Milling & Baking News - July 19, 2016 - 39

Allergy research group seeks
food industry assistance
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Lesley Solomon's 7-year-old son is allergic to
milk, peanuts and tree nuts.
"We live and breathe by labels,"
she said. "We buy the same things
over and over again because they
are tried and true."
Her son's safety depends a great
deal upon how food companies label their products and how they
keep potential allergens from entering products.
"Thank you for being as careful
as you possibly can," she said to the
food industry in general.
Ms. Solomon also is asking the
food industry to help support a new
endeavor. Founded this year, the
Food Allergy Science Initiative will
be centered at the Broad Institute
of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge.
Initial supporters have committed
about $10 million, including $3 million from the Richard and Susan
Smith Family Foundation, a privately-funded family foundation in
Newton, Mass.
"If the food industry got behind
this, it would be so amazing to see
them support this effort," Ms. Solomon said.
She said that, through research,
foods currently not found in the
homes of people with allergens might
be safe to be there again one day. Her
home has neither nuts nor milk in it.
"My hope is one day we will be
able to have these foods in our homes
again, but we've got a lot of work to
do before we get there," she said.
The Food Allergy Science Initiative will explore the biological
mechanisms behind food allergens
and seek to develop new diagnostics
and treatments. One area of research
will focus on the mechanisms of allergen sensing, such as the body determining how to react to different
food components and determining
whether they are healthy or harmful.
Other areas of research are the cellular landscape of the gut, immune
response to allergens, the role of microbiota in food allergy, and clinical
and translational projects.
About 8% of American children
suffer from food allergies, according to the Broad Institute. The
prevalence of food allergies among
American children up to age 17 increased to 5.1% in 2009-11 from 3.4%
in 1997-99, according to a May 2013
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report from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Atlanta.
Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Ph.D., the
David W. Wallace professor of immunology at Yale University School
of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.,
will lead research at the Food Allergy Science Initiative.
An imbalance in the immune system may cause allergies, he said.
"What can lead to imbalance is
both the presence of something that
wasn't meant to be there or the absence of something that was meant
to be there," he said.
He said the increasing rate of American children with allergies might stem
from changes in the environment.
"There are many things that go
into the modern environment," Dr.
Medzhitov said.
Both hygiene products and food
products are examples. A hygiene

Education and Research

of reduced exposure to chemicals
that are normally found in natural
foods and also in whole foods," Dr.
Medzhitov said. "That is the unappreciated, unrecognized factor that
I feel might be very important here
although we don't have any evidence for it yet. It is something that
we will be investigating."
Besides Dr. Medzhitov, other scientific leaders for the Food Allergy
Science Initiative will come from
Brigham and Women's Hospital,
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Ms. Solomon, who works at
Brigham and Women's Hospital, and
three other mothers helped to create
the initiative. One of the mothers,
Christine Olsen, M.D., works at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Mothers of children with allergies
tend to communicate.
"Whenever there's a change, or
whenever there's a problem, it kind
of goes out across the mom blogs online," Ms. Solomon said. "When one

The prevalence of food
allergies among American
children up to age 17
increased to 5.1% in 200911 from 3.4% in 1997-99.
- the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention

hypothesis is that the increasing use
of hygiene products has reduced
people's exposure to microbes.
"Because we are not exposed to
enough microbial challenges, now the
immune system is going haywire and
starts to react to things it shouldn't be
reacting to, like substances in the food
or in the air," Dr. Medzhitov said.
For food products, research will
focus on various artificial substances added to food in recent years,
such as for reasons of preservation
and taste modification.
The elimination of natural substances in food also might play a role.
"It's more of my hunch more than
anything else at this point," he said.
He said the immune system possibly was meant to encounter chemicals naturally found in whole foods.
Industrial production of refined
foods accidentally might take out
those chemicals.
"Just like we have reduced exposure to microbes, we now might
be experiencing the consequences

company starts to add peanut flour
into their products, everyone knows,
everyone talks about it. Whenever
there is cross-contamination, everyone knows, everyone talks about it."
Mothers also will relay how a
company's customer service representative responds to a call. Ms.
Solomon said she once called Unilever customer service and asked
about any potential for cross-contamination in Popsicle products.
The person on the phone walked
her through the company's process
to avoid cross-contamination, such
as by explaining how the lines operated and how they were cleaned.
"It was amazing," Ms. Solomon
said. MBN
Milling & Baking News XJuly 19, 2016 / 39

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Milling & Baking News - July 19, 2016

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