Lorna recently contacted me in desperation. Her courage award story [1647] demonstrates:
- our food regulators are failing to protect us
- food manufacturers can now deceive consumers by hiding nasty additives while claiming “free from artificial preservatives”
- propionate preservatives can ruin lives – and are now hidden in staple foods
- no wonder bad behaviour, mental health problems like anxiety and health issues like insomnia and racing heart are increasing, and doctors don’t know why
Lorna’s story
Lorna had started her children on the diet on the recommendation of her GP:
“He'd seen a book called Fed Up by Sue Dengate and thought it would be helpful with our children's intolerances. If only every GP prescribed this book! It became our lifesaver, our go-to.”
On the diet, her children were “calm, happy, restful, and healthy”. Over the years, they became more tolerant of certain foods, but kept avoiding “certain poisonous additives eg 160b and the 280 preservatives which without fail cause issues. Even for the adults in the family.”
Then, 25 years after first trying the diet, things started to change… “so subtly that I never connected the changes with food …“
“Our happy teenagers became sullen, grumpy, argumentative and restless.
We all suffered skin break outs.
Anxiety levels were high…
My husband developed severe insomnia… along with a racing heart. Part of old age we thought. And the doctor agreed... racing heart - you'll just have to learn to live with it.”
After many months, Lorna contacted me in desperation, and I answered:
"There is now a "Clean Label" movement…to remove additive numbers (such as 282) and chemical sounding names (such as preservative calcium propionate) and replace them with innocent sounding names (such as cultured dextrose). This has happened in gluten free bread quite recently …I wonder if your husband is currently eating the bread preservative without realising it?”
She replied:
“Thank you Sue from the bottom of our hearts. That was exactly it. I was not up to date with this clean label movement and in all of my label checking we had been deceived. All our lives we had avoided 282 like the plague... until they gave it an innocent name. Which took us on a very, very unpleasant detour.”
Long term effects of propionate preservatives in Lorna’s family
“It's been a long, difficult journey back to the road we originally were on. Many months of consuming cultured dextrose left damage that has been hard to undo…The kids recovered fairly quickly, but my husband ended up doing the complete elimination diet … he has come off all his sleeping tablets, and no longer has any heart issues. His skin has also cleared up. This was a massive breakthrough! He absolutely hated having sleeping tablets. Between those and insomnia and a racing heart, his quality of life was very poor compared to our pre-preservative life when he was fit and healthy and had no sleeping issues…”
“We believe that the months of consuming cultured dextrose daily, caused the major changes to his health and worsened his food sensitivities to the point that he became intolerant to almost everything!”
Lorna’s conclusion
“Surely our story can convince anyone with health issues to take a good look at their diet….Thank you again Sue and keep up your amazing work” – Lorna
See the full COURAGE AWARD story [1647]
More info and links to science in blog Hidden Additives
