What I Do Now:
Breakfast of Champions
I had just come back from a family vacation with grandparents when I read research on the creation of an allergen free liquid peanuts butter. It involves adding Polyphenols Note: "The altered protein content could have a "detrimental effect on quality and flavor."
Should I be happy about this potentially "safe" peanut butter? Hmmm. I don't believe that genetically modified foods are the predominant cause of the rise in food allergies. However, if food allergies are the result of immune system misinterpreting food proteins as FOREIGN, and therefore THREATENING agents, then...why would we want to further confuse our digestive systems with genetically disguised food? What kind of biological backlash do we risk?
Back to the Florida vacation: We got in the habit of eating breakfast on the outdoor patio by the pool. A wonderful ritual for the obvious reasons and the not so obvious - With his coffee, my father liked to eat a nutritious but pungent pickled herring lying open-faced on toast. (I should note here that my father is an extremely healthy 75 year-old.)
"He's going Old School again," my husband would whisper to me from behind the newspaper. "Love it."
So did I. Though I don't like the texture of herring, I adore my father. And his taste for smoked or pickled fish at such an early hour displayed one of the one of his healthier Eastern European comfort foods. Herring, in particular, is low in mercury and full of Omega 3 oil. Granted, the herring industry is not as lucrative as the peanut industry in the US.
Nevertheless, such a moment reminded me that that there must be a place between old-fashioned and modern dietary extremes, between eating at the much idealized organic farm table and cozying up to genetically altered liquid peanut butter.
Now that I'm back home (in the rain) food allergies and all, I think that it is most practical for my family to aim to be somewhere in the middle of those food philosophies - preferably in the sunshine.