Food Allergies Stir a Mother to Action

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/di...=1&oref=slogin


......The $30,000 Ms. O'Brien made from the products last year is
incidental, she said. Working largely from a laptop on her dining room
table, she has looked deep into the perplexing world of childhood food
allergies and seen a conspiracy that threatens the health of America's
children. And, she profoundly believes, it is up to her and parents
everywhere to stop it.

Her theory -- that the food supply is being manipulated with additives,
genetic modification, hormones and herbicides, causing increases in
allergies, autism and other disorders in children -- is not supported
by leading researchers or the largest allergy advocacy groups.

That only feeds Ms. O'Brien's conviction that the influence of what
she sees as the profit-hungry food industry runs deep. In just a few
dizzying steps, she can take you from a box of Kraft macaroni and
cheese to Monsanto's genetically modified seeds to Donald H. Rumsfeld,
who once ran the company that created the sweetener aspartame.

Through creative use of e-mail, relentless inquiry and a persona
carefully crafted around the protective mother archetype, Ms. O'Brien
has emerged as a populist hero among parents who troll the Internet
for any hint about why their children have food allergies.

"You have changed my life ... my diet ... my health ... my spirit ...
and I thank YOU," a father who had lost his teenage daughter to
anaphylactic shock told her by e-mail.

Ms. O'Brien encourages people to do what she did: throw out as much
nonorganic processed food as you can afford to. Avoid anything
genetically modified, artificially created or raised with hormones.
Don't eat food with ingredients you can't pronounce.

Once she cleaned out her cupboards, she said, her four children
started behaving better. Their health problems, which her doctor
attributed to allergies to milk and other foods, cleared up.........

Thanks Vince