Thank you, KevinMD.com, for picking up my post on a Virtual Visit to the Supermarket !  Check it out at KevinMD.com !
———————————————————————————————————————————————-
Have you ever had a problem that turned out to be a blessing in disguise?     

A long time ago I used to know a family that had a daughter with a corn allergy.  The way they found out about it was that she used to get these terrible headaches, and then get sick to her stomach.  When it started, she was little, like 6 or 7 years old.  It got so bad that she practically couldn’t leave the house.  Often, she would get sick on the bus in the morning, so at first they thought it was all about school.  I don’t need to tell you that they tried EVERYTHING.  

Now this happened about 20 years ago.  Nowadays everybody talks about food, but it wasn’t like that 20 years ago.  So you can imagine how desperate they all must have been if the pediatrician recommended an “elimination diet.”  If you don’t know what that is, it’s a structured, programmed method for determining what foods are causing symptoms.  Basically, you completely stop eating a select food group for three weeks (dairy, for instance), and then you eat a ton of it (like pizza, ice cream, etc.) over one weekend.  If your symptoms slowly disappear for a few weeks, and then come back with a vengeance when you reintroduce the food, you’ve got your answer.  

In this kid’s case, the problem was so bad that they decided to do the elimination diet in a more drastic way — backwards.  They were going to give her just one food to start, and then reintroduce other things one at a time.  They used an interval of one week instead of three weeks because it made more sense under the circumstances.  I don’t remember what she ate the first week, maybe chicken.  Just chicken.  It was a long week.  

But I do remember what they gave her on week 2 — Cola.  I really have no clue why the pediatrician picked that.  Maybe she thought it was easy to digest.  Maybe she wanted to make it easier for the little girl to cooperate, and thought the soda would be a nice reward. 

As a doc, I am an inveterate people-watcher.  I watch people walk, move, and think.  I notice the angle of their shoulders, their hands, the looks on their faces, their skin.  When people start trading processed, food-like stuff for real food, the skin on their faces becomes smoother, less puffy, younger looking.  Its yellowish cast is replaced by a pink shine.  As the levels of insulin responsible for the deposition of central, visceral fat begin to plummet, even children lose the soft double chin hanging from their jaw bones.  I see these changes as readily as I see a week without sleep, or a new coat.  

The little girl’s case was even more dramatic.  Within minutes, she was sobbing and puking.  Her mom picked up the can, and turned it over to read the ingredients.  Then she picked up the phone to call the pediatrician.  It was the corn syrup.   

The story ends well.  With just a few mishaps over the years, the young girl grew up without symptoms, and without corn.  In the way that many families do to accommodate one member with a serious food allergy, her entire family stopped eating all products containing corn.  That means all processed food.  They stopped eating most breakfast cereals, candy, soda, store-bought baked goods.  No more cheap restaurants, cheap ice cream, corn starch, food starch, high-fructose corn syrup.  In a nutshell, they stopped buying things with an ingredient list.  It wasn’t something they chose.  They had to do it.  The health and wellbeing of their daughter was at stake.

Then something unexpected happened. 

Over the next few months the entire family became slender, more relaxed and more active.  At the time, no one could explain it.  But the mom said it was certainly the best thing that could ever have happened to them. 

Next week:  More on getting off the American food grid: what the vegan and Atkins diets have in common!
——————————————————————————————————————————————–