What's Behind the Rise in Food Allergies?
The incidence of food allergies in children is rising. Wheat, milk, egg, fish, peanut, walnut, shellfish and soy allergies have led to recalls of pork, turkey, cream of wheat mushroom soup, roast beef, ice cream and corn pasta in recent months. What's behind the increase in allergies?
There are at least two good hypotheses for which there's sound evidence. First, despite what our pediatrician told us, it's probably a good idea to introduce babies to e.g. cow milk sooner rather than later (see "Early Exposure to Cow's Milk Protein is Protective Against IgE-Mediated Cow's Milk Protein Allergy") and make sure they get a large enough dose to produce tolerance as it's apparently the low doses of say peanuts that lead to sensitization and allergy (see e.g. "Peanut Sensitization and Allergy: Influence of Early Life Exposure to Peanuts").
The second emerging hypothesis, another of the increasingly common "Grandma was right" sort of ideas, is that lack of sunshine is also responsible for the rise in food allergies in children. It turns out that vitamin D is crucial to a properly functioning immune system and without it you wind up with a gut full of the wrong sorts of bacteria behaving badly. (See "Potential Mechanisms for the Hypothesized Link Between Sunshine, Vitamin D, and Food Allergy in Children" and "The Role of the Gut Mucosal Immunity in the Development of Tolerance Versus Development of Allergy to Food").
And while we're on the topic of the consequences of this needless epidemic of vitamin D deficiency in the U.S. due to four decades of anti-sun/anti-reason activism you should also read: "North-South Differences in U.S. Emergency Department Visits for Acute Allergic Reactions", "Are Active Sun Exposure Habits Related to Lowering Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Women, a Prospective Cohort Study?" and "Vitamin D and Risk of Cognitive Decline in Elderly Persons" along with "Vitamin D: A Place in the Sun?" and "Vitamin D in Asthma: Panacea or True Promise?"
The takeaway here is that by overreacting to rare and likely uncontrollable risks we've been stampeded right into far more common and otherwise avoidable risks. So who should be liable to all of the eggshell plaintiffs manufactured out of junk science? Should it be the companies whose products would not have caused harm but for the activists or should the activists be called to account for what they have done?
