I remember when I was studying psychology at university one of the topics was about over diagnosing people with illnesses/syndromes. It looked at the trend that as time went by, the people being diagnosed with ADHD, Autism etc. etc. also increased dramatically. Doctors and researchers attributed this to...
Their willingness to take them to a specialist.
The ability for doctors to diagnosis them with a condition more accurately.
Alright. Let's say we give this some credit. Lets look at something I feel is on the increase and it has nothing to do with psychology.
ALLERGIES.
I'm 26, and back in my days no one had allergies. Some kids had asthma, but there weren't many.
Peanut allergies?
Diary allergies?
What are they?
The only allergies I knew of was from Bee stings (thanks ‘My Girl’).
However, everyone has allergies now.
Friends of mine have kids that had both peanut and dairy allergies...death by peanut or death by ice-cream is not a good way to go out (not at the age of 2 anyways).
Get your child one of these if they have any serious allergy. It can save their life.
Schools and day cares have pictures of people with allergies on the staffroom notice, on their duty jackets so they know which kids have it. There are just too many of them with too many different types of allergies to simply remember who has what.
So Why?!
The food industry has created a Probladox. While trying to keep up with food demands, they have made super chickens that grow 3 to 4 times faster than normal chickens, but not only that, they are larger than normal chickens. They inject animals with hormones to make them grow faster; they spray chemicals to make our vegetables safe from insects; they genetically modify crops to make them look prettier, taste better and grow faster.
Not only are our produce and meat affected, but things like mayonnaise, potato chips and the like are affected too.
An increase of allergies.
Food industry the causation? No, there have always been allergies.
Food industry heavily correlated? Yes
What do you think?
3 comments:
Your stance certainly seems reasonable to me. I'm no expert in the area, but common sense tells me that filling my body with hormones and chemicals can't be doing me any good (and it's not far-fetched to assume that it's doing me harm).
My wife's father had milk protein allergies as a baby and had to be fed sheep's milk. Cut to 55ish years later, and it turns out soy protein allergies are closely connected to milk protein. Back then, soy wasn't so prominent, but now soy is in just about EVERYTHING. It's a cheap filler apparently. Look at the ingredients of various things around your house (I had to do it for everything we bought 2 years ago, and now I've started doing it again in preparation for the possibility the twins will have similar issues) and play soy or no soy. :)
It must be horrible to have to look at the ingredients every time you buy something. Going to kids birthday parties would also be a nightmare!
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