Allergic to Everything

How Evolve Paleo Chef became an allergy-friendly resource in Kansas City.

I have been in the meal-planning and meal-delivery business for a few years now, and something that I have come to notice is that we serve more and more families with allergies and intolerance. Being in the food industry, I have worked at my fair share of restaurants and you hear it in the kitchen all the time: People are allergic to everything from gluten, to peanuts, to mayonnaise, and everything in between. But why? This is not the way it used to be- even in the past 20 years. Why are we all so sensitive? Have we become a society of pansies?

There are a few prevailing theories. First, we have diminished the amount of bacteria in our gut. In other words, we live in such a clean society, from our hygiene to our food, that we haven’t built up any immunity to some things. Check this study out:

“A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences compared the gut bacteria from 15 children in Florence, Italy, with gut bacteria in 14 children in a rural African village in Burkina Faso. They found that the variety of flora in these two groups was substantially different.
The children in the African village live in a community that produces its own food. The study authors say this is closer to how humans ate 10,000 years ago. Their diet is mostly vegetarian. By contrast, the local diet of European children contains more sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods. The study authors posit that these factors result in less biodiversity in the organisms found inside the gut of European children.
The decrease in richness of gut bacteria in Westerners may have something to do with the rise in food allergies in industrialized countries, said Dr. Paolo Lionetti of the department of pediatrics at Meyer Children Hospital at the University of Florence. Sanitation measures and vaccines in the West may have controlled infectious disease, but they decreased exposure to a variety of bacteria may have opened the door to these other ailments.”

The irony here is that while we have protected ourselves from infectious diseases, we have opened ourselves up to obesity, asthma, autoimmune disease, and allergies. Now I know this is just a small study, but it could provide big answers.

The second prevailing theory is that we are not exposing children to allergens soon enough, in a similar vein as the theory above. Do you wait to give your kid peanuts in an effort to shield them from getting an allergy? That waiting could, in fact, be exactly what causes an allergy to develop.

So what can we do?

We don’t know exactly why we are getting more allergic to foods, but we know that, for some reason, we are. So, what can be done about it? I don’t know. I am not a doctor nor a scientist. I am a chef, and all I can do is cook food for people with allergies and prepare meals in such a way as to not get them sick. That is what we do here at Evolve. Through our weekly meal delivery services in Kansas City, Wichita (new locations in Omaha and NW Arkansas), we bend over backward to make food for those that are avoiding certain allergens. We also ship gluten-, dairy- and soy-free snacks and pantry items all over the United States. We do not have all the answers, for if we did, we would not be in the food business. We would be in the book writing business. All we can do is to come along beside you and be a resource for your journey.

For the most part, we can customize any food option for you. If you have any requests, please do not hesitate to put them in the special request box when you place your order. While we can’t do everything, we can do a lot. Please let us know how we can help you. If you have any questions about what we do, or how we do it, please do not hesitate to call 913-747-5559 or email me at caleb@evolvepaleochef.com.

Feel Better…Live Paleo,

Chef Caleb Summers