A high school friend died of cancer last night. A total stud. He was captain of both the football and track teams, and we were the Rebels. He embodied every bit of it: fierce, determined, strong, passionate. But more importantly, he was kind and funny with everyone.
He leaves behind a family, wife, daughter, mother, sister…
Today in the United States, 1 in 2 men are expected to get cancer. It’s stealing husbands, dads, friends, brothers, uncles. It is robbing us of people that we love, taking lives too soon, too early.
In this work, I hear from cancer moms and dads all of the time. Too much. More children and young adults under the age of 40 die of brain cancers than almost any other cancers. Children who have never held a cell phone, adults who have. Cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in American children under the age of 15.
Cancer doesn’t care.
In the wake of losing this friend, I haven’t been able to do much more than think about stopping the runaway rates of this disease.
I’ve seen friends lose their moms, moms lose their sons, and wives lose their husbands. It has to stop. We can no longer support the cancer economy, it is taking too great of a toll on our country.
According to the National Institute of Health, “the economic burden of cancer in the US is substantial and expected to increase significantly.”
The costs of cancer care in the US in 2010 were estimated to be $157 billion dollars. There are expected to be18.1 million cancer survivors in 2020, 30% more than 2010. We are saving lives, but what are we doing to stop cancer diagnoses in the first place?
The total cost of cancer care in 2020 is projected to be $174 billion, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Imagine if instead of building the cancer economy, we built the prevention economy. What would the economic impact of that be on our communities, our schools, our military 20 years from now?
How will we be able to defend our country if we are too sick to fight for it?
“The average gross household income in the U.S. is about $52,000 per year. For an insured patient with cancer who needs a drug that costs $120,000 per year, the out-of-pocket expenses could be as much as $25,000 to $30,000 — more than half their average household income” reported 118 oncologists, urging that we address the issue of the skyrocketing costs of cancer treatments.
Out of the nearly $374 billion Americans spent on prescriptions in 2014, $32.6 billion – about 9 percent – was spent on oncology drugs, according to the annual report by IMS Health Informatics. Another $11.1 billion was spent on supportive care treatments, which help with the side effects of strong chemotherapy drugs.
In the annual report by IMS Health Informatics, cancer drugs were not the most widely prescribed by a long shot.
Prevention would be the smartest way to address it, especially given that a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that cancer drug prices have increased an average of $8,500 a year over the past 15 years.
We have to #stopcancer. Too many lives have been lost. It doesn’t care what side of the aisle we are on, whether we live in Oregon or New York City. It is fearless fierce and becoming a tumor on our economy.
But love is fearless, too.
If the fact that 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women in this country are supposed to get cancer in their lifetimes isn’t some kind of call to action, I’m not sure what is…1 in 1 men?
Today, we lost an incredible man. We aren’t the only ones. This theft is becoming far too prevalent.
It’s time to stop not only the economic burden of this disease, but the heartache and emptiness it leaves in its wake.
This friend who died taught me, when we were teenagers, to dance the night before every birthday. He said, “You have to celebrate the year that you’ve just had.” It’s now a tradition, and something I’ve taught to my kids.
He’s dancing somewhere else now, but while we are still here, we need to change the tune.
When it comes to changing our food system and the way that we feed our families, making perfection a goal in our actions and lives can actually get in the way of making the progress we seek.
I cover that and more in this interview from my recent trip to Cleveland. What role does the media play in all of this? How can we eat well when on the road for work? What needs to happen to make clean and safe food affordable to all who want it?
Please watch and share, especially because the person who produced this is a phenomenal high school kid and founder of Teen Take.
I hear from a lot of cancer moms. I don’t know what it is, but they reach out.
They share how they learned about my work when their child was diagnosed, how my book was passed around the pediatric cancer wing of their hospital or how they watched one of my talks online. When they thank me, it brings me to my knees. Who am I in the face of that? If they are brave enough to wake up every single day to tackle cancer, the very least that I can do is to speak about it.
When I first found out about the escalating rates of food allergies, I had so many questions: what does this mean to a child’s developing immune system if they see food as an enemy? What does the steady state of inflammation do? And why is cancer now the leading cause of death by disease in U.S. kids? Why are 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women in the U.S. expected to get it, according to the Centers and Disease Controll
I couldn’t unlearn that. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing either. Other countries are taking precautionary measures, labeling their food, dropping artificial ingredients, why weren’t we doing that here? And was I brave enough to speak out about it?
In 2006, I wasn’t very brave. I was a number crunching analyst and mom of four. I didn’t want to speak up, and I didn’t want to be the one to rock the boat. I somehow wanted to unlearn all of it, to go back to the plan of returning to the equity desk, finance, the black and white, no heart involved job that I’d loved prior to having kids.
It never happened. I remember one day looking at the kids playing in the yard and thinking, “If not now, when? If not us, who? If we don’t try, what happens?”
So I found the courage to try. The first talk I gave was at the Jewish Community Center. My grandfather and great grandfathers were Episcopalian ministers and the heads of dioceses. Cancer didn’t care what religion we were or what side of the aisle we sat on. Food allergies, autism, diabetes, heart disease didn’t care either. Six people came to that talk. One was a pediatrician, another a dietician….and I found out later that they got married.
I also began to see how love can make the impossible possible. Each time one of us stands up for change, it gives someone else the courage to do the same.
I am often touched by the letters and emails that I receive, but none has touched me quite like this note that I received from a mom named Lisa.
Courage is contagious. Be brave. We are in this together, and years from now, when our children and grandchildren asked what we did when we learned that our food system was so broken, we will be able to say that we fixed it together. It truly is an all hands on deck time.
“Hello Robyn, My name is Lisa. I am married with 4 children.
Almost a year ago, Sept. 3rd, my oldest son Zach was diagnosed with cancer, 2 weeks after going away to college – Stage 4 Mixed Germ Cell Tumors. We have been through quite a difficult journey over the last year but through the grace of God and thanks to his treatment and many prayers, Zach is currently in remission and getting ready to head back to college next week!!
During our cancer journey I became obsessed with trying to find out how a seemingly healthy teenage boy could become so sick. I read articles and books, googled and researched, watched documentaries and tedx talks. I learned so much about the food we eat, the products we use and the chemicals that make us sick. I learned about our country and our government.
This newfound knowledge led me to experience all kinds of emotions. I was sad, angry and discouraged. But it also led me to find a new mission in life; to share this knowledge with anyone who will listen and most importantly with my friends and family.
Transforming our food system is a huge undertaking that can’t be done by one person. But as I’ve learned from you and others who work tirelessly to create change in this country, we must all do our part to make it happen. This thinking has led me to take courage and step out of my comfort zone.
This morning I spoke with my son’s elementary school principal and shared my heart and desire to help educate families on ways they can make better choices to protect their families. She agreed to let me speak to her staff as well as the parents and kids of the school community. I am so excited and quite nervous!
I am sharing this with you because you have inspired me to get involved and work for change. I am not an expert. I’m a mom. A mom who never wants to see her children faced with a life threatening illness again. Any resources, advice or suggestions you could share would be such a blessing to me.
Thank you for all you do and thanks for listening!”
We all have such an important role to play in this. Do what you can, where you are with what you have, because none of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.
I am tucked away this fourth of July weekend with my family, with time to reflect on this beautiful country of ours and what it means to be free.
While we may lag other countries, 64 to be exact, when it comes to labeling GMOs, there are also things that give me hope.
In the ten years of this work, I have seen independence in action, business leaders, parents, farmers, children, teens who are taking action, using their freedoms, their liberties to change our food supply.
It is working. Demand for clean and unpolluted food is exploding. And while we use the adjective “organic” here in the U.S. to describe food that is produced without artificial ingredients like dyes, growth hormones and GMOs, other countries simply call it “food” and label the “genetically engineered” and other altered kinds.
But change is happening.
Capital is flowing into the clean food movement.
Companies like Hampton Creek have raised millions from investors around the world.
Mega food companies are acquiring the smaller organic ones. It can be tough to digest, but inside of these mega companies things are changing. Parents inside of them are spearheading the efforts. The corporate boards need to change, perhaps to retire and be replaced by parents of today’s kids. Why? Because we know the irrefutable truth: that our children that have earned the title of “Generation Rx” because of the rates of food allergies, diabetes, obesity, cancer, asthma and autism.
This generation of parents can not turn away, because while our children may only be 30% of the population, they are 100% of our future. Our country depends on their health.
We have to come together. It is happening. Courage is contagious, and each time that one of us steps forward to advocate for change, another is inspired to do the same.
The Declaration of Independence mentions three rights which human beings possess: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No one may rightfully deny us these things. The pursuit of health is a pursuit for happiness. Disease is dis-ease. In our fight for clean food, for a revolutionary change to our food system, we are not alone. We are living up to the founding principals of our country. These rights are “unalienable.”
The Declaration does not proclaim a right to happiness itself, but rather that we are born with minds and talents that we may use to pursue happiness.
Each of us has a unique set of skills, gifts and talents that have been given to us. No two of us are the same. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something. In this work, the combination of our collective talents is unstoppable. In this pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, this freedom of health that we pursue, it is very much an all-hands-on-deck time.
So this Fourth of July, I found myself bowing my head in gratitude: for the pioneering vision of our founding fathers, for the pioneering work of the business leaders, parents, farmers and organizations working to restore the health of our country and for all of those who are bravely lending their hearts, their talents and minds to this pursuit.
Happy 4th. Here’s to the health of our country and our inspired and collective pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. It is an all hands on deck time.
My grandmother stopped giving to her sorority when they first accepted a black girl. Back in 2008, I asked her what she thought when Obama was elected president, and the word she used was “terrifying.” When I asked her why, she didn’t have an answer.
I was raised in the South. I attended one of the most conservative undergraduate universities in the country.
As the violence in our country around race continues, I have not been able to stop thinking about racism in America and wondering why we haven’t come further.
And then this weekend, I read a piece by my friend Karen titled Say Something.
I hadn’t.
As I watched the viral video of the young black girl, pinned to the ground by a cop, my first thought was: What if that were my daughter? She was 15. The same age as our oldest daughter.
But I didn’t say anything, except to my own kids, which didn’t feel right, so I reached out to a black friend who also had teenage girls.
And then I read Say Something:
“One of the things that I think is important for us to realize is that unlike when most of us were children and media was in the hands of the few, we are now all media. We all have social media footprints, we all have forums where people can hear our thoughts. And if friends who are members of a minority watch those of you who are white go silent when issues like this come up, your credibility as an “ally” diminishes dramatically. And trust me when I tell you that it’s really disheartening to watch. So if you truly want to fight racism, then please, speak out against racism. Make it clear, in your own words—not just retweeting or resharing the words of Jon Stewart or someone else—tell folks how you feel. Take a stand, for heaven’s sake. (But then, after you’ve done that, do freely share articles and posts and links to organizations that fight racism. Amplify, amplify, amplify. Because frankly, those of us who are of colour need white voices to help amplify the cause.)”
I also have a friend in medical school in Denver. He shared the racial profiling that has been going on against him there. He’s been stopped by the cops a handful of times and is afraid to walk home from the library at night. We talk about bringing this message of healthy food to his community. We are strong together. He looks like an NBA player and has built himself into an extraordinary man. He is in his twenties, overcoming more hardship than most could fathom. What if he were my son? I can help with him food, but can’t I do more?
Could I do something?
After reading Say Something, I couldn’t sit silently any longer.
“What if I say something that is wrong, what if I unintentionally offend someone if I say something?”I thought.
But what if I say nothing?
We have inherited systems that are broken in our country. The food system is one example. Our education system needs help, too, our political system, our banking system. Just because we’ve inherited these broken systems, does not mean that we have to embrace them going forward. We can reject them and build better ones.
Just as we can reject racism not only in its brutality but also in its subtleties.
Our kids have always chosen friends with different skin colors. Our oldest led that way. When she first began describing them to me, when she was little, she would say, “She is smart. Her mom works in DC. She is funny, she is really nice.” Never once did she describe her friends by the color of their skin.
Our kids would not be here today if it weren’t for a friend that introduced me and my husband. They would not describe him as a black man, but as someone who is funny and brilliant and kind and hard working, which is exactly who he is.
Why do we see color, when we can describe someone by the size of their heart, the light in their eyes, the brilliance of their mind, the passion in their work?
Why do we see color, when we can describe someone by the size of their heart, the light in their eyes, the brilliance of their mind, the passion in their work? How they love. Even as I write this, I can’t believe that even today, in 2015, that I even have to say something.
But I felt that way when I began speaking out about our food system, if felt so obvious, a system that was so obviously broken.
There are so many systems that we have inherited that no longer serve us. It’s up to us to change them, to rethink them, to build something better, to choose love. To see the love between a mother and her daughter, to see the love between a boy and his grandfather, to choose to see love.
Love doesn’t have a skin color.
“Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Last week, a friend died. There was no long, drawn-out illness, no last good-byes. He was 41, married, with two little boys and had a heart attack.
And like that, his circle of friends was left standing with a hole in it and an unshakeable sadness.
It is impossible to try to make sense of something like this. His wife was given a paper angel by one of their boys on the morning that he died. Grief comes in waves, and it can be hard to swim against.
This morning, as I tried to work, to write about Chipotle and McDonald’s, all I could think about was this quote by Mary Oliver:
We are only here once. We have inherited systems, food systems, health care systems, other systems, that no longer work for 21st century families. We can spend months picking them apart, or we can spend our days building better ones.
The landscape in front of us is wide open. Each of us is here with a very unique set of skills and talents. We need all hands on deck. The legacy is ours to create.
“So tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Written in memory of Peter Johnson with such gratitude for the kindness that he brought into the world.
I am in Texas this week with family and with an uncle battling cancer.
There is nothing special about us, except perhaps for the size.
My dad is one of four brothers. All four are all still married, going on 50-year anniversaries each. Between the four of them, they had 12 children. We now have 31 children between the 12 of us.
We were a dozen cousins growing up in Texas, packed into about 8 years. Close doesn’t even begin to describe us. The cousin two weeks younger than me has always been one of my best friends.
So when our uncle found blood in his urine last July, everyone was told. He went straight in for surgery that week to have his kidney removed. It was cancer. He was put on the leading drugs. And his cancer came roaring back. It was in his abdomen, on his liver, his abdominal wall. It seemed to be everywhere.
We saw him in August. “I’m tired, like I have the flu, Rob, but we’re going to fight this thing. We’re going to beat it.” He knew that he was not fighting it alone. It wasn’t just this enormous family, the dozen cousins who now have 31 little ones between them, it was his faith.
“We” meant all of that. We knew it.
So when we got to Texas this week, we wanted to see him first. He’s dropped 60 pounds, but he took my hand, took my shoulders and said, “I’m a little weak. My back hurts. But we’ve got this. We’ve got this.” His spirit has always been indomitable. His laser blue eyes, like those of his brothers, my dad, pierced through the pain, crystal clear, focused, fierce.
If love could cure cancer, we would have this. We have flooded him with so much love that there would no longer be room for the tumors, the lesions, the growth.
But it hasn’t. At least not yet. So he stands with the 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women in the United States who will get cancer in their lifetime. He stands with the 41% expected to face this disease, a disease that is now the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 in America. He stands to fight it.
Cancer doesn’t care who we are, where we are from or what side of the aisle we are on. It is vicious. It is a formidable foe. But it wasn’t always this way. The statistics were not always this high. It did not always touch this many people that we love.
And that gives me hope. Hope that we can roll back this disease, that we can stop the tsunami of diagnoses that are happening, that we can stop the exploding growth rates in children, that we can cure my uncle and others fighting this wicked disease.
We haven’t cured cancer yet, but the more that we learn about this disease, its triggers, from those found in the food supply to those in our environment, the more we can learn how to stop it.
Love is a rocket fuel. Passion and perseverance can accomplish the impossible…even to end cancer.
Some might say it’s impossible.
I have no time for impossible.
Because “impossible” is just a word given to something that has not been done yet.
Today, one in eleven children struggle with asthma, and one in four are affected by allergies. The incidence of allergy has increased significantly over the past two decades, and allergy to peanuts has more than quadrupled from 1997 to 2010. Approximately 30 million children – more than 1/3 of our kids – are affected by one of these four new childhood epidemics. This is not something we can just accept.
An official statistic held that allergies affect some 7 million Americans, including about 6 percent of children below the age of three. That information came courtesy of U.S. Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Lester M. Crawford, J., D.V.M., Ph.D., speaking before the Consumer Federation of America on April 22, 2002. But that data is now over ten years old.
Today, it is now estimated that up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, 1 in every 13 children. That’s roughly two in every classroom.
The Centers for Disease Control also issued a report in 2008 that said that there has been a 265% increase in the rate of hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions over the prior ten year period.
This begs explanation.
An allergy is basically an overreaction by your immune system to a protein that it perceives as a threat—for example, the proteins in particular types of food, the dust mite protein, or pollen. For people without allergies, these proteins are harmless. But if you’ve got an allergy, your immune system sees these proteins as dangerous invaders.
To drive the invader out, your immune system mobilizes all its resources: mucous, to flush out the intruder; vomiting, to force it out; diarrhea, to expel it quickly. Such conditions may make you feel sick, but they’re actually evidence of your body’s attempts to get well.
A key aspect of the immune response is known as inflammation, characterized by one or more of four classic symptoms: redness, heat, swelling, and pain. Inflammation doesn’t occur only in allergic reactions; it flares up whenever your body feels threatened, in response to a bruise, cut, bacteria, or virus as well as to otherwise harmless pollen, dust, or food. Scientists now believe that much of our immune system is found in our digestive tracts, where many of these inflammatory reactions occur in the form of stomachaches, cramping, nausea, bloating, and vomiting.
Ironically, the immune system’s inflammatory reaction—meant to heal and protect the body—often causes more problems than the initial “invader” in the cases when allergic reactions become life-threatening.
Common Symptoms of Food Allergy: Immediate Reactions
rash or hives
nausea
stomach pain
diarrhea
itchy skin
eczema
shortness of breath
chest pain
swelling of the airways to the lungs
anaphylaxis
Food Allergies and Food Sensitivity: Our Immune System Overreacts Again
At first glance, the distinction between “allergies” and “sensitivity” may seem like a meaningless word game. But understanding the relationship between these two conditions is crucial to grasping the true nature of the allergy epidemic—and to seeing how even the supposedly healthy foods in our kitchens may be harmful to our health.
As we’ve seen, allergies are an overreaction of our immune system, a kind of exaggerated response to a perceived danger. When a child comes in contact with these proteins (peanut, egg, wheat, etc.) her immune system “recognizes” the protein as dangerous, just as it would have seen the danger in the bacterium that causes pneumonia or the virus that causes mumps. In response, her immune system creates special “fighter” proteins called antibodies designed to identify and neutralize the “invader.”
These fighter proteins are known as immunoglobulin E, or IgE for short. When they’re released into the bloodstream, their purpose is to “seek and destroy” the invader, which they do by creating one or more of the classic food allergy symptoms, such as the hives, or the diarrhea with which other children respond, or, in more extreme cases, the anaphylactic shock that can kill a child within minutes.
The classic IgE response occurs within minutes or even seconds, because IgE proteins are some of the most aggressive antibodies we know. That immediate IgE response is the defining characteristic of an allergic reaction.
Food sensitivities start out in a similar way. If a “sensitive” child is exposed to a protein that his system perceives as a threat, he’ll manufacture another type of fighter protein, known as Immunglobulin G, or IgG. Although IgE and IgG antibodies play similar roles, they produce somewhat different—though often overlapping—symptoms.
A crucial difference between the two, though, is their reaction time. The less aggressive IgG antibodies typically produce a delayed response that might not appear for hours or even days after the child has consumed the offending food.
So even though food sensitivities and food allergies both produce painful, inflammatory, and potentially dangerous responses, this delayed reaction time has led many doctors to give food sensitivities second-class status. Partly that’s because they don’t present an immediate and obvious threat to children’s lives: only the IgE proteins trigger anaphylactic shock, for example, and in that sense, only the IgE proteins can kill (though the IgG reaction can have serious long-term consequences). I also think that traditional doctors tend to downplay the importance of nutrition, frequently dismissing the idea that such symptoms as earache, eczema, crankiness, brain fog, and sleep problems might be related to a child’s diet.
However, an article in The Lancet, Britain’s most respected medical journal, casts another light on the subject. The article referred to doctors who use elimination diets—diets that begin with a very limited, “safe” array of food choices and then add potentially problematic foods back into the diet, one by one.
The reason to do an elimination diet is to identify which foods in your diet might be triggering symptoms like skin rashes, fatigue, or stomach ache. Often, some foods affect us without our realizing it and we live with the symptoms, taking medicine to alleviate the suffering. But if you eliminate these foods from your diet, you may find that your symptoms disappear. What becomes even more interesting is that when you reintroduce the offending food, you may suddenly suffer drastic symptoms which make it clear that the food was indeed triggering one or more problems. An elimination diet can sometimes reveal with dramatic speed that a particular food you’ve always believed was harmless is actually causing such chronic symptoms as headache, digestive problems, and even more serious complaints. Masked by your daily diet and by the slowness of the food-sensitivity reaction, the offending food does its dirty work without ever realizing that it is the culprit behind your—or your child’s—disorders.
When you take a break from eating that problem food, however, and then add it back into your diet, you see how powerful its effects are and how responsible it may be for a seemingly unrelated problem. Foods that you thought were safe for you turn out to be highly problematic, indicating the presence of a previous undiagnosed food sensitivity. As a result, the authors of the Lancet article conclude that the prevalence of food sensitivity (referred to in the article as “food intolerance”) has been seriously underestimated.
Certainly, food allergies are far more dramatic. Whenever you read about a kid who died within minutes of eating at a fast-food joint or after breathing in the peanut dust from a friend’s candy wrapper, that’s an “IgE-mediated” food allergy. They’re fast, they can be deadly, and I’m glad doctors want to give them the attention they deserve.
But I also think doctors should be looking at delayed reactions, too, the “IgG-mediated” responses to food sensitivities. And some doctors do look seriously at both. Most conventional doctors, though, tend to focus on IgE immediate reactions. I think there are lots of reasons why they should view the two types of reactions as part of a larger, single problem.
First, both reactions have the same ultimate cause: the immune system’s overreaction to apparently harmless food. According to internationally acclaimed author and physician Kenneth Bock, M.D., there’s also quite a bit of overlap between IgE and IgG symptoms. Both can contribute to inflammatory responses in multiple body systems.
True, the delayed IgG reactions are less likely to cause hives and are more likely to produce a host of apparently vague symptoms, such as headache, brain fog, sleep problems, joint pain, fatigue, and muscle aches. But both the immediate and the delayed responses are immune system problems triggered by a supposedly “harmless” food.
Conventional doctors’ tendency to separate “IgE-mediated” food allergies and “IgG-mediated” food sensitivities into two separate problems has the effect of minimizing the allergy epidemic. Remember, IgE allergies, IgG sensitivities, and asthma—three similar ways that our immune systems can overreact—are all on the rise. It makes sense to find a doctor who is willing to address all three as symptoms of a greater underlying issue.
Common Symptoms of Food Sensitivity: Delayed Reactions
fatigue
gastrointestinal problems, including bloating and gas
itchy skin and skin rashes like eczema
brain fog
muscle or joint aches
headache
sleeplessness and sleep disorders
chronic rhinitis (runny nose), congestion, and post-nasal drip
Five Take-Aways:
1. Even if your kids can’t talk, their skin speaks volumes! Did you know that the skin is a person’s largest organ? Even when your kid is too young to tell you how he feels or too used to her symptoms to identify them (when kids hurt all the time, they don’t know they hurt!), you can often read your child’s condition in his or her skin.
Does your kid have eczema? Does he get rashes around the mouth, especially after he eats a certain food or swallows a certain beverage? Rashes around the knees, elbows, or armpits? Does he have “allergic shiners”—that is, dark circles under the eyes?
These are all inflammatory reactions, signs that the body is trying to rid itself of what it perceives as “toxic invader.” In your child’s case, that “toxic invader” might be an apparently harmless food, to which your kid is either allergic or “sensitive.” Keeping that invader away from your kid may bring relief from symptoms—and it may clear up other problems, such as brain fog, crankiness, sleep problems, inattention, acne, and mood swings.
2. Look below. Your kids’ bowel movements, not to be too delicate here, also speak volumes. Runny poops are a sign that a person isn’t properly digesting his food. And indeed, as we got the allergens out of some children’s diets, poops tend to firm up.
3. Chronic ear infections are often a sign of dairy allergies. In some cases, milk may have ill effects like eczema, upset stomachs or chronic ear infections for children who are allergic or sensitive to it.
4. Find a doctor who is willing to work with you, test for both IgE and IgG allergies and sensitivities and to address the important role that elimination diets can play in managing allergic symptoms like eczema, ear infections and chronic mucous.
5. More research is needed. Food allergies are impacting a growing number of Americans. It is impacting everything from how schools feed children to what snacks airlines choose to carry on planes. Napster co-founder, Sean Parker, recently donated $24 million to Stanford to conduct research to get to the bottom of this condition, what is triggering it and how to cure it.
6. Find a friend. Find an ally to help you get safe snacks in the classroom or meet with your Congressman to discuss this epidemic. The landscape of childhood is changing. It is changing families and changing the food industry. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something.
Always discuss individual health inquiries and medical issues with a qualified personal physician and/or specialist.
I can remember flying into Houston, my hometown, nine years ago.
I had just learned about the chemically-intensive operating system that had been put in place on our food supply by chemical companies now genetically engineering seeds. I remember looking out the window of the airplane and wondering how in the world to get the message out. Wondering if it was crazy to try, knowing that I had to.
Back then, in 2006, the work was so daunting, few were talking about it and people looked at you like you had three heads when you said “GMO”, but it couldn’t be unlearned. It was something that I couldn’t not do, so I kept going.
Last week, I received this note from a high school friend with a mom going through cancer treatment. When I hear from childhood friends from Houston, it means more than they could ever imagine. Her daughter was asked to draw and write about her dreams in school.
“Going through my daughter’s weekly folder of work from her school. Out of the blue, I see this and think of you… She said the project was supposed to only be about dreams and not about food. She just thought it was the best dream that she could think of….I think so, too.”
The John Lennon song, Imagine, has been sort of a theme song through this. I’ve sung it to the kids at bedtime, over the phone when I travel. It’s such a tribute to seeing beyond the mess that we are in right now to the solutions that we can create together. And when a friend unexpectedly sent me a T-shirt with the words, “You may say I’m a dreamer…..I’m not the only one,” my heart was flooded, because we are not. There are so many incredible people working on this issue, so many with enormous hearts and enormous talent, so many that I am so grateful for every day.
And as companies like Kroger, HEB, White Wave, Whole Foods, Costco, Chipotle and others offer more and more healthy food, this little girl’s dream has a very strong chance of coming true.
There was a a big-hearted, Carhartt-wearing guy named Luke sitting next to me on the flight into Missouri today for a conference.
I was nervous about this trip, I don’t know why. Maybe because Monsanto tried to sponsor the conference (kind of a weird flank move) and was shot down. They wanted to be there and wanted a photo opp and press release. So I kept to myself on the flight, worked on my presentation and read about the announcement about FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, and her decision to step down.
“Do you work for the FDA?” he asked. I almost laughed. “No,” I said, “I do a lot of research into our food system. It started with crunching numbers and turned into a lot more.”
“What do you do?” I asked him.
“I build tanks….on dairy farms.” And he proceeded to school me. He talked about the glycol or ammonia used to cool the tanks and to preserve the milk inside of them, he talked about how sometimes he builds tanks for wine, and how some big dairy processors cut corners.
He had a long, slow drawl.
“They just patch things up, you know? They don’t want to spend the money to fix stuff. Tanks get holes, they should be replaced, they just patch ’em up. Bacteria that grows in there. It’s nasty when you see it. Mold.”
He paused and looked out the window.
“They do things half-ass, so they don’t have to spend money.”
I paused.
“Do you have kids?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “17 months and 4 months.”
I could relate to that. And I told him about our four, how I was named after a farmer, and how I don’t understand why we don’t value our farmers more.
He gazed out the airplane window. “Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about that for a long time. A lot.”
And he talked about how his great uncle had made a good living as a farmer, and how he couldn’t do it now. “You have to be real big” he said.
I was quiet and listened as he talked about wild hogs and what they can do to the land.
“You got a poaching problem out there in Colorado?” he asked. No idea, I said.
He laughed. And we started our descent.
We live in a country where those betting on commodities make enormous profits while the farmers growing those commodities take out loans.
It’s unsustainable. We have to value the livelihoods of our farmers like our future depends on it.
Because it does.
It’s time to rethink food and that starts with the farm system. Economies thrive on entrepreneurship and innovation. Right now, small farmers hardly stand a chance. Imagine if farm startups got the same kind of attention as tech startups?
We grow enough food to feed 11 billion people, but there are only 7 billion on the planet. Imagine if we didn’t waste 30-40% of what is produced.
Just for a while on that flight today, I imagined what it would look like if we had a more transparent and efficient food system and that John Lennon song ran through my head.
A high school friend died of cancer last night. A total stud. He was captain of both the football and track teams, and we were the Rebels. He embodied every bit of it: fierce, determined, strong, passionate. But more importantly, he was kind and funny with everyone.
