More information from
Failsafe Newsletter 48
Vets warn of deadly preservatives in pet food…..
The
Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) has issued a warning that dogs and cats
can suffer fatal health problems if they are fed exclusively with pet mince,
pet meat or pet rolls that are high in sulphites preservatives.
These
products often contain high levels of sulphur dioxide (preservative 220-228)
which is used to mask the smell and prevent discolouration of pet meat. The
high level of sulphur dioxide can effectively switch-off or inactivate the
vitamin thiamine, which is vital for brain development.
Animals
affected by thiamine deficiency may show a wide range of symptoms consistent
with brain damage. Dogs with the condition are known to tilt their heads to one
side and may appear to walk around in a confused or disoriented state. Cats can
show dilation of the eyes and neck muscle weakness leading to head bobbing.
Degeneration of brain function can quickly lead to paralysis, seizures and
death.
It is
believed that pups, kittens, and pregnant or lactating females may be more
vulnerable to the condition than other animals.
President of
the Australian Small Animal Veterinary Association, Dr Matthew Retchford, then goes on to recommend that “people who
prefer to feed their animals with meat should purchase it from a butcher,
because legislation prohibits the use of preservative in meat for human
consumption that could lead to a thiamine deficiency”.
The Food
Intolerance Network would like to add that this is true in the
Young
children are the most vulnerable to the effects of sulphites – could they also
suffer from sulphite-related thiamine deficiency? Although the effects of
sulphites on asthmatic children are well recognized, thiamine deficiency due to
sulphites has not been considered a possible cause of irritability or
Coordination Disorder (CD), a growing concern in Western countries. A young
child who was reported to this network diagnosed with vestibular dysfunction -
known to be related to thiamine deficiency - had been eating exceedingly high
doses of sulphites in dried apricots as a daily snack food but no health
professional had questioned her diet.
The World
Health Organisation recommends that the use of sulphites preservatives should
be minimized and replaced by other preservatives if possible. So far there are
few signs this is happening.
More information
AVA press release www.ava.com.au/images/news/AVA2006-019%sulfides.pdf
Steel RJ. Thiamine deficiency in a cat associated with the preservation of 'pet
meat' with sulphur dioxide. Aust Vet J 1997;75(10):719-21.
(available as free full text through www.pubmed.com)
Dangers of Dried Fruit Factsheet on www.fedup.com.au;
NSWHealth survey, sulphites in mince, 2003.
[418] My son is a state ward (May
2006)…..
I got your
book Fed Up from the library and read it over the weekend. What a revelation to
me.
He has just
been diagnosed as a possible coeliac. He has always had some intolerances and
his sister had GI probs and lactose intolerance too.
Both have not done well away from what they ate at home, which on reflection
was low gluten and low additives.
Well, at
the moment the lad is keen to clean up the diet, at least the gluten part, but
I think it is too late to mend our relationship.
I should
have done more research and figured out the food connection earlier. I did make
food connections, from when he was very young. He was lactose intolerant, had
trouble with other foods. He was also a bedwetter
until nearly 10. He always had gut problems. We noticed if he had certain foods
he would be worse, even his family day care parents learnt the hard way about
the foods. His doctors knew this, the psychologists knew this but NOBODY made
the connection. Even now the only reason he got checked out was I pushed and after
a few incidents in the unit I raised Duty of Care.
Anyway at
least I have hope now. Hope that he won't end up in the justice or mental
health system. Hope that he can get back to a normal school. Hope that maybe
one day he can come home to visit. This system he has ended up in is not used
to bright kids and he is in a school for not so bright ones. Meanwhile he has
learnt heaps of bad behaviour from others ...
I can see
that failsafe foods have been your work for years and indeed you work very hard
to get the word out. What I can't understand is why more people don't suspect
food problems in behaviours with kids. How many more families have to go
through what we have been through?
So Sue if
any of our story helps other families or professionals
please go ahead and use it. You don't have children for other people to raise. I should count myself fortunate I still get a say as
I am still a guardian but it is difficult and if the connections had been made
when I first suspected them none of this need have happened - reader, Vic.
[413] Relentless dry cough - I was unaware of the
food-asthma connection (May 2006)….
After the
game his father bought him a sausage sandwich. He started coughing sometime that
afternoon and continued for several days. On the Monday and Tuesday at school
he came last in the cross country practices on both days, and came home
extremely ill on the Tuesday, still coughing continuously. He stayed at home on
the Wednesday with ventolin and the vaporizer and
gradually recovered.
He was
still coughing a little but much better the following Sunday, when we were
unavoidably delayed whilst out. The kids were starving at lunchtime and begging
for hot chips. At this point I was not aware of the food-asthma connection nor of the sulphites in hot chips. Later that afternoon he
quickly began to get much worse again and needed the puffer and vaporiser again
on the Sunday and Monday night. By the Tuesday night he didn't need the puffer
or vaporiser anymore and went to soccer training on the Wednesday night without
coughing or chest pains. He has eaten 100 per cent failsafe since then (4 weeks
later) with absolutely no sign of the asthma cough despite plenty of exercise
and sport. He actually won his school cross country - no reactions at all
afterwards or during, whilst plenty of kids were, in his words, "dropping
like flies with asthma attacks all around him" - some quite seriously so!
Of course, as usual, the school had a sausage sizzle going all that day to
raise money - bizarre isn't it?
I wrote a
record of this for myself to help me work out cause and effect, as I gradually
started to realise the connection after I had gone over everything else they
had eaten during that time - which was all failsafe. The camp food, sausage and
hot chips were the only things not failsafe,
and his
coughing reactions began within a couple of hours of consumption. I am
extremely grateful to you and your books for having made him almost failsafe at
the time, to enable me to so clearly observe cause and effect with the food and
the exercise – reader, NSW.
