NIAGARA FALLS, Ont. – The author of an upcoming book on food says sanitary and safety standards may be making North Americans sicker.
Stephen Strauss, a Globe and Mail science writer now studying and writing at the University of Guelph, said there is growing evidence that today’s hygiene standards are so high that children are not exposed to enough germs to create internal immune systems.
The result, he told the annual meeting of the Crop Protection Institute of Canada Sept. 17, is that the rates of asthma and allergies are soaring in food-rich developed countries.
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Increasing scientific evidence points to a lack of natural immunity as the cause.
Strauss, who is writing a book about the problems and implications of living in a food-rich world, said there is growing evidence that sanitary food and attempts at a germ-free, sterilized existence are making people more susceptible to diseases that people in less developed countries can fend off.
“With every death from food borne illness that you get rid of, do you create one death from asthma?” said Strauss, noting that both kill approximately 5,000 young Americans each year.
“It often is the same age group affected.”
He said there is a “hygiene hypothesis” growing around increased illnesses in developed countries.
Studies of children in East and West Germany before unification showed lower hygienic conditions, more germs, more pollution and more crowding in East Germany. Yet children in the more affluent West Germany were more likely to have asthma, allergies and other diseases.
Asthma deaths have been rising sharply in the United States.
And a study of Swedish and Pakistani children showed that Pakistani children are more resistant to many childhood diseases.
From child birth through childhood and daily living, the presence of more germs and foreign matter on food and in other activities in developing countries may be necessary for a healthier population, Strauss said.
It is the same principle that underlies vaccination, which injects a small amount of disease to create immunity.
“It is possible we are making our world and our food too clean,” he said.
