Do you need another reason to eat more fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts?
If you’re pregnant or a woman thinking about getting pregnant sometime, how about evidence that suggests following the Mediterranean diet during pregnancy helps prevent asthma and allergies in children?
I’m sure you’ve heard of this eating plan before, since it’s gotten fairly trendy over the last several years for weight loss and overall good health. Basically, you’re supposed to eat as the Mediterraneans do since they tend to have long lives with low rates of things like heart disease and diabetes. That means meals heavy on the fish, nuts, and produce and light on red meat and highly processed foods, among other changes.
We’ve seen similar stories about asthma and nutrition before. Just last year, apples and fish popped up on the food and asthma radar, and complementary medicine advocate Dr. Weil recommended eating more anti-inflammatory fats like olive oil in this book back in 2001.
But researchers in this study found the group of mothers who ate more foods on the Mediterranean diet during pregnancy had fewer children with asthma and allergy symptoms at age 6, while they noticed no major reduction in asthma and allergies if the 6 year-olds themselves ate these foods. The results don’t mean you can feed your kid a steady diet of hot dogs and french fries once they reach elementary school, but the study sure puts farmers’ market voucher initiatives like this one in L.A. in a more crucial context.
Here are the quick and easy eating recommendations from the study:
1. Veggies at least 8 times weekly
2. Fish at least 3 times weekly
3. Beans/legumes at least once weekly
4. Red meat fewer than 3-4 times weekly
In other recent asthma/allergy research:
Eczema Increases and the Environment
Maternal Depression and Asthma
FDA: Public Health Advisory for Cold Meds and Kids
I really need to catch up with all your posts! I so look forward to having something to think about here.
I wanted to comment on this because looking back on my pgcy w/ my food-allergic son, I did pretty much all of that reliably – I always cook w/ olive oil, upped my veggie intake, really worked to eat my fish etc. Yet, he still has allergies.
I do believe this information is valuable – it’s good for us to eat well anyway. (my current bandwagon is the book by Beliveau, Foods that Fight Cancer) But, with the book that I mentioned and with the article above, there can sometimes be a flavour of “blame the victim” – people in general want to say “if you do this right, you won’t have any problems” so that if something goes wrong, the person must not have done what they should. Thus there is no random element and nobody is vulnerable unless they don’t follow the right advice. THis is very reassuring because it assumes that we have control over these health issues.
I don’t mean to say you are implying this philosophy, becasue I don’t see that at all in your post – this is just more of a comment on these kind of recommendations. I follow them myself but try to take them with a grain of salt. I will do what I can to tip the balance in our favour, but at the end of the day there are more factors than I can control. Genetics we can’t do much about, and environment can be influenced … but there’s still the random factor, at least that’s how i see it.
We should still eat well to mitigate what we can, of course …
Andie
Oh, absolutely, Andie. This is an excellent point, and actually I read a post just yesterday on how parents of autistic children are often blamed, even today. I need to dig that up so I can post about here, I think……….(I’ll add it to my list, lol)
My point in posting stuff like this is that while it might not help you or me or any other asthma or food-allergic parent, women who are pregnant now and in the future could benefit. They might eat a ton of fruits and veggies and have children that develop asthma, anyway–and some of them will, of course, b/c of that random element you mention–but at the very worst, they’ll be eating a healthy diet even if it ends up having no protective effect.
I think you nailed a really important point, too–and this is something Asthmagirl has mentioned over on her blog–which is accepting that random nature even if we do want to assume that control. That’s a hard lesson to learn, and for me it sure didn’t come easily.
The “why” isn’t important so much as the “what am I going to do now?” Unless the researchers figure out exactly “why” of course, and can then figure out exactly how to prevent and/or cure it. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, thanks for such a well-thought out comment–you’ve certainly given me more to chew on.
I’m guilty of not eating the amount of fish and fruit recommended (I did eat artichokes and spinach last night in a shrimp and crab spread… that counts doesn’t it?) but I do get my beans/legumes in weekly and I rarely eat red meat.
I agree with Andie that we should absolutely do what we can to mitigate our chances of encountering disease, but her point was valid in that sometimes it just happens.
When my daughter began therapy, my grandmother gave me ‘the’ look and reminded me that no one on our side of the family had ever had THOSE issues. I know she blamed my husband for having some sort of comtaminated gene pool (bless her heart). Even when I was diagnosed with asthma a few people said that if I’d gotten the second round of antibiotics quicker, I wouldn’t have gotten it.
Who knows…? I don’t think we should hold ourselves blameless; of course we’re responsible for our own health. But there seems to be a certain amount of serendipity where it just IS.
I also think it’s healthy (to a point) to ask why… but the questions you’re asking, Amy, about how best to treat and what kind of diet or non traditional medicines can compliment traditional therapies and how can we help other newly diagnosed folks… these are wonderful, knowledge seeking questions that can benefit us all. And they’re definitely worth asking.
Thanks for doing so!
PS ~ You’re so smart! It is a sourdough recipe…. like you’ve never seen before!
Savory Sourdough Turnovers, stuffed with ham broccoli and cheese! Mmmmm. The ultimate comfort food!
Oh, EVERYTHING counts–especially in snack food, didn’t you know?
The fish is always a tough question for me, only b/c of the mercury issue. It’s hard to find fish from clean sources. I swear, a person could go crazy trying to figure it all out!
A contaminated gene pool, huh? I guess we’ve got one somewhere in my family, too.
Actually, I think poor AG DOES suffers from a combination of allergic genes (husband), autoimmune genes (my family), early birth, and just sheer bad luck.
The sourdough was totally a guess! I’ll have to check it out when it’s up although……um…….I hate cheese. HATE cheese. The rest sounds delicious, though!
You hate cheese? Are you sure? Oh dear… oh dear. How do you feel about sour cream?
As far as fish go, sardines are an excellent (if smelly!) choice. The canned ones are small (younger & easier to eat), they are low on the food chain (they haven’t been eating other fish and building up a reserve of mercury). They are fatty fish that have all the good omega-3 acids, etc. The smell can be off-putting but really the taste isn’t so bad, and you can actually get to like it! Both my kids are fans, only DS is now allergic. I was so sad for him when we got the news – his face just “fell” as they say and his chin started to wobble. So there you go – sardine fans do exist.
There are other good fish too, of course – salmon (wild) for example. I know I found a few sites out there when I was researching this.
I find it hard to imagine a life without cheese! Those turnovers sound amazing!!!!
Andie
LOL…yeah, I’ve tried to get this family eating sardines–it’s a no-go, although I like them. We’re big salmon eaters, and there’s actually a store near me that carries wild-caught from Alaska.
I guess I should’ve been more clear–I’m always wrestling with how much shellfish to eat. I live along the Gulf of Mexico, and we have some of the best shrimp in the country. They also are on the low-mercury list, but some areas of the Gulf are way more polluted than others so I try to be careful about where I buy them. And we all LOVE shrimp.
The cheese thing–you’re not the only one finding it hard. I’m 31, and in my entire life I’ve only ever met 2 other people who don’t like it, either.