. That, and telling him we were pregnant with our first. He was shaving in our tiny bathroom in the rental we lived in. I still remember the “Whoop!” he let out.
This year, I’m really thankful for the friends and family that have seen us through. We tend to see a lot of perfection across social media feeds, as if motherhood is a perfectly straight line through the years, but life is actually full of curve balls, and some of the best advice I ever received was “Your happiness in life will depend on how you handle the curve balls.” Motherhood is full of them in the 21st century. The advice came from my boss when I worked on the fixed income desk back in the finance world. She was probably 50 at the time, also a mom, and man, she knew what she was talking about. I remember it so clearly.
What I’ve learned is that if you are going to successfully field those curve balls, you need a good team.
If one thing is certain, life throws us curve balls. We’ve been dealt ours, and I’ve watched parents navigate some of the hardest ones out there. Some have been dealt a condition or diagnosis like pediatric cancer, some have survived it and others have suffered the immeasurable grief of losing a child. I had a math teacher in high school who once said, “It goes against the laws of nature to lose a child. Parents are supposed to go first, it’s why it’s so impossible for us to accept.” That was another lesson that stuck with me, not just from this teacher, it was because she was also a mom.
And today, I felt really grateful. Because of all of the love and work that goes into it. We have a house full of four teenagers. This last year has been a ride. Some years have been really fun, some really difficult. Raising teens makes raising toddlers feel like a piece of cake. There is so much going on in their world today that is so different to what we experienced: escalating rates of teenage depression, anxiety, suicide, drug use, alcohol use, Juul-ing, social media, social media, social media. Their struggles in their world are very, very real and amplified across social media. I want home to be a safe place for them in the midst of all of that chaos and amplification. A place where they can come in, put down the mask they may or may not feel they have to wear in the world, put down the armor and the shield and rest.
So today, to have them around was all I could ask for when we went out for lunch. The local brunch spot was packed, and they gave the moms a glass of champagne as we came in the door. As I sat there, listening to our teenagers swap stories from their weekends, a family sat at the table beside us.
And suddenly, all of the memories of the toddler years flooded back. But in a different way, as I watched the mom beside me. She had a three year old daughter in a sundress and little cowboy boots, and she had a baby boy on her lap. He wore glasses, and due to my friendship with an extraordinary mother of four who works on inclusion issues for children with Down’s Syndrome, I knew he had Down’s. He was beautiful and so full of love and such a handful as any 10 month old baby is going to be. Her patience was incredible, and her love so limitless for her little man. I wanted to tell her about my friend Beth whose son Patrick was heading off to college this year, but I didn’t want to interfere, so I kept to myself and simply watched her love him.
As that family turned to go, she looked under the table at the mess and bent to pick it up, with him on her hip. How many times did we do that? We’d actually just been reminiscing about it the night before. The endless trail of crumbs. And there she was, doing it on Mother’s Day.
As we headed home, we swung by the post office, so that I could run in and mail a few cards. At the dropbox was a couple, she held an enormous amount of envelopes in her hands, as he stood to take her picture. I walked past, then turned back.
“Are those wedding invitations?” I asked.
They both beamed and exclaimed, “Yes!” “They are!”
“Would you like me to take a picture of both of you mailing them?” It was a Sunday afternoon, the place was empty.
“We would love it,” they said.
As I handed their phone back to them, I asked if the pics were OK, “I could take another”, I said.
She looked at them and turned to him and said, ” You can see my ring!”
So I left.
If you pay attention, you will see that there is so much love in the world. It will help you find the courage you need to do the things you never thought you could.
Pay attention to the love, don’t miss it because you have your head in your phone, or are afraid to say yes to a meeting, or because you’re afraid it’s been too long since you’ve called. Don’t miss it.
And if you don’t see it, keep moving until you do. And if you still don’t see it, create it. It will attract more. You can amplify it.
Love is a rocket fuel, on Mother’s Day and always.
This week is food allergy awareness week. Life-threatening allergic reactions to foods have increased by five times over the last decade, according to an analysis of private insurance claims by FAIR Health, an independent nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on privately billed health insurance claims.
For twelve years, we’ve been telling the stories of families who have lost their children to this life-threatening condition. It was twelve years ago, this week, that we launched AllergyKids. A few days before the site went live, we heard from a father who had just lost his 13 year old girl. These deaths are preventable, and every time I meet with these parents, my heart breaks even further. Again, these deaths are preventable, and these parents have suffered such incredible and unnecessary losses.
For the month of May, we are running four stories, and few have impacted us like that of Oakley Debbs. I recently met his amazing mom and dad at an event for End Allergies Together. Their strength is phenomenal, their love so fierce. We recently put together this Q&A.
Please take the time to read it and share it. Every child counts, and we have to stand together to say #NotOneMore.
Q. Your amazing boy was an athlete. Like many kids with allergies, he also had asthma. The reactions can very much look the same in the beginning. How can we know what we are looking at? What signs would you now look for?
Yes Oakley was an amazing Athlete. He excelled in almost any sport he tried. Oakley’s favorite sports were soccer, flag football, tennis, swimming , skiing, boogie boarding etc. Its hard for me to say what I would look for now if Oakley had an anaphylactic reaction. The symptoms we saw that night was a stomach ache and vomiting of clear liquid. I would recommend epinephrine way before any symptoms occurred. If you know an allergen has been ingested I would be proactive and not wait for any symptoms it might be to late by then.
Q. You brought to my attention that the ambulance did not have an EpiPen in it when it arrived for Oakley. Those seconds matter so much, and as a mother, it is shocking that this is the case in light of how many children and adults now have food allergies. What advice would you give to parents waiting for the ambulance?
Actually the ambulance did have epinephrine. The first responder was a policeman and he was completely ill prepared to deal with any life threatening situations. The policeman didn’t even do CPR to Oakley. My mother in law did it. My advice is when you call 911 administer the Epinephrine right away and let 911 know that the epinephrine has been administered.
Q. Oakley has a sister that is now without her brother. When we talk about these children, we often forget that there are siblings whose lives are also forever changed. What has been the most help to your daughter through this?
Olivia says she struggles every day with the loss of her twin brother. Nothing really helps except for keeping her super busy. Olivia is excelling in sports all varsity this year and she has achieved first honors as well. Olivia relies a lot on her friends and Oakley’s best friends spend time with her too.
Q. Talk to us about the Red Sneakers!
Red Sneakers for Oakley:
Red sneakers were my son’s, Oakley Gage Debbs, favorite shoes to wear. Red Sneakers for Oakley Is a food allergy awareness organization. We provide education awareness programs for the schools. Some of our goals are to change the laws, provide Epipens or other auto injectors next to defibrillators in institutions throughout America and around the world.
We encourage mindfulness for allergy families by the simple act of wearing RED SNEAKERS and posting it on social media to help spread awareness. We ask schools to host a red sneakers day which basically is a dress down day by wearing red sneakers, or red shoe laces, shirts etc. as long as it is red.
RSFO has a website, redsneakers.org. There’s lots of information on our website.we are partnering with other organizations as well.
Q. What one thing does your family want to see changed to honor Oakley’s legacy?
My family would like to have a Law: THE OAKLEY LAW. All institutions and first responders should have epinephrine auto injectors and they should be trained in understanding and recognizing anaphylactic.
In my work in the food industry, many companies, big multinationals and small startups, are asking about food allergies.
It is no longer a closet condition that mothers bow their heads over. It is impacting a growing number of Americans.
The number of people with the peanut allergy in the United States more than quadrupled between 1997 and 2010.
EpiPen, the life-saving device manufactured by Mylan, has grown from a $200 million product in 2007 to a $1 billion brand today. Its monopoly is so strong that even in the face of a manufacturing shortage, many stand helpless on the sidelines and the media remains silent.
A life threatening food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room once every three minutes in the United States.
Twelve years ago, that person was me, as our fourth child suffered her first reaction.
In the twelve years since, I have held the hands of parents that have lost their children to these allergic reactions and shared far too many of their stories.
Food should not kill our children.
And too much of the data that is often shared is old. “Food allergies cause 150-200 deaths per year,” we often read. But the truth is that the Centers for Disease Control actually do not keep track of the number of deaths by food allergic reaction. And in many cases, when the cause of death is listed, it often has to do with what has occurred during those reactions, the loss of oxygen and inability to breath, like Emily’s Story, which we have shared countless times and will continue to because of the number of lives that it has already saved.
Food allergies are not a niche, it is a growing epidemic that is challenging how we think about our food and how it is made. Genetic factors don’t change this quickly, environmental factors do. Are we allergic to food or to what’s been done to it?
Researchers report that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
Researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association states that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
To discount this condition in any way is irresponsible, but it is just one of the conditions that is triggering a food awakening around the country.
In the United States, we are quickly learning that our food supply contains a lot of ingredients that simply did not exist when we were kids, and that our own American corporations don’t use these ingredients in the products they sell overseas.
As a result of this growing awareness of what has been done to our food, 21st century consumers are looking for “free from” food: food that is free from ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, GMOs and artificial ingredients. Why? Because we are dealing with conditions and diseases in our families like never before. It is driving a food awakening. We are not saying that correlation is causation, we simply want food companies to dump the junk and the artificial ingredients from their products.
In the last few years, Target, Chipotle, Panera, Kroger, even General Mills and Cheerios have responded to this growing demand in the marketplace. In the last few months, Pepsi, Tyson and others have responded, too.
In the United States, we have allowed our cows to be fed genetically engineered corn, removed the ability to label beef as “grass-fed” and allowed an artificial growth hormone to be inserted into our dairy cows that no other developed country in the world allowed? So if a child has a milk allergy, it is difficult to know if they are allergic to organic milk, conventional milk, milk full of the antibiotics and pus that turned other countries off of the artificial growth hormone in the first place? It’s hard to know. That level of allergy testing does not exist.
But consumers are on the front lines.
They see the escalating rates of diseases, they feel the financial impact with their own health care costs, and they hear consumers that are saying they want to eat fewer fake, artificial and genetically engineered ingredients. While the chemical companies selling these new ingredients say there is no evidence of harm, consumers are saying: there is no evidence since these ingredients were never labeled in the United States. There are also no long term studies to show us that they are safe.
The potential of genetically engineered foods to cause allergic reactions is a big reason for opposition to these crops. It is also one of the concerns that led 64 countries around the world to label these foods for their citizens while over 30 countries banned them entirely.
Introduced into the US food supply in the mid 1990s without labels, there were protocols put in place to ask questions about the allergy-causing possibilities, but there has been no test that offers definitive answers.
In other words, if you walked into an allergist’s office and asked if you were allergic to corn that has been in the food supply for thousands of years or if you are allergic to a new corn product, genetically engineered to produce its own insecticide and introduced into our food and now regulated by the EPA as a pesticide, there would be no test to give you that answer.
With no labels on GMO ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm.
With no labels on these ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
But with the widespread introduction of genetically engineered ingredients into the US food supply, a frequently asked question is: Are rates of allergies higher in the United States than they are in other countries?
Previously, it was anyone’s guess.
But a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says yes, living in the United States increases your risk of allergic diseases……“significantly.”
“Living in the US raises risk of allergies,” say recent headlines. Life-threatening allergic reactions to foods have increased by five times over the last decade in the U.S., according to a new analysis of private insurance claims by FAIR Health, an independent nonprofit that collects and analyzes data on privately billed health insurance claims.
According to the research, living in the United States for a decade or more may raise the risk of some allergies, reports the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
In other words, the longer you live here, the more likely you are to develop some kind of allergy, asthma, eczema or other related condition.
Food allergies have been skyrocketing in the United States in the last fifteen years. Not only has the CDC reported a 265% increase in the rates of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions in a ten year period, but the sales of EpiPens, a life-saving medical device for those with food allergies, has also seen record sales growth according to the New York Times.
So what’s going on?
The study aimed to find out. Allergies reported in the survey included asthma, eczema, hay fever, and food allergies.
“Children born outside the United States had significantly lower prevalence of any allergic diseases (20.3%) than those born in the United States (34.5%),” said the study led by Jonathan Silverberg of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
Let’s restate that:
Children born in the US have more than a 1 in 3 chance of having allergic diseases like food allergies, asthma or eczema, while kids born in other countries around the world had a “significantly lower prevalence” of 1 in 5.
On top of that, “foreign-born Americans develop increased risk for allergic disease with prolonged residence in the United States,” it said.
In other words, if you move here, your chances of developing any one or more of these allergic diseases increase.
The study went so far as to say that children born outside of the US who moved here showed “significantly” higher odds of developing these diseases.
What’s driving this? Is it really Purel and intense handwashing? And the hygiene hypothesis?
And are we allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Because genetics don’t change that quickly, and the environment does.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
This presents a risk not only to these children, but also to our economy, as the financial burden of these conditions and their associated health care costs impact not only families but also our country, our military and our productivity.
So what is triggering this escalating, US allergy epidemic?
According to Reuters report on the study and Dr. Ruchi Gupta, who studies allergies at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago but wasn’t involved in the new research, “This is definitely something we see clinically and we’re trying to better understand, what is it in our environment that’s increasing the risk of allergic disease?” said
“Food allergies have increased tremendously,” she told Reuters Health. “We do see people who come from other countries don’t tend to have it.”
As discussed in a previous column, allergic reactions occur you’re your body perceives something to be a threat. They can also be a symptom of a hypersensitive immune system – our bodies armed and ready to launch an attack againstany perceived threat.
A growing number of doctors are also suggesting that food allergies might be a symptom that something is wrong with our food system. In other words, in light of the sudden explosion in food allergies: are we suddenly allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Someone with food allergies has an immune system that perceives a food protein to be “foreign”, unidentifiable. And it launches an inflammatory response to drive out that foreign invader.
Today, we have new, foreign proteins that have never existed in our food supply that have been genetically engineered into our food. These proteins are so new that they have been patented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and never before existed up until their introduction in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Now correlation is not causation, but the concern over the unknown health impacts of these new proteins in the food supply is in part what led 64 countries around the world to label genetically engineered foods when they were first introduced fifteen years ago and 27 countries to flat out ban them.
Genetically engineered crops are created by inserting a protein from a different organism into the original crop’s genome. This is usually done to create a plant that is more resistant to insects or diseases.
The Food and Agriculture Organization within the World Health Organization has a structured approach to determining whether genetically engineered foods cause allergies, according to Venu Gangur, MSU assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, who also is a faculty member in the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center. “But it has a major flaw. A critical question in that process asks, ‘Does the protein cause an allergic reaction in animals?’ The problem is that there has been no good animal model available to test this.”
It’s food for thought.
We don’t have labels on these genetically engineered foods in the US, at least not yet. Bipartisan legislation was recently introduced, and efforts have been made to urge the FDA to take action so that American consumers can enjoy the same freedoms enjoyed by consumers in over 60 countries around the world (including all of the member states of the European Union, Australia, Japan, the UK, Russia, China and India) and have access to whether or not their food and the foods they are feeding their families contain these genetically engineered ingredients.
Do we really want out slogan to be: Come to America, but don’t forget your asthma enhalers and EpiPens? We could quickly earn the title of the United States of Allergic Disease.
We are so much more than that.
Since genetically engineered ingredients are not yet labeled here in the United States. look for “Non-GMO” or “USDA Organic” foods which by law are not allowed to be produced with these new proteins. Chipotle took a bold move and announced that they are dropping these ingredients altogether.
With conflicting positions in the science, these ingredients need to be labeled. A food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room in the United States once every three minutes. European law dictates that any food containing more than 0.9% genetically engineered ingredients be labeled as containing GMOs. It’s a freedom to choose. Clean food is a right that should be afforded to all Americans, not just those who can afford to opt out and purchase foods labeled “non-GMO” or “USDA Organic”.
Mounting scientific evidence points to the role that our increasingly re-engineered food supply, hopped up on additives, artificial dyes, artificial growth hormones, record amounts of pesticides now recognized by the World Health Organization as a probable carcinogen and genetically engineered ingredients hardwired to be sprayed with them is having on the health of our families. The growing number of American dealing with food allergies and food sensitivities is an alarm bell that our bodies can no longer tolerate what has been done to our food.
The cost of food allergies is burdening more than just the families dealing with them, it’s burdening our schools, our health care system and our economy.
Food allergies are not a “niche,” just as cancer is not a fad.
It’s time to clean up our food, to get the junk out. Chipotle recognizes this and is responding to the needs of 21st century families. Given that the company formerly known as Kraft recognizes this same demographic with its recent acquisition, it’s time that others do, too.
21st century consumers are looking for food that is free from artificial ingredients and allergens. The companies that recognize this are seeing their market share and earnings grow.
Jake Bailey is your average teenager who went to the dentist, and then his life changed forever. In this speech, he shares hard-won wisdom on the importance of gratitude.
Listening to him reminded me of this quote by Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.”
It’s a five minute watch. Share it with your kids and anyone you love. It is such a powerful and important reminder.
I’ve met a lot of doctors in my work, and I have enormous respect for so many of them. But none have married the principles of Western medicine with integrative care quite as beautifully as my dear friend, Dr. Frank Lipman.
He’s my go-to whenever I have a question for family or friends. Based out of New York City, but from South Africa, he brings a global view to our health crisis and what we can do to maintain and regain our health.
Inspired by the thousands of patients he has worked with over the last four decades, his new book, How to Be Well: The Six Keys to a Happy and Healthy Life, is the distillation of all the wellness wisdom his Health Coach team have shared with their patients about how to create lasting energy, wellness and vitality.
I mean, as someone who just celebrated her 47th birthday, who doesn’t want that!?
The book is, however, anything but a look back. And if you know Dr. Lipman, he is anything but boring. He is dynamic, passionate and so purpose driven that it’s contagious!
This book is about creating wellness now in a world where the odds can feel as though they’re increasingly stacked against living a healthy life.
He talks about how he is seeing a rising tide of ever younger patients with debilitating digestive issues, metabolic imbalances, chronic fatigue and auto-immune problems, as well as waves of people in their 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s who feel as though they’re aging way too quickly, dealing with memory and energy issues far too early in the game.
And with practical hands-on tips and profound wisdom, he has distilled this down into 6 key steps we can all take.
You will want to grab a copy of this book. It’s practical, not preachy, full of medically sound advice and a gorgeous gift.
And for those commenting on Facebook, we will be giving away a copy here, too!
Next week, I’m doing a cooking segment for a TV show that targets families. The producer left a message last night, asking about how we can work some questions into the segment. It’s such an important conversation, and it got me thinking.
Today, 8 in 10 families are now purchasing some organic products. But less then 1% of our farmland in the U.S. is organic. That’s nuts, and what ends up happening is instead of supporting our own American farmers, we import what Americans are now eating. There is something called the Farm Bill that brings all of these issues to light. And our farmers need help there, to know that organic isn’t a fad or trend.
Why? Because food allergies, pediatric cancers, autism and other conditions impacting our kids aren’t trends either.
Private insurance claim lines with diagnoses of anaphylactic food reactions rose 377 percent from 2007 to 2016, according to a recent report.
The report, by FAIR Health, found that peanuts were the most common food specified to cause anaphylaxis, accounting for 26% of the claims. However, the largest percentage of claims were from a category titled “other foods,” accounting for 33%.
Eggs were 7%, crustaceans 6%, milk 5%, fish 2%, fruits and veggies 2% and food additives 1%.
The increase in claims was greater in rural areas (110%) than urban (70%) areas, challenging recent claims that food allergies were less common in rural areas.
The report also highlighted that food allergies are far more pervasive across age groups than previously understood. About 66% of claims were for patients 18 and younger, but 34% impacted those over the age of 18.
Add this data from 2007–2016 to the fact that the number of people with the peanut allergy in the United States more than quadrupled between 1997 and 2010 and it is obvious that we have a crisis.
Food allergies are not a niche, it is a growing epidemic that is challenging how we think about our food and how it is made. Genetic factors don’t change this quickly, environmental factors do. Are we allergic to food or to what’s been done to it?
Researchers report that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
Researchers reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association states that the costs of food allergies, from medical care to food to pharmaceuticals is $4,184 per child per year, costing our economy $25 billion, including lost productivity.
To discount this condition in any way is irresponsible, but it is just one of the conditions that is triggering a food awakening around the country.
In the United States, we are quickly learning that our food supply contains a lot of ingredients that simply did not exist when we were kids, and that our own American corporations don’t use these ingredients in the products they sell overseas.
From artificial food dyes created in a laboratory to genetically engineered foods now regulated by the EPA as pesticides, we are finding our food supply increasingly hopped up on new ingredients. And if the market is any indication, a growing number of consumers don’t want it this way.
A recent study, funded in part by the peanut industry, stirred controversy when it suggested feeding peanuts to infants. A New York Times story profiled a lawmaker who “discounted the correlations between the rise in childhood allergies and the consumption of G.M.O.s.”
Both triggered an allergic reaction in 21st century consumers with this condition. 21st century consumers are looking for “free from” food: food that is free from ingredients like high fructose corn syrup, GMOs and artificial ingredients. Why? Because we are dealing with conditions and diseases in our families like never before. It is driving a food awakening. We are not saying that correlation is causation, we simply want food companies to dump the junk and the artificial ingredients from their products.
In the last few years, Target, Chipotle, Kroger, even General Mills and Cheerios have responded to this growing demand in the marketplace. In the last week, Pepsi, Tyson and others have responded, too.
They see the escalating rates of diseases, they feel the financial impact with their own health care costs, and they hear consumers that are saying they want to eat fewer fake, artificial and genetically engineered ingredients. While the chemical companies selling these new ingredients say there is no evidence of harm, consumers are saying: there is no evidence since these ingredients were never labeled in the United States. There are also no long term studies to show us that they are safe.
The potential of genetically engineered foods to cause allergic reactions is a big reason for opposition to these crops. It is also one of the concerns that led 64 countries around the world to label these foods for their citizens while 27 countries banned them entirely.
Introduced into the US food supply in the mid 1990s without labels, there were protocols put in place to ask questions about the allergy-causing possibilities, but there has been no test that offers definitive answers.
In other words, if you walked into an allergist’s office and asked if you were allergic to corn that has been in the food supply for thousands of years or if you are allergic to a new corn product, genetically engineered to produce its own insecticide and introduced into our food and now regulated by the EPA as a pesticide, there would be no test to give you that answer.
With no labels on GMO ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm.
With no labels on these ingredients in the US to trace their impact and no test to offer definitive answers, the biotech industry is able to claim that there is not a single documented case of these foods ever causing harm. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
But with the widespread introduction of genetically engineered ingredients into the US food supply, a frequently asked question is: Are rates of allergies higher in the United States than they are in other countries?
Previously, it was anyone’s guess.
But a study released in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says yes, living in the United States increases your risk of allergic diseases……“significantly.”
“Living in the US raises risk of allergies,” says the headline.
According to the research, living in the United States for a decade or more may raise the risk of some allergies, reports the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
In other words, the longer you live here, the more likely you are to develop some kind of allergy, asthma, eczema or other related condition.
Food allergies have been skyrocketing in the United States in the last fifteen years. Not only has the CDC reported a 265% increase in the rates of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions in a ten year period, but the sales of EpiPens, a life-saving medical device for those with food allergies, has also seen record sales growth according to the New York Times.
So what’s going on?
The study aimed to find out. Allergies reported in the survey included asthma, eczema, hay fever, and food allergies.
“Children born outside the United States had significantly lower prevalence of any allergic diseases (20.3%) than those born in the United States (34.5%),” said the study led by Jonathan Silverberg of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York.
Let’s restate that:
Children born in the US have more than a 1 in 3 chance of having allergic diseases like food allergies, asthma or eczema, while kids born in other countries around the world had a “significantly lower prevalence” of 1 in 5.
On top of that, “foreign-born Americans develop increased risk for allergic disease with prolonged residence in the United States,” it said.
In other words, if you move here, your chances of developing any one or more of these allergic diseases increase.
The study went so far as to say that children born outside of the US who moved here showed “significantly” higher odds of developing these diseases.
What’s driving this? Is it really Purel and intense handwashing? And the hygiene hypothesis?
And are we allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Because genetics don’t change that quickly, and the environment does.
“These data indicate that duration of residence in the United States is a previously unrecognized factor in the epidemiology of atopic disease,” it said.
This presents a risk not only to these children, but also to our economy, as the financial burden of these conditions and their associated health care costs impact not only families but also our country, our military and our productivity.
So what is triggering this escalating, US allergy epidemic?
According to Reuters report on the study and Dr. Ruchi Gupta, who studies allergies at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago but wasn’t involved in the new research, “This is definitely something we see clinically and we’re trying to better understand, what is it in our environment that’s increasing the risk of allergic disease?” said
“Food allergies have increased tremendously,” she told Reuters Health. “We do see people who come from other countries don’t tend to have it.”
As discussed in a previous column, allergic reactions occur you’re your body perceives something to be a threat. They can also be a symptom of a hypersensitive immune system – our bodies armed and ready to launch an attack againstany perceived threat.
A growing number of doctors are also suggesting that food allergies might be a symptom that something is wrong with our food system. In other words, in light of the sudden explosion in food allergies: are we suddenly allergic to food? Or what’s been done to it?
Someone with food allergies has an immune system that perceives a food protein to be “foreign”, unidentifiable. And it launches an inflammatory response to drive out that foreign invader.
Today, we have new, foreign proteins that have never existed in our food supply that have been genetically engineered into our food. These proteins are so new that they have been patented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and never before existed up until their introduction in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Now correlation is not causation, but the concern over the unknown health impacts of these new proteins in the food supply is in part what led 64 countries around the world to label genetically engineered foods when they were first introduced fifteen years ago and 27 countries to flat out ban them.
Genetically engineered crops are created by inserting a protein from a different organism into the original crop’s genome. This is usually done to create a plant that is more resistant to insects or diseases.
The Food and Agriculture Organization within the World Health Organization has a structured approach to determining whether genetically engineered foods cause allergies, according to Venu Gangur, MSU assistant professor of food science and human nutrition, who also is a faculty member in the National Food Safety and Toxicology Center. “But it has a major flaw. A critical question in that process asks, ‘Does the protein cause an allergic reaction in animals?’ The problem is that there has been no good animal model available to test this.”
It’s food for thought.
We don’t have labels on these genetically engineered foods in the US, at least not yet. Bipartisan legislation was recently introduced, and efforts have been made to urge the FDA to take action so that American consumers can enjoy the same freedoms enjoyed by consumers in over 60 countries around the world (including all of the member states of the European Union, Australia, Japan, the UK, Russia, China and India) and have access to whether or not their food and the foods they are feeding their families contain these genetically engineered ingredients.
Do we really want out slogan to be: Come to America, but don’t forget your asthma enhalers and EpiPens? We could quickly earn the title of the United States of Allergic Disease.
We are so much more than that.
Since genetically engineered ingredients are not yet labeled here in the United States. look for “Non-GMO” or “USDA Organic” foods which by law are not allowed to be produced with these new proteins. Chipotle took a bold move and announced that they are dropping these ingredients altogether.
With conflicting positions in the science, these ingredients need to be labeled. A food allergic reaction sends someone to the emergency room in the United States once every three minutes. European law dictates that any food containing more than 0.9% genetically engineered ingredients be labeled as containing GMOs. It’s a freedom to choose. Clean food is a right that should be afforded to all Americans, not just those who can afford to opt out and purchase foods labeled “non-GMO” or “USDA Organic”.
Mounting scientific evidence points to the role that our increasingly re-engineered food supply, hopped up on additives, artificial dyes, artificial growth hormones, record amounts of pesticides now recognized by the World Health Organization as a probable carcinogen and genetically engineered ingredients hardwired to be sprayed with them is having on the health of our families. The growing number of American dealing with food allergies and food sensitivities is an alarm bell that our bodies can no longer tolerate what has been done to our food.
The cost of food allergies is burdening more than just the families dealing with them, it’s burdening our schools, our health care system and our economy.
Food allergies are not a “niche,” just as cancer is not a fad.
It’s time to clean up our food, to get the junk out. So many big companies now recognize this and are responding to the needs of 21st century families.
21st century consumers are looking for food that is free from artificial ingredients and allergens. The companies that recognize this are seeing their market share and earnings grow.
Yesterday, our oldest child celebrated her 18th birthday. I lay awake last night, thinking about how much the world has changed since she was born in the year 2000.
One of our biggest worries then was “Y2K”. The fear that computers worldwide were going to lock up and shut down. We stocked water, food and much more, anticipating the possible implosion of the internet. It’s almost funny now to think about, except it is not.
As I lay there last night, I thought about the world that our four kids now live in. A world in which they watch their friends’ parents die of cancer, take care of those at school with life-threatening food allergies, and practice lock downs.
It’s that last part that kept me up last night.
In the wake of the Florida shooting, I checked in with each of our four children individually. There is no handbook for this. There is no, “How to Parent in the Age of Mass Shootings” guide.
Each child shared different concerns. I asked if the school acknowledged the shootings, “Only the big ones, Mom,” was the answer.
Only the big ones. That got me. That there were qualifiers on these shootings. Some worthy of a moment of silence at school, others not.
My first response after the shooting in Florida on Valentine’s Day, which was also Ash Wednesday, was to contact my Senators’ offices. I’ve already heard back with meetings scheduled. My 18 year old is coming with me.
But it wasn’t enough. I spoke with my parents, Dad is a hunter in Texas, a gun owner, and has been his entire life. Like almost all Americans, he has no problem with background checks, 95% of Americans support them. He does not want access to assault rifles. He served in the U.S. Army, and the stories he shares of those times have never once touched on the death or injury he saw. Not once in my 47 years have I ever heard him talk about it.
Without saying a word, he told me everything I needed to know about what he’d seen and experienced, what it did to him.
And as I lay there last night, I wondered what happens to a generation of children in lockdown drills with moments of silence each week for school shootings. What happens to their hearts, their souls? How do they survive emotionally? Do they desensitize? Shut down? Numb it somehow? Will they be able to talk about it with their children?
I don’t have the answers or know exactly how to deal with it, other than to put that love into action. I try to role model that for the kids, our oldest has now written both Senators, too. But how to deal with it emotionally? What happens to their hearts?
Once again, we are running a real time experiment on our kids.
The only thing I know to do is to make home a safe place. Safe to live, safe to come home to, safe to express all concerns and fears.
Because lock down drills and moments of silence weren’t part of our childhoods. The moment of grief that I remember the most vividly that came even remotely close was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. We were in Biology class, and the teacher who told us was also the football coach. He could barely keep it together.
How are the teachers keeping it together?
As Moms Demand Action and other organizations expand into the incredible leadership role we are seeing, the students are, too. As Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action wrote yesterday, ” This moment feels different. So many new voices are speaking out. In a little over a week, than 115,000 people reached out to Moms Demand Action wanting to volunteer — including at least 8,000 students, who will become the first Students Demand Action volunteers. More than 70,000 people have made donations. And nearly 1.2 million people signed up to learn about the gun violence prevention movement.”
I’ve spent the last 20 years in the the food industry, and the last dozen or so specifically working to protect children. Far more bullets than peanuts are killing children in the classroom, and it has me deeply reflective on what to do next. A growing number of moms are running for Congress, and though many ask, that is not my path. Supporting them, however, very much is.
Democracy doesn’t work without us. And we have to move beyond what the internet first enabled, a type of slactivism, petition signing and check writing. We have to get out of our seats and put love into action.
I remember how intimidating that felt when I first contacted a Congressman’s office about a food labeling bill, requesting a meeting. But in hindsight, that fear was misguided. Inside of all of those offices are young Americans, eager to be part of meaningful change.
It is easy to forget that we are writing the history books in real time every day of our lives. But it’s important to remember: We can be bystanders or up standers. There are so many opportunities to participate.
And as I continue to work to protect the health of our families, and the health of children, I will also support more women and more moms who are running for Congress. I will support the voices brave enough to speak with sincerity and passion, to put their hearts on display for the world to see, because that is what will move us forward, and I will work to get the dark money out of politics.
In the words of Marjory Stoneman Douglas:
“Be a nuisance where it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action. Be depressed, discouraged, and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics—but never give up.
For the sake of our children, who only represent 30% of the population, but 100% of our future, we can never give up
“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”
Let’s help create a future that our children will be proud to share.
We’ve highlighted the work of Rick Friday here before, the renegade cartoonist who was fired from a newspaper for speaking truth to power. Thankfully, for all of us (except the multinational ag corporations), he got his job back.
This morning, he posted this on his Facebook page. What happens when there are no farmers left? And if less than 1% of our farmland is organic, we end up importing the food that Americans want to eat. Food security starts with farmer security. And right now, as big ag reports record earnings, farmer are killing themselves in record numbers. The suicide rates of farmers is more than double that of our veterans, and an opioid epidemic is running rampant on farms.
Something is going to give, and Rick Friday chimes in with this take:
“Monsanto marks record sales and gross profit in seeds and genomics segment in fiscal year 2017.
U.S. meat processor Tyson Foods Inc. reported higher earnings for the fourth quarter on Monday, November 13, 2017, as lower costs to buy cattle feed boosted profit margins in its beef and chicken businesses.
Cargill’s earnings were up across four segments—meat, food ingredients, grain and oilseeds, and financial services. 2017 earnings up 50 percent year-on-year on broad gains.
Land O’Lakes, Inc. announced increased third quarter 2017 financial results with quarterly net earnings of $47.5 million, up from third quarter net earnings in 2016 of $8.1 million.
Meanwhile, down on the farm…….”
And he attached the image above.
It’s food for thought. We have to #rethinkfood and protect our farmers. Our food system and health depends on them.
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