Adverse effects of food on human health.

Abstract

T IS BECOMING increasingly recognised that many diseases of western society are induced by the environment the kind of life we lead, the food we eat, what we drink, and the air we breathe. Adverse reactions to the ingestion of certain foods have been known since ancient times and a wide spectrum of diseases involving virtually every system in the body has been ascribed to practically everything man eats. The last few years have seen a revival of interest in the subject, although it is by no means generally accepted as a cause of ill-health by the medical profession, except in the most obvious cases. Modern medicine rests largely on a concept of disease and suffering being treated by administering something a drug or potion, to the individual. However, evidence is accumulating that a wide range of apparently unconnected ailments can be due to abnormal reactions to ingested materials and that a cure can be effected by simply withholding those materials. Difficulty also arises because symptoms are often vague rather than specific, and chronic rather than acute. Complaints of irritability, depression, fatigue, headache, joint and muscle pain or gastrointestinal disturbances may well be dismissed as being of psychological, or emotional, origin. Diagnosis is often difficult and time-consuming, and may well require skills which can be provided only by one who has taken a special interest in what has become known as ’Clinical Ecology’.