Stawberry Allergy OR Chemical Allergy?

My breakfast with mini Arctic Strawberries

that I grow organically in my garden.

Now, that is the question!!! And my girlfriend Cindy of Cindy’s Art and Soul on Etsy brought up an interesting comment the other day when we were talking, and I want to share her idea here with you. Read on… but first I want to apologize for not having posted much these past few days, we've had really bad thunderstorms every day and so I was offline a lot.

For those of you that were reading my old blogger blog, until I moved my blog here on Typepad, you probably know that, unfortunately, I suffer from a good number of allergies (food and environmental).

Back on January 1st 2009, I took the 30-day Pledge to go VEG (eat vegetarian for 30 days and a tree would be planted for my efforts – that’s a win-win if you ask me). Not only did I enjoy doing this challenge, I also saw an improvement in terms of my allergies and my health in general very quickly.

In those 30 days, I realized that by not eating meat, which usually contains various growth hormones and antibiotics (because the animals are susceptible to disease so they pump medicine in them to keep them as disease-free as possible), I felt a whole lot better overall after just a couple of weeks. It was incredible.

During that time, I was also able to confirm what I had suspected for awhile, but wasn’t sure because the stuff is found in about 90% of all commercial/ready to eat foods, that I’m allergic to Soy (Soy beans, Soybean Oil, Soy Lecithin, Tofu), and after staying away from all of these things for a few months, I realized that I wasn’t having any allergies flaring up on me anymore.

Now, this is a big thing for me, because even the so-called non-drowsy allergy meds put me flat out to sleep. I’m talking the kind of sleep that you cannot stay awake even if they paid you a million bucks to fight it. I just cannot function when I take these pills. The brand doesn’t matter. They all do this to me. Heck, even regular Tylenol knock me out. I have no clue why, but it’s as potent to me as sleeping pills would be.

Anyway, back to the point:

After being totally off the allergy meds for a few months (alleluia!!!), I had purchased some commercial strawberries and one evening, I had my bowl (I usually have a bowl of cereals for a snack with blueberries or raspberries) and I broke out in a violent allergic reaction (sneezing uncontrollably, eyes watering like crazy, nose running, breathing became more and more difficult and that turned into an asthma attack - I hadn’t had one of those in years.

Holly dangerous strawberries!!!

I waited 2 weeks and repeated the same exact experiment with fresh commercial strawberries to see if that was a fluke, or if I had reacted to something else (but I eat the same cereals and use the same milk and have had no problems before), and sure enough, I got the same exact reaction.  Nasty reaction.

I tried it again another 2 weeks later. Same nasty allergic reaction. 3 times couldn’t be wrong…. or could it?

I was eating strawberries all the time in the past, it’s my favorite fruit. I was also constantly on anti-allergy meds prior to starting the Veg-Pledge as well (so that probably help to keep this problem hidden). And I was reading about allergies to strawberries that it’s one of the 7 top food allergens. Apparently, it has something to do with the protein in the fruit (the protein linked to the color & taste of strawberries btw) and researchers in a European country have managed to remove that protein, but it removes the color and the taste as well, so they’re still working on this.

Anyway, I was sad all Winter and Spring because I knew that my little Arctic Strawberries growing in my garden would feed everybody else but me, since I thought I was allergic to strawberries.

But all these tempting pretty berries were just too much for me to pass up, so when they started coming up in our backyard and the first few were ready to pick, I had to taste one, then two, then a few more. No reaction.

A couple of days later, I grabbed a few more, no reaction at all. So then a whole bunch were ready at once (a handful) and so I decided to have my bowl of cereal (Kashi puffed cereal doesn’t have soy in it, but some other Kashi cereals do, so if you’re allergic to soy, read the labels to find the Kashi flavors that don’t have soy in there).

Results: NO ALLERGIC REACTION AT ALL!!!

I’ve now had several bowls of my own naturally grown strawberries as pictured above (they are grown with sunshine, water and love, I use nothing else), and I have had no reaction at all. Not once! Not a smidgen, nothing, zip, nada!

So I was telling Cindy about this and then she casually said:

“And what if you were reacting to the chemicals or pesticides that they spray on commercial crops/commercials strawberries instead of the fruit itself?”

LIGHTBULB MOMENT!!!!!

(Cindy, you are a genius!)

So I’m now searching for organically grown strawberries (I haven’t found any yet in my two supermarkets – they have organic veggies but somehow no organic fruits?) because I want to test out that theory. It makes sense, really. A strawberry no matter what type, is a strawberry and it contains that protein that is supposed to be the culprit in creating nasty allergies, but to go from major allergic reaction, tested it 3 times, and have not a smidgen of a reaction with naturally grown berries makes me wonder. I always carefully wash my fruits and vegetables (I'm like Monk on TV, very anal about this stuff), but I'm thinking that the pesticides/chemicals penetrate the cells of the fruit and that cannot be washed off.

Maybe I’m not really allergic to strawberries after all (and maybe it's the case for some other people too) but we could be reacting to the chemicals/pesticides used on the crops – it makes sense!

Has anyone else seen or heard of such a thing?

Anyone has any ideas about this or other similar findings with other fruits and veggies?

Leave me your comments please, while I enjoy yet another bowl of my delicious natural home-grown strawberries without having any allergic reaction what-so-ever :)

Comments

[Cindy Pack]

Glad I could help! :) I do think that might be the answer. I will try some organic as well and see if it helps me. I'll let you know. I don't have major reactions, but my mouth and throat itch when I eat fruit sometimes. And even though they are washed and clean- I don't think you can ever get rid of the pesticides completely. Glad we talked about this! I will give it a try too! :)

[Nathalie]

Make sure to let me know how you feel, of if you feel any different Cindy - thanks again!

[Susmitha Subbaraju]

Great post!

When we were kids, people used to tell us that eating certain fruits like grapes would cause a sore throat.
But mom always said that was because of the pesticides (which grapes are notorious for!) and not the fruit itself.
So we always put the grapes in warm water with salt and baking soda and let them sit in there for half an hour.
Then we rinse wash them thoroughly and eat. I guess some pesticides will remain in the fruit but this method comes close to removing almost all of the nasty stuff.

[Donna]

Nath, you and Cindy are absolutely right. The pesticides they put on our veggies and fruits are not good for us. So if you can grow them, or buy them are the supermarkets organicall grown, that's the best for you. A lot of people think they have allergies to certain foods when in reality it's the garbage they put on those foods.

Great article!

[Tamara]

Strawberries are definitely one of the most heavily pesticide-treated types of produce, so it certainly seems possible! Have you seen the 'dirty dozen' list that tells which kinds of produce have the most pesticides? I find it very helpful in deciding which things to buy organic and which to buy conventional (and save some $$$). :-)

[Nathalie]

Hi Susmitha, Donna and Tamara :) (all A's! LOL)

Sus, I never thought of using baking soda to clean them, but that makes sense! I have been using a mixture of water and vinegar, but after doing a bit of research online just now, it looks like my solution wasn't strong enough. Looking here, there's several different home made recipes for fruits and veggie 'washing solutions' and my vinegar-water solution was too weak:

http://www.stretcher.com/stories/00/001127b.cfm

(Btw, the Dollar Stretcher website has been around for a very long time. It's a great site with TONS of info on how to save money on all sorts of things. There's loads of excellent tips. Check it out!)

Tamara - I didn't know that Strawberries are one of the most heavily pesticide-treated type of produce :( and I haven't seen the dirty dozen list either.

I just had a look online and found the list here:

http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/pesticides.htm

Wow! That is an eye opener!!! Thanks Tamara for mentioning it! I'm printing out the page and I'm going to share the info with my family.

Last night I went to the bigger grocery store nearby as that's where I buy my Amy's Vegetarian frozen products (their Soy-Free products only, of course) and they had a few new things in there, amongst which I found some new Organically grown frozen fruits. In the past, they only carried the President's Choice Organic Blueberries (I have no problems with regular blueberries and regular raspberries), but now they have some other frozen fruits in there, including organic frozen strawberries!

So I bought some and I will give those my test. I'll let you all know how it goes :)

[Steve]

You also want to make sure that you're buying CERTIFIED organic. Food companies are playing fast and loose with the name "organic". Technically anything that is alive is organic.

The other thing you want to do is stay away from genetically modified vegetables and fruits. You'd be amazed at how much of your fruit and vegs are genetically modified. What they've done is remove the genes for the food to naturally break down. This way it has a longer shelf life. Unfortunately, it also means that it is no longer bio available to your body.

If you're body can't use it or bread it down for the nutrients then you're just wasting your money buying the food.

Where is true that most of our meats are now contaminated it's also true that our fruits and vegs are also contaminated. I won't even go into the general contamination of food sources in other products.

I purchase all of my fruits and vegetables in season from local farmers. I buy my meats from ranchers who specialize in grass feed organic grazing animals. I was also lactose intolerant until I started purchasing raw milk from a local dairy farmer.

[Nathalie]

Hi Steve!

Thank you very much for your comment and for stopping by my blog. I really appreciate it :)

I'm not sure for other countries, but now in Canada (since the end of June 2009), all "organic" foods must have a special logo from the government, and no other product can use the word 'organic' unless they are actually certified organic. And then, they must use the logo.

You can see the logo and read about it here on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's website:

http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/orgbio/orgbioe.shtml

This is a big step, and it will definitely help stop the abusive usage of the word 'organic'.

I grow a fair amount of my own vegetables in my garden, and we also have access to a good selection of certified organic vegetables at our market.

We (mom and I - my parents live with us) cook from scratch using fresh ingredients for the most part (since I am allergic to soy and soy by-products and that's in over 95% of commercial/packaged foods), so although it's not perfect, I'm kind of happy to have this soy allergy as it really motivates me to eat clean fresh meals prepared from scratch with fresh ingredients. And now, I am seeking and purchasing real organic vegetables and fruits, for the most part now.

I really believe that we wouldn't have nearly as many cases of Cancer (in particular) and other health problems if we did not consume all this contaminated food.

We are what we eat. There's no way of getting around that.

[allergist]

i think it's not the strawberries, it's the chemicals inside the strawberries. i agree with tamara. Strawberries are definitely one of the most heavily pesticide-treated types of produce.

-luke