Some interesting links and resources

• Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Allergy Unit is the world's leader in food intolerance treatment: http://www.sswahs.nsw.gov.au/rpa/allergy/. You can see Dr Anne Swain’s original thesis on salicylates at http://www.sswahs.nsw.gov.au/rpa/allergy/research/students/1988/AnneSwainPhDThesis.pdf
• The most recent tables showing salicylates, amines and natural glutamates are available in the book Friend Food by Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Allergy Unit, see above.
• Unlike the majority of institutions giving health advice, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest is a non-profit health advocacy organisation. One highlight of their website is an unbiased scientific assessment of 23 controlled diet-behaviour studies. "Diet, ADHD and Behaviour, a quarter-century review" charges that federal agencies, professional organisations and the food industry have ignored the growing evidence that diet affects behaviour. It recommends that unnecessary additives should be banned, and points the finger, with quotes, at organisations and individual researchers who ignore or deny the evidence. The 2 page press release is a good one to give to doubting health professionals: www.cspinet.org/new/adhdpr.html . You can see a summary of the report.

· Improving children’s behaviour with SAFE food alternatives: Melbourne-based Additive Education is committed to informing families about the additives that are in the foods they eat and the potential effects of those additives. Often very simple changes are all that is needed to ensure that the food we provide to the children in our care is free of harmful additives. We offer additive audits of packaged products and processed foods (very useful for childcare centres) and assist with the development of additive free menus for all types of services and functions (ideal for canteens). Customised workshops can be tailored for different ages and interests in the community. The presentation, “Fed Up with Children’s Behaviour”, is ideal for parent groups, kindergartens and maternal health centres to educate parents and carers about the effects of food additives on children. To subscribe for free to the SAFE newsletter send an email to safenewsletter-subscribe@googlegroups.com. Supermarket tours can be organised for small groups or individuals exploring Failsafe or just Additive Free options in the supermarket isles. http://www.additiveeducation.com.au

· Report adverse reactions to medications: Consumer Adverse Medication Events Line: Ph 1300134237, http://www.tga.gov.au/adr/bluecard.htm

• www.additivealert.com.au is the website of a recent book Additive Alert: Your Guide to Safer Shopping by Julie Eady, which provides solid information about additives, the regulatory system and how to influence food manufacturers. Food additives are not only linked to food intolerance effects. For more about the link with cancers, which additives are banned in other countries and more, visit the Additive Alert site.

· Olivia and Bridy have written a good recipe book about going low-additive: www.lowtonoadditives.com

· See Karen Slimak's study with 49 autistic children on diet and VOC avoidance ("the children on the program returned to normal") at http://www.immuneweb.org/articles/slimak.html

· Vets warn of deadly preservative in pet food: http://www.ava.com.au/news.php?c=0&action=show&news_id=165

· Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has done more for kids’ health with his videos and no-nonsense approach than years of government “programs” in the UK. www.jamieoliver.co.uk

• Reviews of books related to food intolerance – your contributions welcome.

· Rachel's Environmental and Health newsletters are named after Rachel Carson, the biologist who alerted the world to the dangers of pesticides. Why are people more sensitive to food chemicals now than 50 years ago? We know that exposure to chemicals can increase our sensitivity to foods. To find out more about environmental chemicals, visit www.rachel.org. In particular, see newsletters #726 and #712 (use "children" as the search keyword).

· As Physicians for Nuclear Responsibility, this group won a Nobel Peace Prize. Now they have broadened their concerns and produced possibly the most significant document you will ever read about the future of our children. IN HARM'S WAY: TOXIC THREATS TO CHILD DEVELOPMENT (Cambridge, Mass.: Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, May 2000) is available of the web at http://www.igc.org/psr/ or as a paper copy from GBPSR in Cambridge, Mass.; telephone 617-497-7440.

· The Parents Jury is a web-based network of parents who wish to improve the food and physical activity environments for children in Australia http://www.parentsjury.org.au/

• Here's a fantastic cartoon for your school or office or to send to the media: click on it for a large printable version:

· For a wider range of treatments for autism, check out http://helpingtogrow.istores.com/autism

· Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden program helps kids understand good food and be involved in producing it: http://www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au/

· The Chemical Maze warns that their books may seriously influence what foods you buy: www.thechemicalmaze.com

· www.smart-mums.com.au was created 12months ago for Busy Australian Mums by 2 Mums who wanted everything a parent needs in one place to save time and frustration.

• A safe food lobbying group in New Zealand that offers information on a variety of food issues that regulatory authorities prefer not to deal with. These include additives, pesticides, genetic engineering, irradiation, fluoridation and the advantages of organic food http://www.safefood.org.nz/
• Allergy free products through the web, many failsafe http://www.allergyblock.com.au/ - a family company in Victoria, Australia.
• Here’s a US-based resource centre on food intolerance http://foodintolerancehq.com/foodintolerance/, not failsafe.
• A Failsafe recipe website run by members: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~failsafe/
• Links to Learning has achieved good results with Music-Based Auditory Stimulation, where the client listens through headphones to a series of specially engineered classical music CDs which have been specially produced to stimulate the brain's auditory pathways. It's called The Listening Program®, and is produced by an American company called Advanced Brain Technologies: www.links2learning.com.au

· For a huge amount of information about MSG (monosodium glutamate, flavour enhancer 621) www.truthinlabeling.org

• After researching food additives for a high school assignment, 18 year old Jonah Lavitt stopped eating food additives, lost 10 pounds in a month, has more energy, fewer sick days and better moods more often. Join Jonah in his Fight against Food Additives at http://home.comcast.net/~jonahlavitt/Jonah.html
• Bernard Trudgett, leader of the Illawarra FI support group, has his own failsafe site at http://www.ozemail.com.au/~btrudget

· Epileptic seizures are highly likely to be related to foods in epileptics from food intolerant families (see Egger paper in references). Many network members have identified seizure-provoking food chemicals by using the diet recommended on these pages. But what do you do with a young child who is having 50+ seizures a day and is already heavily medicated with non-failsafe medication? The kuekids website http://home.iprimus.com.au/kuekids/home describes a different diet - but read the food intolerance page - many of these families eventually find their answers through failsafe. Remember that food chemicals passing through breastmilk can cause seizures in breastfed babies.

• Here are some shocking public notices run in The New York Times by the Centre for Children's Health and the Environment in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. To whom are our regulators listening if hospitals have to pay to advertise the harm caused by industrial, food and other chemicals?

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• For people with chemical as well as food sensitivities: Australian Chemical Trauma Alliance, http://members.ozemail.com.au/~actall/
• If your child is sensitive to environmental chemicals, read the following book then give it to your school principal - "The Toxic Playground", by Jo Immig, from the Total Environment Centre, www.tec.nccnsw.org.au
• How food manufacturers manipulate us consumers - the polished and entertaining anti-McDonalds website provides chilling insights into the reality of multinational marketing, see www.McSpotlight.org
• A panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine in Washington DC now say it is "biologically plausible" that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative in some vaccines, could cause developmental disorders. For more information about thimerosal and late-onset autism, see www.safeminds.org
• Got a story about the effect of food additives in your family? Visit A Current Affair's website "Got a story to for ACA?" http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/
• To find a source of preservative-free bread near you, see http://www.brumbys.com.au/fr_localityguide.htm and http://bakersdelight.com.au for plain breads, or http://www.laucke.com.au/retail_premixes.asp for breadmaker premixes, available in most supermarkets.
• Worried about soy? See a report on the benefits and risks of soy products by the doctors from Harvard Medical School, www.health.harvard.edu/medline/Women/W801a.html .
• For true allergies (not intolerances), see the website of FACTS, Food Anaphylactic Children's Training and Support Group in Australia, www.allergyfacts.org.au. There’s also a fairly indiscriminate international site http://battlingallergies.com/foodallergynetwork/
• In the USA, excellent diet support for children's behaviour is provided by the Feingold Association, using the old Feingold diet (not as effective as failsafe, but works well for some people), www.Feingold.org .
• In the UK, the Hyperactive Children's Support Group http://www.hacsg.org.uk/ strongly supports dietary management for children's behaviour, using the old Feingold diet. Email web@hacsg.org.uk.
• An Australian website for people with chemical, environmental and food sensitivities: the Allergy, Sensitivity and Environmental Health Association of Queensland http://www.asehaqld.org.au/ . There’s also an international site on global chemical pollution and multiple chemical sensitivity run from Australia http://www.mcs-global.org/
• Learning Connections at http://www.learningconnections.com.au/ offer a full range of programs to help children with learning difficulties and are very failsafe-friendly. They also offer innovative programs for stimulating brain development from birth to two and a half years at www.brightstart.com.au
• The Raising Difficult Children program in Australia for behaviour (and self) management once the diet is working http://www.difficultchildren.org/
• Not failsafe, but useful for people who are gluten-intolerant: http://www.celiac.com/index.html .
• author Barbara Pheloung's website http://www.movetolearn.com.au/ for children with learning disabilities supports learning through movement programs and diet (not necessarily failsafe).
• http://www.foodcanmakeyouill.co.uk/ provides a wide range of information based in part on Royal Prince Alfred Hospital's work.
• This is how the government protects or fails to protect Australian and New Zealand consumers against the effects of harmful food additives: www.foodstandards.gov.au
• The site Remedyfind is a non-commercial, unbiased, international site that allows patients to rate the effectiveness of different treatments they have used for specific chronic health conditions, including Asthma. http://www.remedyfind.com/rem.asp?ID=5123 http://www.remedyfind.com/rem.asp?ID=5122
• A huge amount of ADD/ADHD information collected into one place, but USA-centric, at http://www.adhd-hq.com/
• www.kidsbehaviour.co.uk/home.htm has behavioural information
• There's interesting accurate information at http://www.alternativebaby.net for those who want to look at chemical-free alternatives with babies.

Got a question or comment? You are very welcome to email me. I love to hear about success stories, progress updates, suggestions and questions (although please, read the FAQs and checklist of common mistakes first): suedengate@ozemail.com.au.