We Can All Eat That!
“How to raise healthy adventurous eaters and help prevent food allergies” - why do we need this book?
Today many families live in fear of food. Making decisions about what to feed your family can be challenging when you are inundated daily by the media and online, with often conflicting advice.
Keep it simple
We live in an age where there is an obsession with food; magazines, blogs, food coaches, advice sites for food for all ages.
But it’s how we’re glorifying and demonising foods that concerns me.
We classify foods as good or bad, there’s superfoods and foods that create guilt every time you eat them. In packaged children’s foods on the supermarket shelves the common language we see every day is “Free from”.
The food industry and food marketing companies thrive on managing our fears and perceptions. There is a huge abundance of processed food, packaged food, or take away, ready to eat food available for every occasion and targeted at families.
Packaged food is designed for our convenience, its colourful and full of flavour (so they say) and it’s backed up by expensive marketing campaigns. But when you look on the back of many packs there’s all these things listed that you can’t buy in a supermarket- I’ve never seen anyone go shopping and ask for “ Oh I’ll have a bottle of ascorbic acid please, a bottle of high fructose corn syrup too, a can of guar gum, oh and a pack of sodium benzoate if you have that too”. That will be a hell of a dinner party! These are legal food additives and preservatives used in processed foods, but my philosophy is, if you don’t recognise an ingredient on the back of a pack as real food- put it back on the shelf. Many “Fast Foods” use processed ingredients for convenience and shelf life.
When you buy fresh vegetables, fruit and produce from your local farmers market or grocer, you know what you get. It doesn’t need a “free from” label- it’s just real food. Plus there’s usually much less packaging, and better still if it’s been grown the right way by regenerative farmers who care about their soils. Fresh produce provides some of the best sources of nutrition for you and your family and you’re doing a great service for the planet too.
Food Allergies
Although food allergies affect only a small percentage of children, about 4 - 8 per cent under the age of 5, the concern for families today is that the number of children developing food allergies, especially peanut and tree nut allergies, is continuing to rise significantly. It’s not just the children of people who have allergies who are developing them, it’s also children with no allergic history in their family. Australia has one of the highest rates of children’s food allergies in the world.
But is there a way to prevent food allergies? Allergy experts from around the world now advise that early introduction of the common food allergens to children between the ages of 6 and 12 months may greatly reduce the risk of them developing an allergy to those foods.
My journey into the world of food allergies began over 4 years ago when my son Will and I were researching baby foods and attending CSIRO seminars on children’s first foods.
Several months later I met an inspirational and dedicated woman, one of Australia’s leading Paediatric Allergists Dr Velencia Soutter. I went to meet with her to seek advice on food allergies and children’s foods. I also wanted to understand the diagnosis and treatment challenges Doctors face who treat families with food allergies and intolerances. We talked for hours, we shared a common love of “real food, grown right and cooked right”, we both lived on farms and had a passion for rainforest regeneration.
Her patients experienced such a different food world to the majority of children and families I met every day. Their food world required constant vigilance and necessary avoidance of even the smallest traces of specific foods their family members were allergic to. It is demanding and can take its toll both physically and emotionally. I wanted to share the story on what we knew about allergy prevention, what steps families could take to help prevent food allergies and to foster support for much needed research into food allergy treatment.
Although there are some great Government and Allergy Organisation websites about food allergies and ways to help prevent them, I felt that what was missing was an accessible, easy to navigate book for parents and families that gives straightforward advice and tips for navigating children’s first foods and medically sound advice on food allergies and introducing the common allergy causing foods (food allergens). Equally important were delicious recipes to put the book’s practical advice into meals for all the family to share.
It was with Velencia’s help and guidance we began this project. She made sure I covered all the medical bases and that all the advice was backed up by peer reviewed published medical research. Sadly Velencia died in late 2019 and I am truly grateful for the guidance and support from Dr Anne Swain, Dietitian at The Royal Prince Alfred Allergy Unit in Sydney
So here it is. We Can All Eat That! It’s time to get back to real food fundamentals, how to make healthy choices for your family and your children and have a conversation about what to put into our children’s meals rather than being obsessed about what to leave out.
