Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

When what you eat hurts you

Food allergies are on the rise — as are C-sections
food_glenda1

I have two beautiful little bottles in my ever-expanding collection of stuff I like to drag home, even though I have absolutely no room or use for them. One is emerald green, the other that beautiful cobalt blue like the deepest blue of the sea.

Both came from Skagway, Alaska, a 32-hour drive north and west of Whistler through some of the prettiest country our province offers. Both bottles also sport thin, parallel ribs on the outside like bulky corduroy, only made out of glass.

That glass ribbing kept many a prospector, packer and prostitute in the Klondike from harm's way, even death's door. Especially given their dark little cabins and shanties and claims gouged deep into the cold rock, where the kerosene-lamp and candle light, if it existed at all, was low.

Some of these old bottles from the 1890s also have words embossed into the glass: "NOT TO BE TAKEN" or, more to the point, "POISON" is shouted all caps. But those in the Klondike who couldn't read or write, and there were lots, learned to rely on feeling the failsafe ribbing to know something in a bottle was harmful. Important when it sat on a rickety shelf alongside things like vanilla extract, treasured sauce from home, or a top-up of tipple.

These days lots of us could do with something like that ribbing on our bottles and food packaging as warnings, for food allergies and intolerance are at an all-time high.

My mom has been a brilliant cook and hostess for something like five decades now. "OMG!" she said not long ago, sounding exactly like a tweet does in our mind's ear, even though she wouldn't know one from a tweetie bird. "I don't know what to cook anymore! This one can't eat wheat. That one can't eat dairy..." The list goes on, reflecting anecdotally our new dining reality, as well as actual science.

According to a 2010 study — the first of its kind in Canada — on the prevalence of allergies done by the McGill University Health Centre, one in 13 Canadians has a serious food allergy.

About 7.5 per cent of children and adults have at least one food allergy. Eggs, prawns, peanuts, the aforementioned wheat and dairy — they all add up to some serious eating situations for folks.

I have one friend who has to wear a MedicAlert bracelet for seafood and peanuts. If she eats either she'll go into anaphylactic shock, meaning she could die. In fact, food allergies are the largest trigger of anaphylaxis, says AllerGen, the allergy network supported by Industry Canada, which was also part of the McGill study and advocates for a national registry for anaphylaxis to better inform regulatory decisions.

Another pal can't eat dairy products, period, even if she takes Lactaid or a similar commercial enzyme tablet.

Lactose intolerance is my own claim to food allergies, one that surprised me in my late 30s. I'd always thought that you were born lactose intolerant. Not so, I learned firsthand.

Europeans are some of the few people whose adult bodies continue to produce lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose, the simple sugar found in milk.

After a couple of years of travelling in Asia, where I was eating few dairy products because Asians don't have much milk, cream, and the like in their diets, my doctor told me that my body simply stopped producing lactase because it didn't need it. So I lost my ability to digest lactose, me, the milk-guzzling prairie girl sans superior.

But most people don't get food allergies after travelling in different cultures for years, so why are we seeing so many people allergic to the very things that have traditionally nourished us?

A hint about this mystery can be found in an article in the June Scientific American about gut bacteria and it's impact on obesity.

According to the article, babies who are fed formula rather than breast milk and those delivered by cesarean section, rather than through the birth canal, have a higher risk for obesity and diabetes than babies who aren't.

Studies conducted by the University of Colorado-Boulder and New York University found that as babies traverse the birth canal they swallow bacteria that will later help them digest milk. Babies born by C-section miss out on this advantage; babies who don't breast feed miss out on substances in breast milk that "nurture beneficial bacteria and limit colonization by harmful ones."

One other observation, one made by Canadian scientists, is that babies who are given formula have bacteria in their gut that are not seen in breast-fed babies until after they are fed solid foods.

The presence of such bacteria may be one reason why those babies are more susceptible to allergies, asthma, eczema and celiac disease — as well as obesity — says one of the NYU researchers, Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello.

She's also leading a clinical trial in Puerto Rico where some babies born by C-section will be swaddled in gauze cloth "laced" with their mothers vaginal fluids and resident microbes. Those babies' weights and health will be tracked against C-section babies who don't receive the gauze treatment.

At about 26 per cent — an increase of 45 per cent since 1998 — Canada's C-section rate far exceeds that recommended by the World Health Organization of 10-15 per cent. Our breastfeeding rate, though, is up — at 89 per cent.

In the U.S., about 33 per cent of babies are now C-section deliveries, a similar substantial increase. Brazil tops the rankings at 46 per cent, while Scandinavian countries hover around the 17-per-cent mark.

On the other hand, African countries, such as Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Madagascar, are very low for C-sections, at about one per cent of births. African countries have also had few studies and shown fewer documented cases of food allergies, with the exception of South Africa, where the phenomenon is on the rise, as it is in developed countries.

In light of the above, Ms. Dominguez-Bello's clinical trial sounds evermore fascinating. I can't wait to see the results of it, and how they might be implicated in the lives of the next generation of kids growing up. At least they might not need ribbed glasses for their milk, or ribbed jars for their peanut butter.

Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who is very glad of Lactaid.