Milk Doesn't Cause Mucus

The claim that milk creates mucus or phlegm that may or may not be the result of a milk allergy has been around for years, so I suppose that it's not surprising that we'll need years to dispel it. I keep trying. I posted Udder Confusion in 2006 and Milk: No Mucus, No Asthma in 2007 so it's time to attack the myth yet again.

I'm getting help from Dr Raymond Mullins, an allergy specialist interviewed by Genelle Weule for ABC.net.au.

[W]hile many people swear milk produces mucus, the effect can't be explained by science, says allergy specialist Dr Ray Mullins.

A 2005 review of studies concluded that there was no link between milk consumption and mucus production or asthma. In one study, participants infected with the common cold virus reported symptoms of increased in mucus production after drinking milk, but when their mucus production was actually measured there was no statistical difference. In another study, there was no difference in the sensation experienced between drinking soy milk and cow's milk.

This doesn't mean people don't experience the sensation, says Mullins, but rather that there is no actual increase in mucus production.

He puts the sensation down to the texture and viscosity of milk, and notes that most people do not report similar effects with other dairy products such as cheese.

If you believe that milk will cause mucus, then any feelings of mucus you get from milk will simply reinforce that belief whether or not any true increase is present.

There's no scientific connection, though, nothing that can be found in theory or isolated in tests. If you can drink milk, then know the facts about it and make your own decisions based on those facts, not unfounded beliefs.

Nutrition for Vegetarian Children

Emily Sohn in the Los Angeles Times gave a number of good tips for ensuring that children who want to be vegetarians continue to get a full complement of the vitamins, minerals, and esential dietary components.

Some of the major points:

Protein needs range from 13 grams for toddlers to 34 grams for middle-school students and about 50 grams for teenagers. However, most Americans get too much protein, including vegetarians.

Dairy products and eggs are complete proteins that, like meat, contain all essential amino acids. These foods also provide calcium and vitamin D, essential for healthy muscles and bone development, especially during growth spurts and adolescence. One large egg contains 5 grams of protein, a cup of milk has 8 grams, and a cup of yogurt has 11 grams.

To get complete proteins from plant-based sources, you need to combine foods such as beans, rice, corn, nuts and tofu, but dietitians no longer believe that you need to eat those foods at the same meal. Eating a variety of foods throughout the day works just as well.

Vitamin B-12 is one of the nutrients that vegetarians most commonly miss. Essential for making DNA and maintaining healthy nerve and red blood cells, it is plentiful in seafood and beef and is found in lesser amounts in milk and yogurt. Vegans can get it from fortified cereals or supplements. Doctors often recommend B-12 supplements for breast-feeding mothers who are vegan.

Iron, which is abundant in meat, is present in a harder-to-absorb form in beans, tofu, spinach and raisins. Absorption is enhanced by consuming a source of vitamin C at the same time as a vegetarian source of iron, says Ruth Frenchman, a registered dietitian in Burbank and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Assn. (Pair a cup of orange juice with a peanut butter sandwich, for example.) ...

Calcium and vitamin D are found in leafy greens and fortified soy milk or juice. Make sure to look at the labels on dairy-free versions of milk and yogurt and on organic cereals because they're not always fortified with added nutrients.

Fat: A baby's brain needs enough fat to develop properly. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends full-fat versions of milk, yogurt and other foods until age 2.

Rolling Your Own - Probiotics

The annual international genetically engineered machines competition, the iGEM, takes place at MIT each November. Students combine small fragments of DNA and swap them into bacteria, yeasts, or other one-celled organisms to produce new variants that can do specialized tasks. They get better at this each year, as the earlier fragments, known simply as "parts," get added to a library of functions. Much the same way as programming languages accrete blocks of code that can be dropped into place so that coders don't need to solve the same problems over and over again, but can simply and easily rely on the earlier ingenuity of others.

In previous years, students have used these bacteria for such tasks as making "probiotic bacteria, like that found in yogurt, designed to fight cavities, produce vitamins, and treat lactose intolerance" according to MIT's Technology Review magazine.

For all the hype and fear about frankenfoods, genetically tailored beasties are far more likely to do us a world of good than harm. This can't guarantee that every bacteria will be perfectly functional any more than every bit of computer code is perfect. How many people would ask that all computer programs be banned or destroyed because of that tiny risk? Genetically engineered bacteria will no more plague the world than computers will band together to get rid of us. This will remain true no matter how many movies Hollywood makes.

The BRAT Diet Made Liquid

The BRAT Diet is named after its ingredients, Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast, four foods that are so mild for most peoples' digestive tracts that they can be used to soothe troubled tummies.

Toast is a problem for those with celiac disease, of course, and many breads also include milk.

And some children have such severe problems that getting them to eat solid foods is itself an issue.

That was the problem with the children of Greg and Ilsa Toepfer. So, in a familiar tale, the couple worked to find a solution for their children. Which they are now marketing nationally.

The story by Mike Hodgson of The Adobe Press talked about the long process they went through.

Greg said. “We got the basic formula, and it tasted OK. Then we worked very closely with their scientists and designers and came out with something we really, really liked.”

The process took a year.

“It took a long time, but it’s a good thing it did because we found all these other things we could put in it that really help calm the digestive tract,” Greg said.

Some of those things include electrolytes to aid absorption, vitamins, calcium and other minerals, but to make the product gluten- and lactose-free, they removed toast from the formula.

“The ‘T’ now stands for ‘tummy-soothing,’” Greg said, noting the drink comes in four flavors — chocolate honey, vanilla, cinnamon toast and original. ...

In September, Organic B.R.A.T. was among the products showcased by some 3,500 vendors at Natural Products Expo East in Boston, where it won the New Products Showcase Award for the Most Innovative Product.

For more information visit their website at www.bratdiet.org.

A Reminder This Is Planet Lactose

Lactose intolerance (LI) is at its lowest in northern European countries and in populations descended from people emigrating from there. Low is not the same as zero, and a raft of articles from other countries and in various languages serve to remind everyone that the majority of humans are genetically LI and therefore we indeed live on Planet Lactose.

The following links are to the originals, but are followed by excerpts courtesy of Google Translate.

Austria

1. Lactose
Symptoms of intolerance to lactose (milk sugar =: diarrhea, bloating, abdominal cramps. Are affected up to 30 percent of the European population (compared with only three to five percent suffering) with clinically proven food allergies. Lactose is found not only in cow's milk products like cheese, but is also often accompanied by industrially produced food. In trade, there's labeled lactose-free milk and dairy products. The intolerance is caused by a deficiency of the enzyme lactase in the small intestine. With a breath test can determine this incompatibility.

Germany

To reflect the increasing number of patients with food allergies and intolerances into account, there is since 2004 a labeling regulations for packaged foods. Lactose was incorporated into a product, it must be marked on the packaging. Beware of medications: Again, may contain lactose. However, this is usually only relevant if a lactose-free diet is really necessary.

Belgium

5) Almond Milk
Advantages: it contains no saturated fat or lactose and has the least calories of all milk alternatives. It is also suitable for vegans.

France

Homemade or purchased commercially, yogurt belongs to the category of healthy foods nutritionally. It is rich in calcium (150 mg of calcium per 125g pot). It also reveals much more digestible than milk as lactose, sometimes poorly digested, is converted by enzymes. Finally, yogurt promotes good bowel. His enablers contributing in part to balance the intestinal flora, even in cases of diarrhea.

Why Does Milk Bother Me?

The National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC) is a service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health. Which almost makes for a full blog post all by itself.

They have pages on many, many diseases, illnesses, and conditions, including a good page on lactose intolerance.

If you have kids suffering from LI and wonder how exactly to explain it to them, though, they have a better page aimed especially at children. Why Does Milk Bother Me? explains it all in simple language, and has cartoons to ease the eye down the page.


It's not as full an explanation as the adult one, of course, but it should help get the basics across to a youngster.

Two Sides of the Raw Milk Argument

AlterNet, as the name implies, purports to give alternative views to conventional opinions, taking articles from a variety of sources in addition to original content. Alternative now apparently means looking at both sides of an issue rather than raw advocacy if The Battle Over Raw Milk: Let's Ditch the Hysterics and Give People a Choice is any evidence. Richardson is founder of the blog La Vida Locavore, a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board, and author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It...

Although, as the title indicates, Richardson eventually finishes the article by saying that people should have the choice to drink raw milk if they want to, she does list some of the objections to raw milk. She balances that with the usual shaky anecdotal evidence for raw milk. And even reported that in "a survey of milk drinkers in the state of Michigan, over 80 percent of those advised by a health care professional that they were lactose intolerant were able to consume raw milk without problem." She doesn't seem to understand that the "survey" was a bogus one put forth by the leading raw milk advocacy organization, the Weston A. Price Foundation. The survey was only of raw milk consumers who had contracts with farmers producing raw milk, not the most impartial of populations.

Medical studies on the one side, anecdotal testimony on the other, but Richardson still comes down on the side of choice, for the straightforward reason that people should be allowed to take risks. Many states already allow people to take risks by making raw milk legal, while also trying to minimize the risk.

Which is fine, as long as everybody does understand the actual risks. As Richardson points out we eat many risky foods that no agency protects us from.

So everybody's happy, right?

Not in the least. The truly frightening part doesn't appear in the article but in the comments. (Note: many of the comments rightfully complain about a subhead that has now been removed.) Nobody there is thanking Richardson for presenting both sides of the argument. Almost universally the commenters either present their anecdotes about the wonderfulness of raw milk or excoriate her for having the audacity to present both sides. That's unfortunate.

More facts, fewer anecdotes. That's an alternative point of view I'd like to see spread across the Internet.

Many "Milks" Comparison

What even larger than galore? I ask because a mere couple of weeks ago, I posted "Milks" Galore: Soy, Rice, Almond, and Hemp, about a Los Angeles Times comparison of different milk alternatives, along with cow's milk itself.

That apparently set off a trans-Atlantic one-upsmanship contest. The UK Daily Mail has a comparison of, deep breath now, whole cow's milk, 1% fat cow's milk, raw milk, goat's milk, sheep's milk, buffalo milk, and soy, almond, oat, and rice "milks."

And after the idiocy shown in the post I made about the firm who claimed that goat's milk had smaller lactose molecules, a chemical and physical impossibility, this article correctly points out that it is the "fat globules" in goat's milk that are smaller. Obviously, globules can be of various sizes. Molecules of lactose can't. You can tell the quacks instantly by their scientific illiteracy.

Unfortunately, the article goes on to give this statement:

This helps to avoid symptoms that can occur with cow's milk intolerance such as bloating and discomfort.

You can easily find claims by goat milk enthusiasts that the smaller fat globules make goat milk more digestible and that somehow helps people with lactose intolerance. What I can't find is a single claim that has any references to actual medical or scientific evidence for this. I also can't find any such articles in the medical literature.

Even the most honest admit that they don't know what this should be so, although that doesn't keep them from making the claim anyway.

"Raise a Glass of Nature's Goodness."

Goat’s milk contains less lactose than cow’s milk and therefore is easier to digest for those suffering from lactose intolerance. Now the interesting aspect to consider is that goat’s milk isn’t much lower than cow’s milk (contains about 10% less than cow’s milk) and yet, countless lactose intolerant patients are able to thrive on goat’s milk. Although the answer for this is unclear, it has been hypothesized that since goat’s milk is digested and absorbed in a superior manner, there is no “leftover” lactose that remains undigested which causes the painful and uncomfortable effects of lactose intolerance.

The Daily Mail article also hits a bump when it comes to the part on sheep's milk.

Like goat's milk, it has small fat globules that are easily digested by the body. ... Unsuitable for the lactose intolerant and babies.

But if it's the small fat globules that make goat's milk more easily digested, then...

I've learned never to expect consistency in claims by proponents of anything. Milk is just a particular bad example.

On the plus side, the information on the milk alternatives doesn't have these obvious faults.

Alicia Silverstone's Kind Diet

Face it, a vegan cookbook by the "Sexiest Vegetarian Alive" is going to get a lot of attention. When the author is a photogenic famous actress, the mediasphere will be burning up with fawning praise.

So I can't tell you how good Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet might be. She's been a vegan for most of her adult life, which does mean she's not riding a fad.

Product Description

In The Kind Diet, actress, activist, and committed conservationist Alicia Silverstone shares the insights that encouraged her to swear off meat and dairy forever, and outlines the spectacular benefits of adopting a plant-based diet, from effortless weight loss to clear skin, off-the-chart energy, and smooth digestion. She explains how meat, fish, milk, and cheese—the very foods we’ve been taught to regard as the cornerstone of good nutrition—are actually the culprits behind escalating rates of disease and the cause of dire, potentially permanent damage to our ecology.

Yet going meat- and dairy-free doesn’t mean suffering deprivation; to the contrary, The Kind Diet introduces irresistibly delicious food that satisfies on every level—it even includes amazing desserts to keep the most stubborn sweet tooth happy. Alicia also addresses the nutritional concerns faced by many who are new to a plant-based diet, and shows how to cover every nutritional base, from protein to calcium and beyond.

Alicia knows that changing life-long dietary habits is a process, and that each person progresses at a different pace. For that reason, The Kind Diet encompasses 3 separate levels, from Flirting to Superhero. Flirts learn to dip a toe into the vegan pool, reducing their meat-eating and swapping out a few key foods for plant-based substitutes to see quickly how even small changes can reap big results. Vegans get to experience the life-altering effects of forgoing animal-products entirely, while still enjoying many convenience foods and meat substitutes in addition to the wonderful grains, vegetables and fruits that form the core of that diet. True enlightenment comes with the Superhero program, based on the principles of macrobiotics and built on a foundation of whole grains, vegetables, and other yummy foods that Alicia describes in detail.

Whether your goal is to drop a few pounds, boost your energy and metabolism, or simply save the world, Alicia provides the encouragement, the information, and the tools you need to make the transition to a plant-based diet deliciously empowering.

Rodale Press hardcover
320 pages
List price: $29.99

You can also go to her Kind Life blog for recipes and more.

SoYummi Dairy-Free, Gluten-Free Whipped Mousse

SoYummi is primarily known as a maker of soy equivalents of meat products. (Notice the spelling: SOYummi.) But Kate Lawson of The Detroit News pointed out a new line of theirs.

You'd never know that this naturally delicious line of organic treats is lactose/dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan and sweetened naturally with beet syrup.

Oh, it also contains prebiotics, has no trans fats, is low in sodium, is a source of fiber and is nut-free.

Now people with celiac disease and those who are lactose-intolerant or suffer from allergies can enjoy a lightly whipped mousse as a snack or dessert, thanks to SoYummi.

They're available in a variety of flavors, but my favorite is the lime-flavored whipped pudding. It's delicate and delicious.

So I went to SoYummi.com to check out their products page. I found no whipped mousse there. No dairy-free snacks of any kind, in fact.

Usually this is the point at which I start complaining about company websites. But this time the total absence of the product has a different and probably weirder explanation.

You have to go to their Canadian website, SoYummi.ca to find their whipped mousse. And like any good Canadian website, there's no mention of their sales in the U.S.

You're better off being a Ken Jennings than a Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery. Any good trivia maven or fifth grader who studies geography knows that Windsor, ON and Detroit, MI are twin cities, staring at each other across the Detroit River. And Windsor is south of Detroit. (Just like Reno, NV is west of Los Angeles in triviaworld. You got to know these things.) So Detroit probably gets a lot of Canadian goods before the rest of us.

It's in Whole Foods there so it may become available in the rest of America. If not, hey, Canada's a gorgeous place.

Once Again, Animal Milks and Lactose Intolerance Don't Mix

Appropriate and timely for Halloween: the Nonsense That Just Won't Die!

Remember when I beat my head again the wall because of the lady who claimed that goat milk had smaller lactose molecules?

I found another one.

Yayi International is a leading manufacturer and distributor of goat milk powder products in China. While the Company's main focus is premium infant formula goat milk products, its product portfolio currently includes goat milk powders, goat milk formula tablets, and goat foremilk powder. ...

Compared with cow milk, the molecules of lactose in goat milk are smaller, making the milk more easily absorbed by individuals who are sensitive to milk products.

They vant your money. Bevare!

And they're not alone. Camel milk has equally magical properties!

If Dr. Millie Hinkle has her way, camel milk will someday be as easy to find in North Carolina as barbecue.

For 3,000 years, camel milk has been revered for its medicinal properties in the Middle East and Hinkle, a physician in Raleigh, hopes to bring it to the U.S. and make it legal to sell.

"We know that folks who are diabetic or lactose intolerant have absolutely no allergy to camel milk, so it's a great thing for those people as well," she said.

Lactose intolerance doesn't involve an allergy. Neither does diabetes. Camel milk affects those with either in exactly the same way as cow's milk.

This particular nonsense is too dangerous to make jokes about. It's such extreme nonsense, though, that I have to wonder if the reporter is quoting Dr. Hinkle correctly. Unfortunately, it's within the realm of possibility. Dr. Hinkle is an ND, of Naturopathic Doctor, which North Carolina does not regulate or allow to prescribe medications, according to Wikipedia. Her site does include citations of medical journal articles about the possible efficacy of camel milk for diabetics, but also includes the false "fact" that "Camel milk can be easily digested by lactose-intolerant individuals."

No. It can't. Camel milk has almost exactly the lactose content of cow's milk. The protein segments are slightly different from those in cow's milk so that the immune systems of people with milk allergies may not get triggered by camel milk.

So where is the backing for that weird fact?

There's a link on that page of Dr. Hinkle's website that leads to Camel Milk for Food Allergies in Children by Yosef Shabo et al., Israeli Medical Association Journal, vol. 7, December 2005, pp. 796-798.

It does contain the following line:

Lactose is present in concentrations of 4.8%, but this milk sugar is easily metabolized by persons suffering from lactose intolerance [5].

But if you go to footnote 5, you find this:

5. Hanna J. Over the hump. In: Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. TV series (USA) 2001 season; #2190. www.animaladventures.com.

I kid you not. The justification for human lactose intolerants "easily metabolizing" camel's milk in an article in a medical journal comes from a syndicated television show for kids.

We're beyond surreal here. I can't compete with a guy who brings cute cuddly animals on television for a living. Why would anyone listen to me while they're watching Jack Hanna hold a bottle to the mouth of a baby camel? Awww. But he's not right about this.

And nobody in a medical journal should be citing his television show.

Lactose-Free Milk and Lots of It

I mention frequently that I learned I was lactose intolerant back in 1978, long before dairy products made without lactose could be found in any supermarket. That's not to impress you with my age or launch into incoherent screeds about how easy you kids have it today. It's more like sheer astonishment at the changes.

Like this week's shopping trip to a local supermarket. The "dairy" case long ago stopped being merely dairy. Or a case. Today it's a bank of vertical refrigerators, six shelves high. Juices of every possible fruit take up three banks at one end, eggs are at the other. In between are milks. Lots of milk, this being a gigantic store, the flagship of the Wegmans chain and the busiest supermarket I know.

And one whole case, top to bottom, was lactose-free milk. Six full shelves of it. No, seven. The next case over had an additional shelf full. Four separate brands of lactose-free milk were represented there, Lactaid, Real Goodness, Hood, and the Wegmans store brand.

When people ask me why they can't find more varieties of lactose-free dairy items I have to tell them that they simply don't sell. Nothing does. Except lactose-free milk. And that seems to be doing fine. Four brands! I remember the first appearance of a lactose-free milk in a supermarket and the first time I saw two brands competing. They might have taken up a shelf between them. They have been times since when I've seriously wondered if the whole market was going to collapse for lack of buyers.

No longer. Apparently we're in good shape for the foreseeable future.

Now you need to start clamoring for lactose-free ice cream. And then start buying it. Wouldn't it be nice to have even one whole shelf in the frozen section for ourselves?

Lactose-Free Recipes

Gourmet magazine recently folded operations with a thud so loud that it made national headlines. What happens to purveyors of the world's fanciest dishes? I guess they start roaming aimlessly across America like the Joads, looking for handouts of truffled nitrogen foam in exchange for chopping wood and sharing a few of their more plebeian recipes with the plainfolk.

How to to explain the appearance of the magazine's Ex-Executive Editor "Doc" Willoughby on the CBS Early Show with, of all things, lactose-free recipes?

The Forbes' 400 loss is our gain. The Early Show website shares five recipes with us, Tuscon Yellow Pepper Soup, Grilled Cornish Hens With Coconut Curry Sauce, Black Rice Pudding, Chocolate Sorbet, and Hazelnut Biscotti, a complete meal from soup to nuts, if a bit heavy on dessert..

This is less generous than one would think, since sorbet and biscotti are virtually always lactose-free so you don't need "Doc" to make 'em so. Still. You try making truffled nitrogen foam over a wood stove.

Halloween Allergy Anxiety

Which would be a bigger surprise to you? That 80% of mothers with allergic children "say Halloween causes a great deal of anxiety"? Or that 20% of mothers don't?

The survey, conducted by the MomCentral.com website, also found that 20% of moms get so hyper about the holiday that they are thinking about having their children give up trick-or-treating entirely.

Why? Probably because they are uncertain about how much they know and about what to do. As the survey found:

•61 percent of children have been prescribed an epinephrine auto-injector; however, only 23 percent of them carry it with them at all times.

•One in five moms is unsure how they feel about their school's emergency plans in place to deal with a severe allergic reaction.

•While many moms feel they have good information on food allergies, they also expressed a clear desire for more: 78 percent of survey respondents say they would benefit from additional information on food allergies and how best to prepare for and treat allergy-related medical emergencies.

I've mentioned before that children and teenagers tend not to carry their auto-injectors with them. This is one of those parenting challenges that no outsider can solve. Getting your kids to carry reminders that they are different is a constant battle.

By now you may be guessing that I'm quoting from a press release that is related to injectors. You are quite correct. This one is by the maker of EpiPens.

Unlike all too many press releases, fortunately, they tone down the hype and focus on helpful advice.

Tips for an Allergy-friendly Halloween

For parents of children with food allergies, monitoring Halloween candy is just one way to avoid an accidental allergic reaction. Stacy DeBroff from Mom Central offers additional tips for enjoying an allergy-free holiday:

•Find Allergy-Free Activities: With a little research, you can find many festive activities right in your own backyard. Take the family pumpkin picking, on a hayride or for a scavenger hunt.

•Bring the Fun to Your Child: Consider hosting your own costume party for your child's friends. Invite everyone over for pumpkin carving, bobbing for apples, spooky stories, a scavenger hunt and other Halloween-themed games. This way, your child can still have fun and you can control all the goodies that are being passed out.

For those children who do go trick-or-treating, the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI) offers these helpful tips:

•Never Go Alone: Always accompany younger children trick-or-treating and have older children go out with friends.

•Inform Others: Make sure all the adults and friends in your group know about your child's food allergies and what to do in an emergency.

•Pack Medication: While out for Halloween, make sure you or your child is carrying an epinephrine auto-injector. Make sure your child's friends or other adults know how to administer this medication.

•Provide Safe Snacks: Provide your close neighbors and even your child's teacher at school with safe treats or even non-food items like stickers that can be given to your child.

•Check the Goodies: Carefully read labels or check the candy company's Web site to make sure the product doesn't contain something that can cause an allergic reaction. It's important to remember that the ingredients of 'fun size' candy bars may differ from the regular-size bars.

•When in Doubt, Throw It Out: If you can't find information on a treat's ingredients or are simply not sure if it's safe, then throw the candy away or stick it in a treat jar that is out of the reach of the child.

•Avoid Snacking: Eating dinner before trick-or-treating might curb your child's urge to sneak goodies from the bag.

Food Allergy Tests You Must Avoid

The Food Allergy Initiative has a page on Unproven Diagnostic Tests that includes some familiar targets of mine, such as Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique (NAET) and IgG Testing.

These tests should be avoided at all costs. Getting a false diagnosis, whether positive or negative, is bad enough. However, some of these tests involve eating the allergen itself and that can precipitate a reaction. As the page says, in bold face type:

None of these tests is recommended for the diagnosis of food allergies, and those that involve the ingestion or injection of allergens may increase the risk of a reaction.

The other tests they warn you about are:

Body Chemical Analysis
This type of test analyzes a sample of your hair, body fluids, or tissue to diagnose a mineral deficiency or confirm the presence of toxic substances. Either of these supposedly leads to food allergies or other diseases. Again, there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.

Cytotoxic Testing
In this test, the white blood cells are extracted from a sample of your blood. Then, samples of the white blood cells are applied to slides that contain dried extracts of suspect foods. A technician views the slides under a microscope and analyzes them for changes that supposedly indicate whether you are allergic to any of those foods. AAAAI has concluded that there is no scientific basis for this test.

ELISA/ACT
A sample of your blood is drawn and cultures of the white blood cells are analyzed for their reactions to up to 300 food allergens or other substances. Studies have shown that this test is not effective in diagnosing food or other allergies. Other questionable diagnostic methods that involve white blood cell analysis are the ALCAT and NuTron tests.

Electrodermal Diagnosis
This test uses a galvanometer (an instrument that detects and measures electric currents) to gauge your body’s resistance when you come in contact with a suspect food. Increased resistance to the electric current is supposed to indicate that you are allergic to the food being tested.

Provocation and Neutralization
These tests involve injecting a solution containing a suspect food under your skin or administering it sublingually (as drops under your tongue). Increasing amounts are given in an effort to provoke a reaction. When symptoms appear, you are given increasingly weaker doses of the solution until your symptoms disappear. The last and weakest dose, which supposedly eliminates your symptoms, is called the “neutralizing dose.” This solution may then be provided as a treatment for your food allergy. Provocation tests are not only ineffective, but increase the risk of an allergic reaction. There is no scientific proof that neutralization can prevent or control a reaction.

Pulse Testing
This test is based on the notion that, if you are allergic to a particular food, your pulse (the rate of your heartbeat) will go up after you eat that food. There is no scientific evidence to support this claim.

What's really scary is that each time I've written about NAET, about as pure quackery as exists in fake medicine today, somebody always comments approvingly.

If you have questions about these or other possibly questionable allergy tests, contact the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI).

How to Make Almond Milk

The Instructables website has a multi-page tutorial on making almond milk.

The comments also have a healthy debate over whether almond skins are healthy. Adding them to your milk is apparently optional.

Lactose Intolerance Rate Depends on Definition

How many people in the U.S. are lactose intolerant (LI)? The number that has been given for the past generation has been about 30 - 50,000,000. That the estimate hasn't changed in 30 or more years should give you an instant clue that we're not talking about real firm counts. It's at best a guess, although you can extrapolate it from census information, as I did in my book Milk Is Not for Every Body: Living with Lactose Intolerance.

The last estimate I've seen for the U.S. population is 307,000,000. That would make about 10 - 16% of the population LI.

If you want a better percentage, Nutrition Today published Prevalence of Self-reported Lactose Intolerance in a Multiethnic Sample of Adults by Theresa A. Nicklas et al., September/October 2009 - Volume 44 - Issue 5 - pp 222-227 doi: 10.1097/NT.0b013e3181b9caa6.

Abstract
According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, between 30 and 50 million Americans have the potential for lactose-intolerance symptoms. However, lactose-intolerance prevalence rates in practical life settings may be lower than originally suggested. The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of self-reported lactose intolerance among a national sample of European American (EA), African American (AA), and Hispanic American (HA) adults.

A nationally representative sample of randomly generated telephone numbers was purchased from a commercial sample provider. A nationally representative sample of randomly selected telephone numbers were called from the Survey Research Unit's Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing facility at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Interviews were completed by a total of 1,084 respondents between the ages of 19 and 70 years with 486 EAs, 355 AAs, and 243 HAs. The response rate was 24.2%, and the cooperation rate was 34.2%.

The age-adjusted lactose-intolerance prevalence estimates were 7.72%, 19.50%, and 10.05% for EAs, AAs, and HAs, respectively. For all respondents in the sample, the crude and age-adjusted self-reported lactose-intolerance prevalence rates were 13.38% and 12.04%, respectively.

These results indicate that the prevalence of perceived lactose intolerance is significantly lower than what has been previously estimated. Health professionals need to be aware of the misrepresentation of currently estimated lactose-intolerance rates and should continue to encourage individuals with lactose intolerance to consume dairy foods first to help meet key nutrient recommendations with proper guidance and education.

Several items from this abstract need comment.

The term lactose intolerance has three overlapping but separate definitions. The first is that you get the standard symptoms - gas, bloating, flatulence, diarrhea - after eating or drinking dairy. The second is reacting positively to a lactose intolerance test. The third is having the gene that stops the production of lactase at some time in your life.

That third definition is the one that is normally used to estimate how many Americans are LI. It has to be. There has never been before this a good large-scale study of the issue. And only a small percentage of Americans have ever had a formal lactose tolerance test, certainly nothing like the tens of millions.

Although the full paper is not online so I haven't yet been able to read it, I have to assume that most respondents considered themselves LI because they get - or believe they get - symptoms from dairy products. That's almost certainly a different and much smaller population than those whose ethnic heritage makes them likely to stop producing lactase.

And that's probably why the numbers are being presented as "significantly lower." Here the abstract alone is misleading. A 13% average is obviously not lower than an estimate of 10 - 16%.

However, both Hispanics and African-Americans have always been considered to be groups with very high likelihoods of carrying the LI gene. Estimates range more in the 50 - 80% vicinity than the 10 - 20% actually found.

Genetically that's still likely true. Many earlier studies have already shown the percentage of people who actively get symptoms from dairy is much lower than the genetics would indicate. Those who have little or no dairy in their normal diets or who generally eat low-lactose products like cheese or butter are less likely to have symptoms. We simply don't know what the gap is between definition 1 and definition 3.

Unless we do now. Or do we? If I'm reading that abstract correctly it took over 13,000 phone calls to get the 1084 people to complete the survey. (One in 4 responded and only one in 3 of those cooperated. So you need 12 times as many calls to get that number of completions.) Without a better view of the demographics of the final sample it's hard to know how representative the final group actually was.

An interesting survey. It will need close checking, though, to see if there is less here than meets the eye.

Gluten-Free Asian and European Travel Cards

Translation cards - cards with the words, phrases, and questions you need to know about food sensitivities in other languages - are a handy travel item. I've written about the SelectWisely firm before, in both Food Sensitivities Translation Cards and in Food and Travel Translation Cards.

They're back in the news with a new offering, as the title indicates, Gluten-Free Asian and European Travel Cards.



The inevitable press release tells us more.

The new gluten-free cards have been developed to help people with gluten intolerance improve communication when dining and purchasing meals. All of the cards feature English text describing what foods to avoid along with a picture of a stalk of wheat within the international prohibitory sign (red circle and slash). The European cards also have the English text translated into Spanish, French and Italian. The Asian cards have the English text translated into Chinese, Japanese and Thai. The card is laminated, simple to use and easy to carry, allowing travelers to keep them in their pocket or wallet to use when they are ordering meals at restaurants.
... All cards have English text, a picture and multiple language text allowing restaurant wait staff and kitchen staff who speak different languages to understand.

About the allergy and medical translation cards:
22 types of cards are currently available in the following categories:

Food Allergies
Gluten-free/Celiac Disease
Diabetes Emergency and Pharmacy
Asthma Emergency
Lactose Intolerance
Penicillin Allergy
Smoke-Free
Low-salt Diet
Vegetarian and Vegan
General Emergency
Special Orders

15 common languages are available (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc), plus an additional 40 languages through our Special Order program. The Special Order program provides translations for unique food allergies and medical conditions in less common languages (Catalan, Vietnamese, Khmer, Croatian, Czech, Laotian and more).

Over 130 common food allergens are available including nuts, peanuts, wheat, milk, shellfish, soy, sesame and others. Additional non-food allergens are available for translation including latex, sulfites, MSG, bee stings and penicillin.

Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog

Many, many, many months in the making, I can finally announce the official publication of my new book, whose full title is Planet Lactose: Reports from the worlds of lactose intolerance, milk allergies, and dairy-free alternatives [The Best of The Planet Lactose Blog, volume 1 (2005-2008)].

As the title indicates, I've taken the best posts on the blog and put them into a handy trade paperback book. Blogs are wonderful things for daily updates and specific searches, but nothing beats a book to collect and organize information to make the whole more than the sum of the parts. You can quickly turn to your greatest subject of interest, whether lactose intolerance, veganism, baby feeding issues, or cookbooks, and find a whole chapterful of posts that should capture your attention.



The cost of Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog is a mere $16.00 and postage is free. For that you get a thick slab of a book, 376 pages covering almost 250 topics, and weighing more than a pound.

Buying the book is just as easy. I've set up a website for Planet Lactose Publishing. On the Purchase Books page, you can order Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog. My collection of f&sf short stories, Tyrannosaur Faire, is also available for purchase there. All purchases need to be made through PayPal.If that's not possible for you, or if you live outside the U.S. or Canada, then go to the Contact page for information on sending checks or the equivalent.

As you probably know all too well, there are few books that talk about living dairy-free. Planet Lactose: The Best of the Blog packs more and varied information about all things non-dairy than any other book available today. It's a book I'm proud of. I hope you'll spread the word.

Daiva Vegan "Cheese"

Daiva is a vegan cheese substitute that is making inroads into restaurants and stores. It's big distinction is that instead of soy or rice or the usual bases, Daiva uses cassava and/or arrowroot flours. They claim that this makes it unusually allergen-free.

What is Daiya?
Daiya is a revolutionary new dairy-free vegan cheese that tastes, shreds, melts and stretches like dairy based cheese. Daiya is not made with casein, the protein found in dairy products or soy, common to many other non-dairy cheese alternatives. In fact, Daiya does not contain any common allergens, animal products or cholesterol. Daiya is made with nutritious planted-based ingredients and is:

▪ 33% less fat than dairy-based cheese with equivelant[sic] attributes
▪ Cholesterol free
▪ Trans Fat free
▪ Dairy free
▪ Free of all animal products (Vegan and Parve)
▪ Free of common allergens including:
▪ Soy, Casein, Lactose, Gluten, Egg, Wheat, Barley, Corn, Whey, Rice, and Nuts
▪ Free of Artificial Ingredients
▪ Free of Preservatives
▪ Free of Hormones & Antibiotics
▪ An excellent source of a naturally occurring vegan vitamin B-12 as well as an excellent source of B vitamins in general

The zpizza chain is adding Daiva cheese to its menu to complement its gluten-free crusts.

You can also buy it at selected Whole Foods stores as well as online. Check their store locater page.

Desensitization Injections Cured Boy's Milk Allergy

Back in August I posted about a series of videos made by the Children's Hospital Boston. The videos followed the progress of eleven-year-old Eric Nasuti as he underwent a series of injections to try to desensitize him to the 15 foods he was born allergic to.

The last in the eight-part series has now been posted. Eric tries drinking a full eight-ounce glass of milk. Will he be cured? Will he be rewarded with a pizza party?

Hint. They posted the video. What do you think? I'm writing this before I'm even bothering to watch it.

Cynical as I am about public relations exercises, the fact that these injections worked in this trial is very exciting news. There are bunches of links of the page of the video with more information for parents. We'll just have to see how fast they can go from a small trial to a larger rollout.

"Milks" Galore: Soy, Rice, Almond, and Hemp

Over at the Los Angeles Times, Elena Conis writes an amazing piece comparing cow's milk and goat's milk to a wide array of milk substitutes, soy "milk", rice "milk", almond "milk", and hemp "milk."

It's amazing for two big reasons. One is that no errors pop out at me the way they normally do in articles written by reporters. The second is that it's dated Oct. 19, 2009, today being Oct. 17, 2009. Sunday paper articles often come out early, but Monday articles? Tis truly strange.

Conis also glancingly covers most of the major claims made by the various sides in the issues and looks at the medical studies on them. Most of what she says is that there isn't much good evidence either way for milk or the various milk substitutes being globally harmful or helpful. You can drink them without fears but they're not a cure-all. That's also the right approach to take.

The link goes to the single page version of the article. There is also a separate nutrient breakdown comparison chart accompanying the article.

Dairy-Free Chocolates Are Healthier

Chocolate has sometimes been mentioned as a healthy food. Turns out it's not all chocolates. They have to be... Dairy-Free.

That's the claim made by this Premium Health News Service story by Lisa Tsakos of NaturallySavvy.com. I found it on the website of an Arkansas television station.

Q. Is chocolate actually healthy? I've heard a lot about the antioxidant properties of chocolate.

A: The antioxidants (polyphenols) in chocolate are very powerful -- as long as no dairy has been added. Research shows the health benefits of chocolate (or cacao) are negated with the addition of dairy. Bottom line: Yes, dairy-free chocolate can be healthy (the more antioxidants the better), however, those same nutrients can be found in tea and red grapes. So as much as we'd like to think of chocolate as an "essential" food ... oh, go ahead, eat it anyway.

Is this true? Are there any studies on this?

Who cares? I love dark chocolate! (70-72% cocoa powder content is best.) Do you think I'm going to even try to disprove such a wonderful report? Facts that you want to hear are always true!

Fortunately for my morals and ethics, Lisa Tsakos' contention is backed up by some scientific research.

A story by Daniel J. DeNoon on WebMD in 2003 reported on an Italian study.

Dark chocolate -- but not milk chocolate or dark chocolate eaten with milk -- is a potent antioxidant, report Mauro Serafini, PhD, of Italy's National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research in Rome, and colleagues. Their report appears in the Aug. 28 [2003] issue of Nature. Antioxidants gobble up free radicals, destructive molecules that are implicated in heart disease and other ailments.

"Our findings indicate that milk may interfere with the absorption of antioxidants from chocolate ... and may therefore negate the potential health benefits that can be derived from eating moderate amounts of dark chocolate."

Nature is one of the world's premier science journals. Did I mention that they printed a story of mine on their back page "Futures" section that features one page science fiction hard science stories? It's in the September 24, 2009 issue for those with access to bigger libraries. (Or you can buy it as part of my collection of short stories Tyrannosaur Faire. Its title is "A Kiss Isn't Just a Kiss".) Why didn't I tell you about it sooner? Because I didn't know when the story was going to be published and I only found out about it when they sent me an issue - an issue that didn't arrive until the next week's issue was already out.)

Digression, Sorry.

I have to point out that this study was on a grand total of 12 people and only tested their blood an hour after eating so there's no way of knowing whether any long-term good was done.

ScienceDaily.com reported on a different study from the U.S. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in 2005. The ARS is the chief scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The researchers found natural cocoa powders contained the highest levels of TAC and procyanidins, which were found to be the dominant antioxidant in chocolates. Milk chocolates, which contain the least amount of cocoa solids, had the lowest TAC and procyanidin levels. Baking chocolates contained fewer procyanidins, because they contained more fat (50-60 percent) than natural cocoa. Alkalinization, used to reduce the acidity and raise the pH of cocoa, such as Dutch chocolates, was found to markedly reduce procyanidin content. Researchers concluded that chocolates containing higher amounts of cocoa ingredients have higher procyanidin contents, therefore, higher antioxidant capacities.

Nine major manufacturers provided commercially available chocolate and cocoa samples and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provided its Standard Reference chocolate for analysis. The study was partially funded by a grant from the American Cocoa Research Institute.

Wait. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a "Standard Reference Chocolate"? Why isn't this better known? Why aren't there public tours?

Anyway, other research indicates that the chocolate should be at least 70% cocoa for best results, a nice bittersweet amount. (I find that anything over 80% is too bitter, but I'm extremely sensitive to bitter tastes.) Remember that the rest of the chocolate will be fat, so don't overindulge.

There are zillions of dark chocolate bars on the market. I've tried many and found that they are remarkably different from one another. Unfortunately, the more expensive ones really are better. You can get good results inside a good supermarket if you explore the shelves carefully and sample the brands. If the bar doesn't tell you the cocoa percentage you can assume that it isn't high enough.

Dark chocolate. Daily. Have a piece while checking out my blog. Both are proven to be good for your health.

'Ntolerance Allergy Free Store

'Ntolerance. Not a typo. A pun. It's a store that sells allergy free foods. As usual it was started and is still run today by people who have a personal connection to allergies. Sue and Mark Egbers founded the store in 2004 after discovering that their son Matthew had coeliac disease. It was taken over by Heather Faulkner, herself a coeliac, in 2008.

What I found really cool about the place - and the reason I'm talking about it here when I don't mention the dozens of other local shops that sell allergy-free foods - is the location. Pukekohe. That's in South Auckland. Which is in New Zealand.

I ran across the shop in an article by Virin Gomber on the Auckland Business to Business website. It caught my eye. I used to write similar profiles of local stores and companies for a paper called Business to Business Newsletter. I'd take off during my lunch hour at work, do a 45 minute interview, and write it out at home.

I'd never heard of a store that sold only allergy-free foods back then in the 1980s. I don't think Rochester has such a store today, although it has a couple of gluten-free bakeries. These specialty stores find it difficult to compete against large organic and natural food stores that carry a wider range of products as well as supermarkets that have huge natural food sections of their own.

Even so, most larger American cities, not to mention college towns that are smaller but have a targeted and interested population, have specialty free-from food stores today.

New Zealand does too, but 'Ntolerance is the only store that sells nothing but allergy free products that I can find. (Apologies if I missed any, but I count on your writing in and correcting me.) It's a tough business. In fact, the Egbers, who had started the store in an industrial area - presumably because costs and rents are typically much lower there - were planning to shut the store down. Faulkner moved the store to a site that had better visibility and higher foot traffic. It worked.

Managing the business on her own at the age of 55 - looking after the supplies, sales, customers’ needs, working six days a week and taking care of her own health condition – she has done exceptionally well breaking even just one year into this business. And she has achieved it even while increasing the product range at the shop.

The website also has changed to better suit customers' needs.

The range of products sold at the shop includes gluten free, dairy free, nut free, egg free, soy free and sugar free foods. Besides retail sales, customers can even order online and get the items couriered to them. The products on the website have colour codes underneath them to make identification easier, to denote suitability for different allergies / intolerances.

These specialty businesses aimed at us, our small slice of the market, can survive only if we patronize them rather than their competitors. Faulkner's success seems to be well deserved for her hard work. Yesterday I wrote about the similar Dairy Free Market, a new online site that is wading into the same waters.

Find these stores. Test them out. See how well they meet your needs. Tell them what you'd like and where they need to improve. The better they are, the longer they'll last and the more satisfaction you'll get from them. And that will help all of us.

Introducing Dairy Free Market

Jeff Eder sent me his press release announcing the creation of an online store that sells nothing but dairy-free products, the Dairy Free Market.

An estimated 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant. With them in mind, Free-from Foods, LLC announces the opening of Dairy Free Market at www.dairyfreemarket.com. The online food store exclusively sells food without dairy, including baking ingredients and mixes, cereal, cheese alternatives, non-dairy chocolate, cookies and snack/energy bars.

Many products sold are also free from other common allergens, such as egg, gluten, nut and soy – perfect for anyone with a food allergy, intolerance, or special diet (e.g., celiac, gluten-free/casein-free, kosher and vegan).

"Our site helps take the guesswork out of grocery shopping," said Founder Jeff Eder, who himself is lactose and potato intolerant. "I created Dairy Free Market for people like me, who want to buy foods that meet their dietary needs without the hassle of shopping at multiple stores, or the frustration of settling for the limited choices on local grocery shelves."

The site offers brands such as Cherrybrook Kitchen, Enjoy Life Foods, NuGo and Road's End Organics - popular among adults and children alike.

Dairy Free Market ships everywhere in the U.S. and currently offers free shipping on orders over $100.

Experience a taste of food freedom at www.dairyfreemarket.com.

While all the foods offered are dairy-free, you can also click to bring up those foods which are also egg free, gluten free, nut free, potato free, soy free, sugar free, kid friendly, kosher, organic, or vegan. No wonder Eder's parent company is called Free-from Foods.

As an online company shipping will be crucial. Here are the site's policies.

Shipping
Most orders ship within two business days from the date of purchase. We ship to any location in the United States via all major commercial shipping companies. You will receive a tracking number for your shipment once your order is complete.

For a quote on shipping outside North America, contact us at shipping@dairyfreemarket.com.

Returns
All sales on DairyFreeMarket.com are final – unless items were damaged during shipment or they expired before your purchase date. In those instances, items that are received by DairyFreeMarket.com no later than ten days from the date of purchase are eligible for full refund.

Have questions about your order? Contact us at shipping@dairyfreemarket.com.

**LIMITED TIME OFFER: SPEND $100 OR MORE AND RECEIVE FREE (GROUND) SHIPPING **

You can read an interview with Eder on the Avoiding Milk Blog.

How do you go about selecting products for your store, what standards do you have?
Dairy Free Market selects dairy free foods that fall into a number of different product (cookies, snack bars, baking ingredients, chocolate, etc.) and lifestyle categories (vegan, kosher, organic, gluten-free casein-free, free from other allergens, etc.) and we therefore spend a good deal of time talking to manufacturers to find the latest and greatest dairy free products out there and hope to share as many of them with our customers as soon as possible. However, the primary requirement of all items sold by Dairy Free Market is that they must not contain dairy of any kind (no lactose, no casein, no whey). In some cases, the products we sell may have been made in the same facility or on the same equipment as milk products (a common issue in the dairy free world), however, we try to minimize those cases and if they do exist, we make those instances clear to customers.

Your selection of foods has been steadily expanding. What new products can we expect to see in your store?
In the coming months, Dairy Free Market will be adding many more dairy free baking mixes and ingredients, some newcomers to the dairy free snack bar world, a sugar free line featuring brands such as Aunt Gussie’s and showcasing the gluten-free products of Nana’s Cookie Company. Dairy Free Market will also be venturing into carrying a line of dairy free cheese! Finally, as we approach Halloween, Dairy Free Market will be featuring Enjoy Life Foods Choco Boom dairy free chocolate bars, as well as NuGo Crispy Cat candy bars - perfect for the non-dairy trick-or-treater!

That Eder will be adding more products is good news. What causes most of these ventures to fail is the lack of choice, especially for true dairy alternatives rather than products like cookies or pasta which are relatively easy to find dairy-free.

Other minor problems that might get fixed include the inability to search for products that are free of multiple allergens and a lack of an ingredients listing on some foods. Most shopping sites evolve as customers comment on exactly what they'd like to see, so if you try them out offer any helpful hints.

The Simple Food Movement

Michael Pollen, the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, has a number of rules, or rules of thumb, that he suggests people who want good, healthy food should follow.

One of them suggests suggests "avoiding products with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce."

Those extra ingredients are the ones normally found in processed food, which is pretty much every food that is found in a can, box, or container. The ones that fill up all the aisles in all the supermarkets of the world. Ingredients you can't pronounce may be emulsifiers, or stabilizers, or preservatives. Although sometimes they are vitamins or probiotics or good old fashioned sodium bicarbonate.

Pollen is not one of the crazies who runs around screaming that "chemicals" are in our foods. As sodium bicarbonate proves, everything, even familiar ingredients found in every kitchen, is a chemical and a chemical name doesn't mean something dangerous or scary. Pollen is an enemy of large agribusiness practices and of the fast food lifestyle Americans practice.

He has followers. As Janet Helm reported in the Chicago Tribune, corporations, ever sensitive to trends and fads, are jumping on the "Simple" bandwagon, featuring foods like:

Five, the new line of Haagen-Dazs ice cream that's made with only five ingredients -- including well-known kitchen staples (milk, cream, sugar and eggs). Then, Pillsbury introduced Simply cookies that are based on a similar premise: "Made just like you would make at home, same ingredients, same process."

Many food companies are scrambling to simplify ingredient lists and find naturally sourced alternatives to create what has been dubbed a "clean label." And when they do, they proudly declare "no artificial flavors, colors or preservatives" on the front of the package. That has become one of the most popular claims made by new foods and beverages, according to the market research firm Mintel.

I'm torn on the issue. I don't care about the trendy foods. They won't last. Literally so. Foods without preservatives spoil faster, have to be made in smaller batches, cost more, and can't sit for months on kitchen shelves. That's why companies started putting preservatives into foods in the first place. I absolutely guarantee that they'll be doing so next year after this trend has passed.

The larger trend that includes the "locavore" movement - eating foods grown locally - as well as fresh foods, more fruits and vegetables, and whole grain foods will likely take hold of a segment of the market. There's not much to complain about here. I've been eating locally raised organic meats, for example, and they are far tastier than the normal supermarket varieties, even though they are available at supermarkets as well from farm markets.

How do local farms, small bakeries, and specialty marketeers manage to feed the 300,000,000 people in this country? They don't. They can't. Programs have been started in Detroit and New York to get fresh produce into inner cities, areas in which supermarkets and groceries have smaller and more expensive selections than anything suburbanites will see at their worst stores. These worthy efforts aren't more than a dent in the larger problem. The people most in need have the least opportunity. The Simple movement will be adopted most enthusiastically by the well-to-do. Just what we need. Another large wedge between classes.

Of far more importance to our small community is the simple fact that creating dairy-free and other specialty items for people who avoid some of the commonest "simple" ingredients in our cooking lexicon is almost impossible to do with just a few ingredients. Getting similar taste, texture, and "mouthfeel" requires a set of ingredients to imitate the originals. Those ingredients probably include emulsifiers and thickeners. And because they are made in small batches with the full expectation that they won't fly off the shelves like Oreos or Spam, they need the preservatives to keep them from rotting in the package.

The Simple movement doesn't address our special needs. Adding more free fruit and vegetables to our diets may be sound advice but "well-known kitchen staples" like milk, cream, and eggs aren't found in all our kitchens. Unless we plan to cook and bake every item we eat, we will rely on packaged foods and those packaged foods will not be Simple.

Don't eat just Simple. Eat Smart. Smart is what is right and best for you. Smart always wins.

8 Holiday Allergy Tips

For someone who grew up in the 1950s there's an illicit thrill in digesting the Reader's Digest. No, not that kind of digesting. Well, the same root word. Making smaller. Like lactase digests lactose by cutting it in half, into glucose and galactose.

Anyway, the good gray RD, now in color, presented 8 Fall Holiday Tips for Those with Food Allergies, abstracted from a probably longer piece put out by The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI).

So here, slightly shortened even further, are tonight's Top Eight:

1. Tricks and treats: Purchase treats that your child can enjoy safely, and swap them for treats with allergens after trick-or-treating. Send candy your child can consume to school parties or send non-food goodies such as Halloween stickers.

2. Be the class baker ... to ensure there will be foods available your child can enjoy.

3. Inform your guests: Let guests know that you or your child have dietary restrictions, and offer to let them bring holiday themed plates, cups or napkins, rather than food.

4. Give your host a heads-up: If you'll be attending holiday festivities away from home, let your host know about your food allergy. Offer to bring safe foods for you and others to enjoy.

5. Don't overlook the turkey: Basted or self-basting turkeys can include common allergens such as soy, wheat and dairy. [A] turkey labeled "natural," ... should contain nothing but turkey and, perhaps, water.

6. Hang on to food labels: ... Keep the ingredient labels from the food you are serving for allergic guests to review before digging in.

7. Carry medications: Always have emergency medications on hand just in case.

8. Discuss strategies with your allergist: ... Your allergist also can help you and your child become "label detectives" so you both know what ingredients to watch out for.

For more information about allergies and asthma, and to find an allergist near you visit www.AllergyAndAsthmaRelief.org.

Anti-Milk Nonsense: The Dumbth List

Although it's usually attributed to Mark Twain, it was really Charles Haddon Spurgeon who said "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."

I feel the same about the Internet and stupidity. Or Dumbth, as Steve Allen once called it. Just two weeks ago yet another deluded vegan made my blood pressure soar by posting - in a college newspaper, no less - that:

Humans are the only animals on the planet that drink another animal’s milk. Thus, by definition, drinking cows’ milk is extremely unnatural.

You can't approach that statement. It makes no sense from any direction. There are no foods that humans are designed to eat. Not one. They're omnivores, eating every digestible plant or animal part on the planet. And the list of what humans do that other animals don't would fill the Internet. Because it is the Internet.

How could you look yourself in the mirror after saying that? Isn't reason itself one of humanity's unique attributes?

Number two on the Dumbth list is harder to track. Here's my nominee for tonight, mostly because I just read it online and I haven't calmed down yet.

"Margarine is but one molecule from being plastic."

You need to know a little something to understand just how incredibly dumb that statement is. Not much. A grade schooler with a decent science teacher would make a face at an adult spouting that line. I could wish more decent science teachers existed in the world.

Margarine, of course, is a concoction. It's no more a single thing than butter is a single thing. Butter is mostly animal fat with a sprinkling of animal protein and sugar (our old friend lactose). Margarine imitates butter by substituting vegetable oil and water for the animal fat. The rest is a sprinkling of preservatives, stabilizers, and colorants. Nobody denies that margarine is artificial. But it's artificial in the same way a cake is artificial. Cakes don't grow. They are put together from a recipe.

The whole "one molecule away" business is just as bad. Lactose is made out of two simpler sugars, glucose and galactose. The chemical formula for glucose is C₆H₁₂O₆. The chemical formula for galactose is C₆H₁₂O₆. Yes, they are chemically identical. They are structured differently and that gives them different properties. The sugar called maltose is composed of a glucose plus a glucose. Starches are composed of strings of glucoses. Identical, but structured differently. Chemicals - and everything is a chemical or a conglomeration of chemicals - can vary tremendously even if their molecules or atoms are the same. Being one molecule away is meaningless. It's like saying that the U.S. is one ocean away from Europe.

Snopes.com traces the origin of this bit of idiocy back to a 1999 email. The line is too good to kept to only one food. They collected some of the variants.:

I was told that the difference between Cool Whip and Styrofoam is one molecule... is this true???

Is velveeta processed cheese food really one molecule different from plastic?

heard that Pam spray is 1 molecule away from plastic and is therefore dangerous??

I am tired of hearing my husband say that Cheez Whiz is only 2 ingredients different from garbage bags. Can you please help me set him straight?

Happy to set him straight, my dear.

If you have other examples of high-level dumbth about dairy, share them. Let's see if we can create a debunkers' top ten.

"Food Detective" Home Allergy Test Flunks

Intolerances are not the same as allergies. Lactose intolerance is defined as having symptoms because of the body's inability to digest the lactose sugar in milk. A milk allergy is caused by antibodies that react to the proteins in dairy products. They are totally different. I know that. If you've been reading this blog from more than about five minutes you know that.

And the makers of the "Food Detective™, the world’s first food intolerance self test" kit know that. They have a whole page devoted to the difference.

And yet they keep calling the Food Detective a food intolerance kit. It isn't. It tests for protein antibody reactions. Not the same.

Why make a big deal of this? Many people, especially in the UK where the Food Detective is based, confuse the terms or even use them interchangeably. But I'm cynical. And as their own food intolerance page says, as many as 45% of the population of the UK may have food intolerances, but only 2.5% have food allergies. Now which set would you rather your marketing department pitch your product to?

And that's assuming that the product can possibly work as claimed. You take a mere pinprick of blood and put it into the tiny test tube in the kit. Pour on some developer and in 40 minutes you'll know if you have allergies to any of the following:

Cereals
Corn, Durum Wheat, Gluten, Oats, Rice, Rye, Wheat.

Nuts & Beans
Almond, Brazil Nut, Cashew, Cocoa Bean, Peanut, Legume Mix (pea, lentil, haricot),
Soya Bean, Walnut.

Meats
Beef, Chicken, Lamb, Pork.

Fish
Freshwater Fish Mix (salmon, trout), Shellfish Mix (shrimp, prawn, crab, lobster, mussel), Tuna, White Fish Mix (haddock, cod, plaice)

Vegetables
Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrot, Celery, Cucumber, Leek, Peppers (red, green, yellow), Potato.

Fruits
Apple, Blackcurrant, Grapefruit, Melon Mix (cantaloupe, water melon), Olive, Orange & Lemon, Strawberry, Tomato

Other
Egg (whole), Cow's Milk, Garlic, Ginger, Mushroom, Tea, Yeast

That's amazing. Too good to be true? Well, I'm always a skeptic.

You see, the makers of Food Detective are Cambridge Nutritional Sciences CNS), which has done this testing for several years if you mail them a sample of your blood. And the British newspapers have not been kind to CNS.

In You and Yours on Which? Investigation into Food Intolerance Tests, Dr. Mike Walker of CNS reveals that the tests don't test for IgE, the antibody that causes true allergies. It tests for IgG, an antibody which causes hypersensitivities. Some researchers do lump the various antibody reactions together as allergies, some don't. All, to my knowledge, agree that only IgE reactions cause the anaphylactic reactions that are the ones to take most seriously.

Tests on similar testing kits have a large fail sign pasted on them. As Jenny Hope reported in The Daily Mail:

The tests found a total of 183 intolerances, even though the researchers had just one medically confirmed allergy and one already recognized food intolerance between them.

Different test results were produced from identical blood and hair samples sent to the same company under different names. There was little or no overlap of test results from different companies for the same researcher.

A panel of medical specialists and a dietician concluded that none of the tests, which cost between £45 and £275, had ' diagnostic value' for genuine allergies or intolerances.

It's nice to think that one tiny pinprick of blood can tell you what foods not to eat. It's also too good to be true.

Lactose Can Kill... and Other Misleading Headlines

A very, very bizarre story caught my eye. The story of the lactose that killed a woman.

Absolutely true, but also absolutely not anything that will affect you. Instead, it's a tragedy that contains a warning to all people who seek to take medications in unapproved, unauthorized, and dangerous variations. And I'm also using it as an object lesson in the way that stories can be slanted to take information and facts totally out of context to produce shocking but misleading headlines.

The best version of the story comes from the site Attorneyatlaw.com.

The story starts with the worldwide fears of a deadly flu outbreak. The H1N1 virus hit earlier this year, a virus that then seemed to be either new or a warped version of a older known killer version of the flu. While most cases were mild, with the most serious effects on those with what the media terms "pre-existing causes," patients were understandably scared and demanded relief, if not cures. With a vaccine not yet available, the only solution was antibiotics, specifically Tamiflu and Relenza.

Relenza, made by industry giant GlaxoSmithKline, is not a pill or a shot. Instead, it is a powder that is inhaled via the mouth through a special device the company calls a Diskhaler.

You would think that the existence of a special device would be enough of a warning sign in and of itself. Who would take the powder and find a totally different and unauthorized way of using it?

Yet such were the fears sent up by the flu outbreak that some people who apparently could not use their inhalers made up their own rules.

Glaxo has heard reports of its powdered form of Relenza being removed from its packaging, dissolving it in water, and converting it into a fine mist, a process called nebulization, officials said. Doctors may be modifying the composition of the drug in order to give it to patients who cannot take oral medications or inhale the drug. However, nebulization is not recommended for administering Relenza Inhalation Powder, the FDA said.

“The safety, effectiveness, and stability of zanamivir (Relenza) use by nebulization have not been established,” the FDA warned.

Relenza Inhalation Powder is a combination of zanamivir and a lactose drug carrier. When subjected to nebulization, lactose sugar in the product can prevent mechanical ventilator equipment from working properly, the FDA cautioned.

A pregnant woman - talk about pre-existing conditions - outside the U.S. used this nebulized powder for three days in a mechanical ventilator. As I've frequently noted, lactose - mostly tasteless and non-reactive - is used as a filler, coater, sweetener, and sealer in hundreds in medications.

Tragically, the lactose, never intended for use in this form or format, blocked the ventilator and the woman died. The FDA is contacting health care professionals to warn them against nebulization of Relenza.

I've also written about misguided parents feeding their infants soy "milk" instead of soy formula, leading to their deaths. That's similar to this case. Neither soy nor lactose is deadly. Totally inappropriate and improper use of them, of almost anything taken into the body, had serious consequences.

A bizarre tragedy. And a lesson.