Unhealthy truth: Is our food making us sick?

Think you know all there is to know about what you put in your mouth? In the new book “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It,” author Robyn O’Brien — known as the “Erin Brockovich of the food industry” — exposes hidden dangers in the seemingly safe ingredients we feed our children and families. O'Brien reveals the shocking manipulation of food and how it affects all consumers. Read an excerpt:

Chapter 2
Becoming the allergy detective
It was a relief to get Tory home from the doctor that first day, but my re­lief was short-lived. Since my baby had three lively older siblings ages three through five, I knew that I couldn’t completely control her food in­take, however much I wanted to. I was desperate to protect her from her brothers and sister, especially from three-year-old John. But I could see after our first little talk that John remained oblivious, and so my desper­ation grew.

The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became. Sure, Tory was just a year old, so other than an occasional babysitter, Jeff and I were pretty much the only ones who fed her. But what would happen when she got even a little older? I had been totally clueless about allergies just a week ago, so how could I send her out into a world of adults and chil­dren who might be offering her food, at an age when she was barely able to say her name, let alone to explain that there were foods she couldn’t eat? What if one day she didn’t remember that she wasn’t allowed to have eggs, or didn’t realize that hidden eggs were lurking inside, say, an Eggo waffle or a slice of birthday cake?

I didn’t want my daughter to grow up fearful, the need to explain her allergies foremost in her mind. But I hated the thought of her being so vulnerable. And the Mama Bear in me simply would not accept that there were limits to my ability to safeguard my child. There had to be some way to warn her and her siblings away from “danger foods,” some way to eventually carry that message out to her preschool, the church nursery, her friends’ birthday parties ...

I wondered if there might be some kind of universal symbol that other parents used to protect their kids, something I could use to protect my daughter from her siblings. Once again, Mama Bear provided the impe­tus and Research Wonk provided the means as I jumped onto the computer, searching for ways that other parents had handled this problem. Obviously, I was hoping for a magic bullet, but a universal symbol would have to do.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t one. No matter how much I searched, I couldn’t find any hint of a sign or symbol used to indicate that a food might be dangerous to a kid who had allergies. There wasn’t even any symbol for “allergies” in general — no equivalent of, say, the pink ribbon for breast cancer.

I had to wait three weeks for an appointment with the allergist, and that was just more inaction than I could bear. At least creating a warn­ing sign was something I could do, some way I could at least tell myself that I was protecting my daughter. So I began to sketch my own.

Almost immediately, I thought of a stop sign, a symbol that would cue people to STOP before feeding Tory so they could find out what she could and couldn’t eat. Wouldn’t that be a good idea? We could put a  stop-sign sticker on foods in our house that Tory couldn’t eat, and that would help my other kids know what might be safe to give her. Or I could slap a sticker on a brown paper bag when I sent Tory to school with her lunch, to remind her classmates to stop and think before they offered her food. If I couldn’t be there to talk for her, then maybe the stop sign could.

With a pile of scratch paper and a jar full of crayons, I eventually came up with a green stop sign bearing an exclamation point. The bright-green octagon seemed like an easy,  kid-friendly way to get children to stop and pay attention, something that would grab their interest but wouldn’t be scary or make Tory feel bad. I had grown up with fluorescent green “Mr. Yuck!” stickers denoting poisons under the kitchen sink, so the color seemed like something everybody could recognize and understand. It had been a roller coaster of a day, but as I fell into bed that night, I some­how felt better. Finally, something I could do to protect Tory.

The next morning, when Jeff came in to breakfast, he thought the symbol was terrific. Then I shared with him a thought that had been slowly nudging its way into my brain.

“You know, Jeff, it’s been unbelievably difficult finding information about allergies — there are several Web sites out there, sure, but they all seem to have the same three paragraphs, sometimes even word for word. It’s driving me crazy. What if —”

I took a deep breath to give myself courage. After all, we had just had four kids in five years. Wasn’t this sweet man due for a break?

“What if I started a Web site to provide free information about food al­lergies?”

In retrospect, I can’t even remember how long we talked about this idea or how long it took me to develop a plan. I only knew that the idea seemed to take shape with dizzying speed. A few years earlier, I’d helped Jeff start his own financial services company, so I already knew how to register a business name and a domain name and to file the paperwork with the state. After a few days of research, I decided that my new Web site would be called AllergyKids.

As Jeff and I talked through the details, I realized once again what a remarkable man I had married. He had supported my compulsive devo­tion to business school and had encouraged me to save every dime I had earned as an equity analyst. Now he suggested that I take those savings and use them to launch AllergyKids.

I loved the idea of giving parents a quick and easy way to get the free information they so desperately needed. But Jeff and I could only fund this project for so long; then, somehow, the idea would have to be  self-supporting. I was committed to providing free information to any parent who wanted it. But how could I make this operation self-funding?

My second idea dawned as I stared at the stop-sign symbol: I could make stickers. I couldn’t be the only mom who wanted to label  allergy­safe food for her kids. In fact, maybe we could sell other products that parents needed, like tags for kids’ backpacks and special lunch boxes.

I conducted the first of what would be many online focus groups by sending out a quick e-mail query to a few trusted friends. Within a few hours, I’d gotten the “go for it” response I had been hoping for. Over the next few weeks, after hearing from a dad who hated having to carry his kids’ allergy meds in his wife’s cosmetic bag, we came up with a little medical case for carrying EpiPens, the  single-dose injectors of epineph­rine that many children used as an emergency treatment for an anaphy­lactic reaction. And for parents who were traveling with their kids, we designed a computerized wristband that could be used anytime, any­where, to access their children’s medical records. The project seemed to fill a real need, helping both Tory and the thousands of “allergy kids” who shared her condition.

But my biggest interest was in promoting the green stop sign as a uni­versal allergy symbol. I hoped the symbol could maybe bring about a truce in what I’d come to think of as the “ peanut- butter battle.”

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably seen it, too. The parents with al­lergic kids want to protect their children by banning certain foods from the lunchrooms. The parents of “regular” kids don’t see why they and their children should have to suffer just because some children have spe­cial needs. I’d been firmly in the second camp, rolling my eyes at the al­lergy parents and mindful of the fact that two of my kids ate only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I sure wasn’t interested in having “food fights” with my kids or in broadening my culinary repertoire.

But now my doctor had told me to protect Tory from a potential peanut allergy by not exposing her to peanuts in any form. Those PB&Js that Lexy and John adored now seemed like loaded weapons, pointing straight at Tory.

With the new battle lines drawn at my own kitchen table, I could fi­nally see both sides. Of course the “food-allergy” parents were terrified that their kids might be offered peanut butter, egg salad, milk — foods that could make their children sick or even kill them. Of course the “ non­allergy” parents were frustrated by the various restrictions imposed on their kids’ diets or by learning to make new foods. Wasn’t it hard enough packing lunches every day without accommodating other people’s chil­dren?

Maybe my new symbol could help bring both groups together. Maybe it could enable non- allergy kids to bring in whatever lunches they wanted while the green stop sign on the allergy kids’ lunch boxes reminded every­one to stop and think before they shared food. Maybe my new symbol could help educate children, teachers, and even parents, creating a safer, friendlier environment for everybody. If we could find a common solu­tion, I thought, then we could all have our cake and eat it, too.

But I wasn’t just thinking about parents and children. With my MBA background, I was also wondering how I could engage the business com­munity. After all, in our society, it’s the corporations who have the money. To create a national awareness of this problem, we would need to have them on our side. What incentive could I provide to engage them?

I had learned on the trading floor that corporations tend to pay atten­tion and are a lot easier to engage if there is money to be made. Though some nonprofits do a fabulous job of fund- raising, I didn’t want to com­pete with them — business was my area of expertise, not nonprofits. What if I designed a business model whose mission was to fund a cure for food allergies?

Inspired by the way Paul Newman had started Newman’s Own to sup­port environmental and other causes, I decided to operate AllergyKids along the same lines, with my own profits funding research and educa­tion on food allergies. I also thought that a for-profit model would engage the business community not just as donors but as partners, with forward-thinking food companies and grocery stores licensing my symbol and maybe even developing new allergy- safe food lines targeting this growing segment of the population.

As my idea took shape, I realized that plenty of businesses were al­ready capitalizing on what I now saw as a — sadly — growing market. I’d heard of parents who had started allergen- free cupcake and cookie com­panies, and I would soon come to know women who had published chil­dren’s books and cookbooks, or whose companies made EpiPens and similar products for allergic kids. I was happy to think that I, too, could help raise money for the cause, with every extra nickel going back to fund research and the spread of information.

Providing information was especially important to me, since the largest and most respected of the food- allergy nonprofits, the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), wouldn’t provide more than the most basic information until you paid its $75 membership fee. I joined, of course, and I respected the good work that FAAN was doing. But I didn’t understand how they could insist that parents pay for information.

The way I saw it, if my kids were at risk, anybody’s kids could be at risk. And if something could help my kids, maybe it could help other children, too. Weren’t we all working for the same goal?

When I first broached the idea with Jeff in our kitchen, I had no idea where founding AllergyKids was going to lead me. But I guess I knew, even then, that there was no way I was going on this journey all by my­self. Somehow, some way, a lot of other folks were going to be part of it.

Becoming “The Allergy Detective”

I’ll be honest: one of the scariest experiences of my life was finding out that Tory had a food allergy. I understood — intellectually, at least — that what she had was probably not life-threatening. And when the allergist finally confirmed that she was allergic to eggs, I felt an enormous sense of relief. At least now I knew what to protect her from.

More from TODAY Makeover! She was bullied into cutting her hair  Treatment improving burned triplets’ scars | Images Six foods that take a bite out of the flu ‘Loser’: A player’s past choices haunt her   Images: Unlikely animal pals: Pig and tiger, more

But along with the relief, I was terribly frightened. During that first visit, the specialist had also told me that Tory’s allergic reaction meant that she was at an increased risk for other food allergies and maybe for asthma as well. As I listened to the confusing, contradictory advice that the allergist laid out for me, I felt as though my head was going to ex­plode. Raising four kids was hard enough. Was I really up to these new demands?

MORE FROM

How one mom learned to translate baby cries

How one mom learned to translate baby cries Quiz: Test your smarts about children’s health ‘Stand by Her’: A breast cancer guide for men Cesar Millan: How to help your pup learn Mom's guide to a happy work-home balance The birds and bees: Talking sex with your child One mother’s battle to save her son from OCD The worst meals for kids ‘Josie’s Story’ turns grief to patient-safety fight Yay! 101 real solutions for bewildered parents   Add headlines to your news reader: