Posted on 11/29/2005 9:32:46 PM PST by neverdem
Newhouse News Service
Multiple-choice question: Why are more American kids allergic to foods, particularly peanuts?
A) Their immune systems are confused by increasingly clean homes.
B) Nervous parents wait too long to feed their children peanuts.
C) We roast peanuts rather than boil them.
D) Maybe one of the above, and/or something else.
Unfortunately, the answer is "D."
One study estimates American children's rate of allergy to peanuts and tree nuts (like walnuts and pecans) — about 1 percent of those under age 18 — has doubled in recent years. No one can say why.
But whatever biological mysteries are at work, U.S. children are more likely to be allergic to peanuts than kids in China, in Israel and in many underdeveloped nations, experts say.
"It's a moving target," said Dr. Robert Wood, a pediatric immunology professor at Johns Hopkins University. "The numbers may be different by the time the next study gets done."
Deaths from allergic reactions to food are not officially counted, but studies suggest 150-200 fatalities a year, experts say. Case studies of 32 food-allergy deaths during 1994-99 showed that most victims died of reactions to nuts, most had asthma, and 13 were under 18 years old.
Though rare, deaths from food allergies can occur with shocking caprice.
New law on allergies
On Jan. 1, a new federal law goes into effect requiring food manufacturers to use simple language — milk instead of "caseinates," egg instead of "albumin" — in food products' ingredients lists. The law will apply to peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, fish, wheat, soybeans and crustaceans (such as shrimp and crabs). Proteins in these foods cause about 90 percent of allergic reactions. Studies of peanut, tree-nut, fish and shellfish allergies suggest 11.4 million Americans, or about 4 percent of the population, have food allergies, according to the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. Ten years ago, scientists believed less than 1 percent of the population was affected.
In 2003, about 1,800 children under 18 were hospitalized due to food allergies, according to a federal estimate. That number had increased only slightly during the preceding decade, but researchers say many allergic episodes go uncounted when hospitals misclassify them.
"The data are not clear enough to say what the true rate of increase has been, but we would be very comfortable saying the rate of food allergy has truly increased," said Wood.
The only treatment for a severe allergic reaction is a shot of epinephrine, a hormone that relaxes the airways of someone struggling with a life-threatening allergic response.
On Jan. 1, a new federal law goes into effect requiring food manufacturers to use simple language — milk instead of "caseinates," egg instead of "albumin" — in food products' ingredients lists. The law will apply to peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, fish, wheat, soybeans and crustaceans (such as shrimp and crabs). Proteins in these foods cause about 90 percent of allergic reactions.
Meanwhile, some advocates are pushing for federal guidelines for schools to create emergency action plans for allergic students.
In well-prepared schools, administrators have assembled teachers, parents, a school nurse and others to discuss how to handle emergencies and how to make a school safe, said Anne Munoz-Furlong, founder of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a group advocating more protections. "Nut-free" zones are becoming more common on school lunch tables.
Even highly sensitive peanut-allergic children are unlikely to experience a severe reaction from casual external contact with peanut butter, research has shown. Soap and water effectively remove the allergen from surfaces such as tabletops, while disposable wipes work well with hands.
But reactions do occur, most often when a child unknowingly eats something containing an allergen. Serious problems result when a school's files contain nothing from a child's doctor about a condition, what symptoms to look for and how and when to give medication.
"A child eats something, thinks it was safe, but they have a reaction," Munoz-Furlong said. "They're sent to the office, the office staff calls the parents. Or the child has asthma, and they give her an inhaler. The reaction gets completely out of control, and when you bring epinephrine into the picture, it's too late."
An allergic reaction occurs when the body mistakenly identifies something as an invader and activates a portion of the immune system. People with hay fever, for example, overreact to the inhalation of pollen. The same process occurs in food allergies, with protein acting as the trigger.
In someone allergic to peanuts, for example, the body senses a specific protein has attached to cells in the body. To "protect" the cells, it sends out special antibodies called immunoglobulin E, or IgE. When IgE reaches the cells, it causes them to release histamines and other chemicals that may cause itching, nausea or restricted breathing.
In trying to explain the increase in allergies, many scientists have embraced the "hygiene hypothesis." It holds that some people's immune systems have gone out of whack because America's increasing cleanliness has changed the behavior of IgE.
The central role of IgE is to help fight infections. But as America has become more sanitary, and as antibiotics have cut down on infections, IgE has less work to do, making it restless and prone to attack new things.
"The more [IgE] is left 'unbusy' because we're not being exposed to germs early in life, the more it could direct its attention toward allergies," said Wood.
Some data support this idea. Allergy rates are lower in many underdeveloped nations, perhaps because the immune systems of those who live there are constantly exercised.
But the hygiene hypothesis, which would apply to all kinds of allergies, doesn't explain everything.
"It's not clear that it's the whole story," said Dr. Marshall Plaut, chief of allergic mechanisms at the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Doctors have successfully "desensitized" patients with allergies like hay fever by injecting them with small but increasing doses of pollen. Such "immunotherapy" often causes severe reactions when tried against food allergies — an effect scientists are trying to understand and avert.
Mindful of the hygiene hypothesis, researchers also are studying whether exposing children earlier in life to peanuts and other potential allergens may properly prepare their immune systems.
Peanut allergy rates in Israel are low compared with the United States, and some suspect that's because many Israeli children eat peanut snacks earlier and more often than American children do.
"It could be the hygiene hypothesis," Munoz-Furlong said. "It could be the way peanuts are processed. In China they boil them, and we roast them. Or, it could be how they introduce it; in this country, we wait until the third birthday. In Israel, it's typically before the first birthday."
OK. Now you've got me started. My aunt, a nurse, was warning me to be aware that my daughter's cycle could start as early as 8. I was horrified. I told her that I'd only known two girls who started as early as 9 and she went on reassuring me that it was perfectly normal for girls to start at 8-9. She patiently tried to explain to me that "things had changed".
I asked her: If 15% of all the babies born suddenly had an extra arm, would we all calmly smile and nod and say, "Oh! This is so common that it *must* be normal" or would we break down the gates of Hell to figure out what was happening to our kids? She tried to argue that it wasn't the same thing, as all healthy females have cycles. Girls are just starting earlier. So I presented this scenario: What if 10% the 20-25 year old young women were going into menopause? Would *that* be acceptable? She finally got it.
Uh huh. Look at the info/studies about estrogen, and other drugs, in the water supply. I remember first reading about this in the '80's. A portion of most drugs is excreted unchanged from the body. This enters the water supply. Treatment plants are geared to deal with microorganisms, not drugs. There have been a number of reports/ studies about estrogenic effects being found in marine life. So, it's not surprising that girls are entering puberty earlier if the water supply is laced with estrogenic compounds.
Pure glucose doesn't disrupt mineral balance, pure fructose does.
Ok, let's look at this again now that it's not real late and I haven't consumed two bottles of my favorite Petite Syrah.
You're saying that as fructose in metabolized in the liver it raises lactic acid levels which inhibits the absorption of calcium, phosphorous and magnesium. Yes, without phosphorous and magnesium, iron and copper absorption can be inhibited.
Problem is, lactic acid just doesn't build up in the liver because the liver metabolizes it down to CO2 and water. Muscles, of course, will break down the sugar they use for energy into lactic acid but no further. However, the blood whisks it away to the liver where it's broken down. Lactic acid can also be converted back to glucose by the liver but that does not happen often. There are times when lactic acid will build up in the muscles faster than the blood can remove it. This happens only under extreme circumstances, mostly with athletes, and causes the muscles to go into tetany (muscles refuse to contract) which is the same as a charley horse.
The liver is the reason lactic acid doesn't build up in the body. The human body is an amazing instrument that has an incredible ability to ensure that things like lactic acid don't build up. Over the ages, the human body has learned to pass things along that may be bad for it. Just look at how well we're able to handle alcohol. It's a poison yet our body does an exceptional job of filtering it out and sending it on its way. It just doesn't make any sense to think that lactic acid, in a healthy body, will be allowed to build up enough to rob the body of calcium, phosphorous and magnesium. Our body was designed to protect the living organism.
I read the link about kidney calcification in female rats and although it's impossible to determine a great deal from so little information, I was taken by the fact that the researchers fed the rats purified diets which is not the real world. Of course you'd need to know the levels of fructose and glucose that they were fed. If they were fed high concentrations of fructose this would result in high concentrations in the blood that the liver couldn't handle. That, in turn, would transfer to the urine and cause minerals to pass in the urine. No surprises there. What's important to know is what the normal levels of glucose and fructose are after a meal. If you overwhelm the body with anything it can cause all sorts of malady's. I said earlier that researchers will feed lab rats and mice quantities of these products that would be impossible, or at least unreasonable, for humans to consume. So they get results that have no relationship to real life. Remember, 95% of all scientific experiments never amount to anything. All kinds of research is done that is meaningless. That's the nature of research.
As for the other link, I'll look more into what they've done but right off the bat, I'd say that using fructose for 20% of energy is an immediate issue. It looks like all of their references are from research done prior to 1998, when I was actively involved in the R&D side of the food industry. I would have certainly been aware of these findings had the industry thought the research valid. But you never know what these folks might have come up with, that might be new and exciting, so I'll give it a thorough look.
As for insulin resistance and dyslipidemia....I don't know what to think of this. I've seen this stuff posted on FR before but just don't believe that this is in any way valid. I've seen some people here contend that the liver converts fructose far more readily to triglycerides than it does with glucose. I have never seen any legitimate research that proves that there is faster fat formation with fructose than with glucose. As I said earlier, Glucose is converted into 3x2 carbon fragments. Fructose is also broken down into 3x2 carbon fragments. The body cannot differentiate between the two.
Maybe what they are saying is that fructose yields these two carbon fragments faster than glucose. I don't believe it but, if it did, fructose would also give you energy faster than glucose. This would be an advantage for many people, especially athletes, but I have never seen any research saying this is so. You cannot have one without the other.
This whole debate is really very simple. If you are an active person who doesn't overeat, glucose and fructose are converted into energy. If you do not need the energy at the time, the excess glucose and fructose is converted to glycogen and stored, mostly in the liver, until the body needs to produce more energy. When you need energy, the stored glycogen is converted back to glucose.
With sedentary people, as well as those who consume too many calories, the process is different. If the body has converted the excess glucose and fructose to glycogen and the glycogen reserves are full, the body will convert the excess glycogen to fat. Think of an empty bucket that you fill with water. Once the water fills the bucket it starts overflowing. That overflow is what the body turns into fat. To stop the overflow, you must stop pouring into the bucket. People get fat because they consume too many calories and don't burn enough of it off. That's why this whole issue about the body converting fructose to fat faster than glucose doesn't matter either way. If you aren't consuming more calories than you need it's a non-issue.
As for the insulin issue, from the studies I've seen making this claim they are always prefaced by saying that large quantities of fructose can cause insulin resistance. Anything in excess can be bad for you. Long distance runners are dropping dead now from consuming too much water when they run. If you overwhelm the body with sugar you can induce diabetes by damaging cells in the pancreas. You rarely see thin people with diabetes. Excess calories, usually from carbs, results in weight gain and diabetes.
Sugar and HFCS are not the cause. Consuming too many calories and not exercising enough is. Problem is, there are many who use the Internet now as a means of promoting their agenda. Food ingredients will be the next class action lawsuit because of junk science.
As for the article on VLDL....I got to the part where they indicated using genetically obese rats. They didn't even use normal rats. I guess they thought there would be some parallels to obese humans . So, now you have research using abnormal genetics, abnormal diets and abnormal metabolisms. Trying to transfer any learnings from this to healthy people is suspect from the start. To fully grasp what's being done here you'd have to fully understand genetics.
But I insist that one of, if not the, major carbohydrate in the "Standard American Diet" is HFCS
The major carb in the American diet is starch. Do you really think that we consume more HFCS than rice, pasta and potatoes?
America is getting around to removing the excess amounts of sugar in their diet -- but HFCS is sliding in thru the back door.
It's not a conspiracy. HFCS is used because it's cheaper and keeps the food police happy. The fact that it's much sweeter than sugar means that less of it is used to achieve the same level of sweetness as sucrose. Sucrose is half glucose and half fructose. There is more fructose in HFCS but by using less of it you're not getting as much more fructose as you might think.
Apologies for the epic post.
These compounds are toxic, whether they are "poisonous" depends on the concentration.
Yeah, OK now we're playing games. The color in autumn leaves is caused by a flavone. The coloring of a grape is caused by flavones and is an antioxidant and considered good for you. Some flavones have been identified as toxic. Cottonseed, for example, contains gossypol which is an isoflavone. If you eat enough of them you'll get sick. Who'd ever eat cottonseed though? Until your post I'd never heard that soybeans contained flavones.
LD50% (lethal dose) is what we use to determine toxicity. Researchers feed animals doses of something until 50% of the animals die. That's the way in which we express toxicity. Water is LD50%. Virtually anything can be toxic. However, it's almost impossible to get enough of most compounds into an animal to kill it, unless the researchers force feed it.
These are some things that are toxic but you could never consume enough of them to kill you.
Everything has a toxicity. Whether it reaches LD50% is a different story. To say that soybeans are toxic is technically correct. But, when you consider how much you'd have to consume, with the fact your body wouldn't allow it to happen, makes calling something toxic meaningless.
Injecting it means placing it into their bloodstream. Seems to me that might kill them. No way you can determine LD50's by injection. If you mean they are fed by a stomach tube (force fed) then the research is not realistic.
Heck, if I pump a rat full of sugar he's going to get fat too. Obese animals, like humans, have all sorts of problems with insulin production. To force feed animals anything, in quantities that no human would or could consume, and then blame that compound for the resulting obesity and insulin production problems, is ridiculous. Glutamic acid is metabolized by the body just like protein. It has no more calories than protein.
Also, glutamic acid can be in foods and labeled as yeast protein, among others.
Proteins are made up of up to 22 amino acids. The individual amino acids are linked together in a sequence. This sequence determines the property of the protein. Virtually all proteins (collagen is excluded IIRC) include some glutamic acid. Hydrolize any yeast protein and you'll get some glutamic acid.
Your comments make it sound like you think this is all a conspiracy to hide the inclusion of evil glutamate in our food supply from the public. That's just nonsense. Yeast protein is just that: Yeast Protein. There is no more reason to inform the public that it includes glutamic acid than there is for placing glutamic acid labels on fresh chicken, beef, fish or vegetables.
Hydrolized Vegetable Protein (HVP) is common in many foods and is just vegetable protein broken down into individual amino acids. It's a great flavor enhancer used by the food industry but, because it utilizes vegetables, it will contain a significant amount of glutamate.
...long term studies on the proteins and ingredients in infant formula. There was concern of what long term impact it would have on the brain.
I can understand why researchers might be concerned about this because the blood brain barrier is not fully developed in infants. Someone was probably concerned about what ingredients could overwhelm this barrier. But, remember, glutamate is found in virtually every protein. So, if a baby consumes colostrum or milk from its mother it's consuming glutamic acid. Can't get away from it. Just because someone chooses to study something doesn't mean there is a problem. Babies have been drinking milk, which contains glutamtic acid, forever.
a spimple search of the internet will turn up a wealth of information from credible sources
I am continuously amazed by what passed for scientific research on the internet. I'm even more amazed by what people choose to believe. Relying on Google as a substitute for scientific knowledge and sound methodology could be very dangerous. There are a lot of people out there, without proper training in biochemistry and physiology, making wild claims and embracing junk science to prove those claims. I think they really do believe the bunk they purvey. Unfortunately, the internet has given them an effective means for perpetuating their nonsense.
No. The metabolism of fructose in and of itself leeches the minerals. Lactic acid production is a artifact.
... I was taken by the fact that the researchers fed the rats purified diets which is not the real world. Of course you'd need to know the levels of fructose and glucose that they were fed. If they were fed high concentrations of fructose this would result in high concentrations in the blood that the liver couldn't handle. ...
So feeding humans with a 80/20 mix of fructose/glucose is not a "high concentration"?
... but right off the bat, I'd say that using fructose for 20% of energy is an immediate issue.
Don't look at the cans in your pantry ...
... As for insulin resistance and dyslipidemia....I don't know what to think of this. I've seen this stuff posted on FR before but just don't believe that this is in any way valid.
I posted links to papers from the New England Journal of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Discussion of beliefs are well covered on the crevo threads.
...
The major carb in the American diet is starch. Do you really think that we consume more HFCS than rice, pasta and potatoes?
On a per calorie basis ... Yes.
No, I'm not.
I'm pointing out that that Asian soybean is different than the African soybean.
Your linked research article says that consuming fructose can cause the kidney's to excrete phosphorous and calcium resulting in low blood calcium and phosphorous. This study has a lot of problems. The first is that they use fructose for 20% of energy and completely eliminate starch from their subjects diets. There was no glucose being fed to these people. This is too much of an imbalance. What they did totally abrogates a every interpretation of what constitutes a normal diet and makes the entire study meaningless. In the summary, they discuss the fact that they fed these folks fructose as their total source for carbs. For crying out loud, that's just loony! They showed what they wanted to show. Period.
Please don't tell me you believe that leeching (however you define it) happens in the liver.
Lactic acid production is a artifact.
You must be joking. Lactic acid is not an artifact. It's an end product of the metabolism of glucose in active muscles. It doesn't build up, except in extreme physical circumstances, because the blood removes it to the liver where it is metabolized, very quickly, into CO2 and water.
So feeding humans with a 80/20 mix of fructose/glucose is not a "high concentration"?
HFCS is used as a replacement for sucrose. That's all. Where there was once sugar, there is now HFCS. Food packers are not randomly placing HFCS into food to increase the amount of carbs people consume. Because HFCS is much sweeter than sugar, manufacturers can use substantially less of it in their product to achieve the desired effect. They use less HFCS, by volume, than they did with sugar. Sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. When they replace sugar with HFCS (80%-20%) you are not getting anything close to the amount of fructose you envision because the amount of HFCS used is much less than the amount of sugar that was used previously.
posted links to papers from the New England Journal of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health
Funny. These two organizations supported the removal of Saccharine from our food supply based on all the faulty science I mentioned earlier. The claim that fructose causes fat formation more readily than glucose is another red herring. Glucose and fructose are both broken down into two carbon units. In active bodies, most of these units go to making energy. Lethargic bodies may not use these 2 carbon units fast enough. In that case the body pushes those units back up the fat metabolism pathway into depot fat. Whether fructose does this faster than glucose is debatable. What isn't debatable though is the fact that if you are active or don't consume too many calories, this issue will never impact you. The fact that people are fat has nothing to do with whether they consume too much fructose. It has to do with consuming too many calories overall or relying on carbohydrates for too much of their total daily caloric intake.
If you overwhelm the body with carbohydrates, you can create all sorts of problems. It's not the fault of the food companies or the ingredients they use. It's the fact that people today are not conscious of what they consume and don't have even the most basic understanding of nutrition. They'd rather blame others or the ingredients themselves. Ignorance is alive and well in the food business and this lack of knowledge, fostered by the food police and those who make money from lawsuits, are destroying what were once great products.
[The major carb in the American diet is starch. Do you really think that we consume more HFCS than rice, pasta and potatoes?]
On a per calorie basis ... Yes.
That is such a ridiculous statement it doesn't warrant a response.
personally, I'm convinced it is due to the lack of lead based paint to gnaw on during their crawl-around years.
Daily food consumption at different locations: All individuals ages 2 and older
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