There are many genuinely good reasons why this should be so (more expensive specialist ingredients, many imported from far afield, more difficult/time consuming to manufacture, extra cost of testing for allergens, no economies of scale) although I suspect that it is not unheard of for manufacturers to ‘load’ the cost the cost of ‘niche’ freefrom products to generate themselves a little extra profit. But, hopefully, as ‘freefrom’ food becomes more mainstream, so will its prices.

But for those with a food allergy/intolerance, it is not only the food that they eat that may cost them extra. A couple of weeks ago we ran an article (an update on one first published in 2005) on avoiding allergens, especially gluten/starches, lactose/dairy and sugar in prescription drugs.

You can read the full article here but the nub of it is that, if you cannot tolerate any of the excipients (the non-active fillers, capsules etc) in the standard formulation of your prescription drug, and you cannot buy an off-the-shelf version without these excipients, the drug can be made up for you, without any of your particular allergens, by what is known as a ‘specials’ laboratory . However, this can only be done at the request of a doctor or dentist and – not surprisingly – it is very expensive. So, especially in these straightened times, doctors are very reluctant to go down this route.

The subject came to my attention again because, long time friend of FoodsMatter, Jacquie Broadway, who is severely allergic to all starch, but especially to corn, to sugar and to moulds and has serious digestive and malabsorption problems, has just had a hip replacement and is suffering from a crumbling spine. She has been battling for years with her GP practice to get antibiotics that she can tolerate but now she also needs pain killers. The full story is at the bottom of the article but what it boils down to is that although her GP did prescribe one lot of paracetamol crystals that she could tolerate (cost £300), they are not prepared to fund any on-going prescription. So either she puts up with the pain – or she pays privately.

(One other option that Micki Rose suggested in a blog back in 2010, was getting your drug as a suppository, a delivery method much favoured by the French. Suppositories, if you can get them, usually contain nothing except the drug and the melted fats – usually palm or coconut oil – to make the capsule.)

The question of how much the NHS should spend on drugs (or in this case, allegen-free drugs) for any individual patient is, of course, a hugely difficult one. No purse is bottomless and although it would be wonderful to be able to fund every beneficial treatment for every patient, in the current state of the country’s finances that it simply not possible. So hard ‘value judgements’ have to be made which are always going to seem unfair to someone – in this case, to the allergy sufferer, again…

If allergy/intolerance sufferers got great service from the NHS and wonderful treatment from specialist units around the country, then having to do without expensive prescriptions for allergen-free drugs might not seem quite so unfair – but they don’t. Despite marginally increased awareness in some GP practices, and some (very few) centres of genuine excellence around the country, allergy/intolerance sufferers are still  very poorly served and look as though they will remain that way.

How frustrating, then – on a slightly different tack – that no PCTs picked upon the excellent and extraordinarily cost-effective allergy/intolerance nurse training programme  piloted by FAIR that has just been featured on FoodsMatter.

Yes!!! At last I have been able to mow the grass… for more luscious green detail click here!

Christina points out that GlaxoSmithKline, one of the worlds leading manufacturers of drugs, including vaccinations, are a major sponsor of the London Olympics – and, surprise, surprise, ‘won’ the  contract for all drugs testing at the games. And now health experts in the US  (inspired by whom?)  are encouraging everyone taking part in or visiting the games to top up on their measles vaccinations so that ‘they bring back memories and not measles’ from their trip abroad… Errr…. really? And who are they going to catch them from?

Christina goes on to point out, courtesy of a number of health experts specialising in the history of vaccinations, that while no one disputes that a very small number of measles cases can have horrendous outcomes, for the vast majority catching measles ‘was no big deal and that anyone catching the measles got lifetime immunity as a result’. Moreover, ’95% of the people who used to die from measles stopped dying before the vaccine was introduced in 1968′. Figures quoted by other authors also show that ‘infectious diseases rose dramatically after the introduction of vaccinations’ and ‘that hygiene and living conditions played a significant role in the relative disappearance of cholera and the black plague and that there is no vaccine for either of these diseases’. 

Click here to read the full post.

At the time we did manage to supply several people with ‘children’ from our plant – which had kindly been donated to us by our gluten-free beer lady, Sue Cane. However, recently, while still making perfectly nice kefir, our grains have ceased to grow and multiply as they before……

I have just consulted with Sue on this matter and she says that her grains (which were originally her dad’s and were vigorous in the extreme) have also started beating a retreat and she wonders whether the kefir grains, like the rest of us, are so depressed by endless, if needed, rain that they have decided to go into hibernation…

So this is really just to tell the five or six people who have recently asked about grains that, as of now, we really cannot afford to give any away but, if the sun comes out, and the kefir leaps back to  energetic life, I will put up an alerting blog and, if you have not managed to get any elsewhere, do please come back to me.

But I have just been sent a link to KatieBoo’s blog and Katie not only has pretty virulent Crohns’ (she has spent most of the last few months in and out of hospital with a violent Crohn’s flare up), and coeliac disease, but has now become epileptic knocking up no less than 30  seizures in the last month!

Not that either of them (Gluten Freek or KatieBoo) are remotely sorry for themselves although like Ruth of What Allergy? and Micki Rose of Truly Gluten Free, they are honest enough admit that, on occasion, it can be pretty crap suffering from such a horrendous range of health problems. But thanks to all of them and their regular (and often very funny) blogging, tweeting and pig headed determination not to be beaten by their bodies, we are all learning a lot more about these conditions which, hopefully, in the long run, may also help them to deal with them.

I think this is probably the moment for a plug for helminthic therapy, championed so vigorously, and with reason, by the wonderful John Scott who does all of our research for us. John has sorted an equally long and scary list of health problems, including total – and I mean total – food intolerance, Crohn’s disease, rhinitis and sinusitis, migraine, ME, MCS and restless leg syndrome, by inoculating himself with a low dose of parisitic worms. These friendly little hookworms appear to have re-regulated his immune system which had been at total and disastrous odds with itself. So if any of you ladies want to know more – Caleigh, KatieBoo, Ruth or even Micki, although she is exploring another and equally exciting way of bringing her problems under control – please go to the helminthic therapy section of the FoodsMatter site where you will find a truckload of information including John’s latest compilation of personal accounts of success with helminthic therapy.

One condition for which helminths do not as yet have a track record is electromagnetic hypersensitivity – although John is always encouraging me to try them out… Maybe… But meanwhile, there are many just as horrendous stories from ES sufferers as there are from Crohn’s/coeliac sufferers. There are a number of them on the FoodsMatter site, including one very sad story about South African, Alwyn Lewies, who has now been reduced abandoning his wife and two small children to live in the bush, having spent many months sleeping in his car, because he had become so sensitive to EM radiation. (One of Alwyn’s ES symptoms was epileptic fits – nota bene KatieBoo.)

However, another blog, EHS Fight Back,  not only alerted me to another ES sufferer forced to sleep in her car but, reminded me once again of the murkier politics which impact on so many health conditions. Dafna Tachover, the mid 30s ES sufferer who runs this blog, has been writing to the president of the Karolinska Institute, home not only of the Nobel Prize, but of Professor Olle Johansson, one of the most outspoken scientists leading the charge against mobile phone technology in its present form and the increasing electro-magnetisation of our world – because, it appears, the Institute is doing its best to gag the professor by evicting him from his laboratory and thereby preventing him pursuing his researches. Now why should this be?…..

Well, this is not a new story, nor has it yet reached a satisfactory ending… But if you want to know all the ins and out check my earlier blogs here and here.

Tawkon’s  apps will work for Android phones, BlackBerry handsets and the iOS platform but not for iPhones as Steve Jobs, Apples’ CEO who died two months later from cancer, made it quite clear that the app would not be welcome in its App Store. Last March, Tawkon had sent an email to Jobs in the hopes of gaining approval for distribution of the application through Apple’s App Store. The response they got was:

‘No interest.’
Sent from my iPhone

The only way for iPhone users to get the app is to have their iPhones ‘jailbroken’ – that is, their proprietary operating system software modified to allow them to use non-proprietary software. However, ‘jailbreaking’ your iPhone could void your warranty.

According to Mike Barrett at Activist Post:
The company instituted the ban because it felt the app would be confusing to customers, though the ban was likely due to the fact that the app could only decrease sales for Apple’s iPhone. Whether Apple’s decision was driven by profit or not, there are some valid questions and concerns regarding the app’s accuracy.
Using a complex proprietary algorithm, Tawkon estimates the amount of radiation emitted by cell phones at any moment. As a way to measure the amount of radiation being emitted and ultimately picked up by the user, the company considers factors like current antenna strength, and whether a headset is being used or speakerphone is currently selected. The problem, however, is that the app depends on radiation baseline figures provided by device manufacturers. The app itself has no way of actually measuring radiation emissions, so it must rely on the publicly posted radiation emission quotes by manufacturers in order to estimate a device’s radiation output at all times.

Even so, the concept is a good one, and let us hope that more accurate devices soon  hit the market – and ideally via the Apple App Store.

Meanwhile, Dr Olle Johansson has just forwarded an advert for a new Android Smart watch which will incorporate the technology in your smart phone into your watch. Great – hands free access to your Facebook page, Google maps, whatever else you may need. But also, as Dr Johansson points out, radiation will be directed, via your Smart watch, straight into your tissues and thence into your bloodstream. Is this really a very good idea?….

With the exception of the grass (now knee high) the garden has more or less gone on hold… Only our little apple tree has really struggled into flower… Read more.

Ingrid runs Artisan Bread Organic, a bakery in Whitstable in Kent that only uses organic and biodynamic ingredients: whole grain flours freshly milled on a traditonal stone mill every day, revitalised water, natural leaven and Seagreens seaweed to add calcium and nutrients to their breads. On separate millstones they grind naturally gluten-free flours to use in the breads that they make for dairy-free, wheat-free, gluten-free, salt-free, baker’s yeast-free, blood group and geno type diets.

Ingrid has always been vocally opposed to factory made bread, and is especially upset by factory made ‘freefrom’ bread as she maintains that no one whose health is compromised, is ever going to get well by eating manufactured foods that include additives, enzymes and manufacturing aids. She thoroughly disapproves of what I like to think is our more pragmatic approach to freefree…

While I agree that eating the kind of food that Ingrid recommends is the ideal, I just do not believe that the majority of people will be able to get their heads around so dramatic a change to their daily regime, and therefore they will not stick to it. So I prefer to take a more gradualist approach by first removing the worst dietary offenders (dairy or wheat) and then using a pincer action on both the manufacturers and on those with dietary problems: encourage manufacturers to minimise additive use and improve the nutritional profile of their products and encourage allergy/intolerance sufferers to cook more of their own food from scratch using a wider range of natural fresh ingredients and excluding their own particular problem foods. I am not sure that I ever expect the food eaten by the average person on a ‘freefrom’ diet to reach quite the health level of  Ingrid’s breads, but I would hope that they would end up on a reasonably good, at least partially home cooked, healthy and allergen free diet.

Anyhow, one of Ingrid’s biggest bete noires is xanthan gum. She has lectured me on a number of occasions on what a dietary disaster it is and how freefrom breads, such as Genius, are no better for the health of coeliacs and wheat intolerants than eating Mother’s Pride. Ingrid’s basic objection to xanthan gum is that it is a totally unnecessary manufactured additive, but she has also warned that it could, in itself, be an allergen. And now it looks as though she could be right…

Xanthan gum is an exopolysaccaride which is grown or fermented from the bacteria Xanthomonas campestris, the bacteria which cause black rot on cruciferous vegetables such as brassicas (cabbages, cauliflowers etc). The bacteria can be grown on corn, wheat, soya, whey or dairy products. After around four days the fermented ‘broth’ is pasteurised and then dried to make a powder.  When liquid is added to a tiny amount of this powder it forms a thick viscous syrup which is invaluable not only in gluten-free baking (where it largely replaces the ‘gluey’ properties of gluten) but in a wide range of other food products such as salad dressings, ice creams, sauces, frozen foods and drinks. It was discovered by researchers at the USDA and first appeared in food products in the 1960s under the brand name Kelco.

Xanthan gum is both cheap and easy to make and has been a boon to the freefrom industry as it makes the whole business of baking ‘gluten free’ very much easier. However, as its use has spread so, inevitably, have problems arisen.

Whatever you may think about the very wide use of a gum derived from a cabbage-rotting bacterium in food manufacture (if you are Ingrid, not a lot…), if you are highly allergic/intolerant to corn, wheat, soya or dairy you should be concerned about what medium the gum was grown on as it is possible that residual protein fractions from the growing medium may make it through into the gum. The problem here is that, as of now, it is almost impossible to discover what growing medium might have been used for any specific batch of gum and although corn is probably the most common, it is certainly not universal.

A post from Wendy Cohan on celiac.com suggests that xanthan gum itself can cause an allergic reaction which is very similar to a coeliac reaction, except without the pain e.g. bloating, gas and diarrhoea. (She advises using guar gum instead, a more ‘natural product in that it is just the ground starchy part of the guar bean.) However, xanthan gum is an efficient laxative according to a 1993 study from the University of Sheffield, so it might well be responsible for gassy and diarrhoea symptoms. There is also the possibility that, since it is a fermented product, it could affect someone who was super-sensitive to mould.

So, sorry guys….It looks as though that could be another whole range of products off the menu for those who are particularly sensitive. (And if you want to know how sensitive people can be, take a look at Micki Rose’s Truly Gluten Free site…) Indeed, there is an argument to suggest that even if you do not have any overt symptoms (silent coeliac disease, for example), that extra fraction of protein or allergen could be doing you harm even though you are not aware of it.

The way forward? Well, xanthan gum is far too useful a product for freefrom cooks and the freefrom food industry to give up without a struggle. So maybe the first move would be for xanthan gum manufacturers to specify the substrate on which the bacterium was grown so that at least the allergic/intolerant consumer can choose only to eat products using a xanthan gum grown on a base that they can tolerate.

We do transfer some of this material, although not nearly as much as I would like (pressure of time), on to the ES section of the FoodsMatter site but just now and then a report comes through that I think everyone would relate to – such as the mayor of Udine and his ‘telefonini’ ban!

Udine is a delightful old town, population around 100,000, which sits half way between Venice and Trieste in Northern Italy – and its mayor, Furio Honsell, has just had it with his counsellors spending most of their meetings updating their Facebook pages and sending text messages. As it happens Mayor Honsell is also a doctor, and a doctor who believes in the precautionary principle: namely that, until we are sure that having mobile phones glued to our ears, and especially to our childrens’ ears, for a large proportion of each day is not going to have some disastrous health outcome, we should not do it.

He has therefore banned mobiles in council meetings and launched a campaign to have them banned in bars, restaurants and hotels in the town; so far sixteen establishments have signed up.

Wherever you stand on the safety issue (if you did not manage to make it through the whole of Andrew Goldsworthy’s very weighty paper featured in last weekend’s FoodsMatter e-newsletter there was a good overview article on msnbc.com which will lead you in more gently), many people who value the convenience of their mobile phone are nonetheless profoundly irritated by their overuse by others, thereby banishing any semblance of peace in public places and making normal conversation almost impossible! They will be right up there with Mayor Honsell. And with  the Italian rail company, Trenitalia, who are now introducing ‘silent’ carriages – a luxury which, to their credit, most British train companies have offered for some time.

And there is no doubt that coconut is the new wonder food. This year’s FreeFrom Food Awards were awash in new coconut products – coconut milk, yogurt, ice cream, coconut water, cold pressed coconut oils – and very good they all were too. Not that it is entirely surprising as, of course, all of the above make excellent substitutes for dairy milk, yogurt, ice cream and butter, especially as fresh, cold pressed coconut products are far more delicate in flavour than the coconut of one’s childhood memories. (To see just a few of them see this year’s winners and shortlisted products in the ‘Plant’ category of the awards.)

My especial favourite is cold pressed coconut oil. You can use this as a butter or spread substitute, although not everyone can immediately get their heads (or taste buds) around its very white colour, slightly ‘lardy’ texture and more definite coconut flavour. It did take me a little while but I am now a convert. However, far less work was needed to convince me of coconut oil’s virtue as a cooking oil.

Because coconut oil is a saturated fat, it is, unlike the polyunsaturated vegetable oils such as sunflower or corn oil, stable enough to withstand cooking heat. (Polyunsaturated fats and oils break down when subject to heat, which causes the oils to oxidise which is not a good idea.) Coconut oil is also very high in ‘virtuous’  lauric and capric acid. Both good health reasons for cooking with it. However, the added appeal is that it adds the most delicious flavour and silky texture to whatever you cook in it – be it just some sautéed vegetables or a slow cook casserole. Give it a whirl… If you want inspiration, nearly all of the more recent articles on our FreeFromRecipesMatters site use coconut oil.

However, while I am now convinced of the coconut’s virtue as a food, I had completely forgotten, until a post arrived from Dr Mercola this morning,  that it is also used very widely in the Far East both as a skin and a hair treatment. Because it is so temperature sensitive, the oil reacts to the heat of your hands and is fantastic as a massage oil – for skin, for muscles – and for hair. According to the study quote by Dr Mercola, ‘coconut oil, being a triglyceride of lauric acid, has a high affinity for hair proteins and, because of its low molecular weight and straight linear chain, is able to penetrate inside the hair shaft’ – unlike mineral oils and polyunsaturated oils which, because of their bulky structure due to the presence of double bonds, just sit on top of your hair! And, even better, while the coconut oil is nourishing your hair shafts, it will also dispose of any lice or nits who happen to be lurking there more effectively than any of those nasty chemical treatments…

And, if you need more…. A doctor in Florida has written at length about the success that she had in treating her husband’s advanced Alzheimer’s with coconut oil – or, more specifically, the ketones in coconut oil. Check here for a report from CBN News, here for Dr Newport’s original article  or here to buy her book.