When Food Kills
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When Food Kills

2005, Health  -   8 Comments
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Ratings: 7.43/10 from 7 users.

When Food KillsIt’s every parent’s worst nightmare. One moment their child is perfectly healthy. The next, they’ve stopped breathing and are turning blue. For many children, the merest hint of nut is all it takes to send them into anaphylactic shock. Food allergies are on the increase and the number of children affected has more than doubled in the past ten years. Yet simple precautions could significantly cut the death rate. This week’s documentary, When Food Kills is a wake up call to the rising danger of food allergies.

It started out as just a normal day for Sophia Neou. Her seven year old son was at play camp; fun and games were the order of the day. Then she received a phone call from a teacher crying, telling her “He’s turning blue and has stopped breathing.” The paramedic witnessed his rapid decline. “He developed shortness of breath. He got very anxious and then his airways started to swell and that’s when he passed out.” When the helicopter arrived William was within 30 seconds of dying but they managed to bring him back.

Other families are not so lucky. “There’s a big hole in our family and his name is Johnny,” laments Cheryl Whitburn. Her 15 year old son died six years ago after accepting some rice from friends that had satay sauce on it. The tiny amount of peanut in the sauce was all that was needed to trigger a reaction. While cases like this are rare, the incidents of severe food allergies are increasing. “In the past ten to twenty years, the incidence of severe food allergies has doubled or tripled,” stated Dr Alyson Kakakios from Westmead Children’s hospital.No one knows why allergies are on the increase. Scientists still don’t know exactly what causes them.

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steven smith
steven smith
12 years ago

We have been slowly starving ourselves from nutrients from the over processed foods we eat. Along with the poisons in our body's from industry
we are becoming more and more unhealthy.
I find it incredibly interesting how the bible gives certain foods as clean or unclean. Most of the unclean foods given do offer proteins but come at a price. Pigs for instance are immune to venom from a lot of different animals. Pigs are actually put into corrals to kill and eat poisonous snakes because of this fact. The reason behind this is pigs do not rid their body's of poisons as a lot of other mammals do. They secrete poison out of pour like tubes that open at their feet. Most of the poisons are absorbed into the pigs flesh which shouldn't be consumed by humans. It is also a well known fact that swine has a much, much, more percentage of fat than beef or other type of cud chewing animals we eat.

A lot of sea food is in the same category as pigs. Clams and other shell fish are environment cleaning animals working like our liver does to get rid of poisons in our body. They play an important role in the environment but should we be eating such animals??

I really think the commandment of eating clean animals and not unclean animals was more of a warning than God just forsaking his chosen people of Israel of common foods. Of course that is just my belief though. I guess with all the other crazy studies these days maybe there was someone who did this study at some point to see the truth in what I have just shared. I doubt I could of been the only on to wonder about this before.

wutluviz
wutluviz
13 years ago

I don't think it helps that until recently, we were told not to give our children foods that could cause allergic reactions until way later. After one or two years of age. Introduce foods slowly with a few days in between new foods for babies just starting solids. Now recommendations have changed and you should give foods in rapid succession if there is no history of allergy to that particular food in the child's family history. Many people still don't know this because they don't do any research. Mothers still hear this from other mothers and don't bother to look into it themselves, but this is easily accessible information that the A.A.P. is now recommending. There are new studies which suggest that a baby who is exposed to commonly allergenic foods in the womb, breast milk, and shortly after being introduced to solid foods may be less likely to develop these allergies.

cindy
cindy
13 years ago

i believe GM foods should be considered. there is evidence that corn and soy have downsides if they've been altered. and still the FDA doesn't want to label this. Are they covering up something?

makes no sense
makes no sense
14 years ago

you cant call food which has "evolved" from thousands of years a GMO because only the strongest strains survived, what is happening now is that anyone can make a GMO food at home and sell it to farmers whithout having any study done on its effects in fact the FDA made it so no test can be done/wont be needed. This "shortcut" is called shoting in the dark, because we dont know/wont know the efectsof it....but wait there have been reported effects but the big and powerfull GMO company hid it and change those facts. If not then why have the allergic reaction to GMO foods have increased?

Mike
Mike
14 years ago

Most of the food you eat are technically GMOS, the difference is science is taking a shortcut instead of thousands of years of selective breeding and grating that made MOST of the food you eat, from bananas to corn. And before you bring it up, foods that have animal genes are not allowed to be served to humans, so the say that they do the experiments means nothing

Kathryn
Kathryn
14 years ago

Interesting that they don't mention the possibility that GMOs may play a role in the rise of food allergies. And of course there's not a peep about vaccines being one possible cause. Vaccines have been known to contain traces of eggs or dairy, so doesn't it follow that maybe those allergies are triggered by the immune system associating these substances with an immunological threat? And that's taking a pretty conservative view if you've seen some of the scarier docs about vaccines on this site.

At any rate the theory of not being exposed to enough bacteria seems a little thin. Sure, kids on farms may have a lower rate of food allergies, but maybe the reason isn't their interaction with farm animals and the associated bacteria. Wouldn't it stand to reason that a kid raised on a farm is going to consume fewer genetically modified foods because most of what they eat comes from the family farm? Seems hard to believe that any scientist looking at all the variables between city and farm life would conclude the only possible reason for a lower rate of food allergies is exposure to more bacteria.