Norma, your story of rice allergy in an Asian persons does not
surprise me at all from what I have read - in Brostoff and Gamlin's
book 'Food Allergies and Food Intolerance', I think.

The basic trend seems to be for the 'staple food' of the culture to
be the one that causes the highest incidences of intolerance. Hence
wheat and cows' milk in Western cultures. Think how often those of us
in Western countries have a meal or snack that *doesn't* contain both
of these proteins (unless you are purposely avoiding them, of
course). Not often, eh?

And I understand that corn allergies/intolerances are more common in
USA than other Western countries. Am I correct in thinking that
Americans, especially those in southern states (and also in Mexico),
eat more corn products than people in other Western countries?

The theory to explain this phenomenon (from my memory of reading
about this) is that the body can take only so much of a foreign
protein before it reacts. Our bodies are not really designed to have
'staple' foods as such - we are designed for a great variety as
hunter/gatherers, also varying the foods with the seasons. Once we
settled down and started farming and eating the same foods very
frequently all year round, we started having trouble with
intolerances.

Development of allergies may also depend partly on how much *intact*
foreign protein gets into the bloodstream after eating. A proportion
of the proteins are *not* digested into basic units. Some people seem
to have more 'leaky' guts than others. This is the basis of the
treatment of giving pancreatic enzymes to the breastfeeding mother to
reduce the intact proteins getting into her milk.

Of course, the young baby has a very 'leaky' gut, designed to allow
large colostral and other breastmilk proteins to enter the baby's
system to protect it and assist in development. When babies are given
foreign proteins before their guts have 'closed' (relatively
speaking), then the intact foreign proteins have the ability to get
through to sensitise the immune system, and set up allergies.

Another interesting thing about food, especially plant foods, is that
each contains toxins that prevent it being 'eaten out' such that it
becomes extinct. This is *natural selection* at work. The vegetables
and fruit that are 'edible and non-poisonous' to us still contain
some of these toxins, but we have evolved simultaneously to be able
to detoxify these, usually in the liver. When we eat too much of one
food, we can overwhelm this detoxification process and the toxins can
have adverse effects. Also, there is a variation between people in
their ability to do this - some react sooner than others.

I am no expert on this, so don't quote all this as *mine* - it is
just from what I have read and it sounds logical to me. I think this
is all very fascinating, though. I would be interested in what the
dieticians amongst us think about all this.

You may be thinking that this is really 'off-topic', however, I think
information on this topic is invaluable when working with
breastfeeding mothers with unsettled and sometimes low-gaining
babies. It can be a very big part of the puzzle, that is often
presented to us as 'breastfeeding problems'.
******************************************************************
Joy Anderson B.Sc. Dip.Ed. Grad.Dip.Med.Tech. IBCLC
Australian Breastfeeding Association counsellor
Perth, Western Australia.   mailto:[log in to unmask]
******************************************************************

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