For most of her life, Zen Honeycutt, 51, ate store-bought food. And why wouldn’t she?
“I trusted what was in the grocery store to be regulated and safe,” said Honeycutt, a mother of three sons who lives in Alexander, North Carolina. “I thought I was eating healthy.”
It wasn’t until her first newborn son was covered head to toe in rashes that she thought there could be something wrong with his food—or hers, really, since she nursed him for all his meals. After a doctor diagnosed her son with a dairy allergy, Honeycutt went cold turkey on milk, cheese, and yogurt. But new problems developed for her child, including asthma, stomachaches, and facial swelling. Within a few years, she said he suffered from “more than 20 food intolerances”—to dairy, nuts, and even to a thing called carrageenan, a seaweed-based thickening agent.
“My doctor told me my son was going to die from a nut allergy, and it was only going to get worse,” she told me.
“It was unfathomable,” she added. “How does this happen to a kid?”
After switching her three children to an all-organic diet, she said “a miracle” occurred—they no longer broke out in rashes or cried for hours on end. And the deadly allergies that plagued her first-born, the doctor said, were no longer going to kill him.
“I have total peace of mind because my son will not die from food,” she said.