Mommy, what's ham?

Tartiflette - a famous dish in the French region of Upper Savoy, consisting of potatoes, reblochon cheese, and chunks of ham.  I ordered it for lunch during our ski vacation in the Alps, with a plate of ham and sausage varieties on the side. Kids would not touch any of it.

When we moved to Madagascar, we had to be careful about what we ate. Strawberries were a no-no (pig manure possibly containing worms could have been used as fertilizer - the worms can get inside the permeable skin of the strawberries and then you eat them and you could get a worm in your brain). I also stopped buying pork and ham for the family because of sanitation conditions in the local pork industry. This was a radical change from Italy, where prosciutto crudo (cured ham) was a family staple.

Fast forward two years later, and we had move to Kuwait. In Kuwait, just like back in Madagascar, we eat no pork products, not because of sanitation issues, but because we're in an Islamic state where the raising or importation of any and all pork products has been banned.

Last night, I read the Bambino the book Green Eggs Ham just before bedtime. At the end of the book, I asked the Bambino, in a teasing kind of way because he is such an incredibly picky eater, "Do YOU like green eggs and ham?"

"What's ham?", he replied.

This is what I get for not serving my children pork products for a period of five years straight.

To be honest, I did try to serve pork back in France last summer, but the kids didn't take to it. They weren't used to it. They picked the lardons out of the penne pasta with parmesan cheese that I had served them. They wouldn't have any of the organic pork sausage that I had bought at the farmer's market. They've never fancied sandwiches of any kind, so I don't bother preparing them. The Bambino was offered ham sandwiches at his day camp and while he did apparently eat the bread, he wouldn't touch the ham. Didn't know what it was. Didn't want to know.

I tell myself that in the long run, this is better. Pork and ham contain nitrates that have been added as a preservative. That stuff can't be good. And my vegetarian friends never cease to tell me that pigs are smarter than dogs, so we definitely should not be eating them. Still, it makes ordering food at the restaurant in the French countryside or the Alps all the more difficult. They don't eat much of any other meat there and vegetarian main courses are almost non-existent, unless you're in the Alps and you order cheese fondue.

Which water bottle for your globetrotter kid?

We live in a developing country, which means that we don't drink water from the tap, which means that there is no potable water at the Bambina's school, which means that she has to bring a bottle of water with her every day to school.  

So the question is, which kind of water bottle should she use?

This question is also relevant for globetrotter families who are on the go and want to have one or more bottles of water on hand for the kids.

One obvious answer is your standard disposable plastic bottle of Evian or other bottled water.  But they get grody after a while and they are difficult to wash.  Plus have you ever looked at the water inside a bottle of Evian after your child has drunk from it?  There are food particles in it because kids backwash.

Another possibility is a hard plastic bottle like the kind you can buy in our local Jumbo grocery store here.  The Frenchman bought one of these for the Bambina last year and I nearly had a keniption.   Besides the fact that your water ends up tasting like plastic, the bottle itself was made in China, reeked of "new plastic" and was probably leaking polyvinyl chloride and/or Bisphenol A into the water.  That and the fact that it leaked all over and broke after about two weeks of use meant that we had to search for another bottle.

An alternative to plastic is a metal flask with a drinking spout.  There would seem to be two kinds on the market - those made of aluminium and those made of stainless steel.  Decathlon, the French sporting goods giant, sells an aluminium one (pictured above).  The Frenchman was very keen on buying these but I determined from the coding on the bottom of the flask that it was, indeed, made of aluminium and I had some reservations.  Aluminium in unlined water bottles leaches into the water, leaving a metal taste, not to mention possible concerns about alzheimers disease in the long run.  No link between aluminium and Alzheimers has been proven - yet - but it's just not something that I want to have to worry about.

Aluminium cans with a lining, such as a the famous Sigg line, come with concerns about what, exactly is in the lining.  Sigg swore that the lining in their water bottles contained no Bisphenol A - until they changed their minds and admitted that all bottles sold before August 2008 did have Bisphenol A "but only in tiny amounts".  Great.

Rather than worrying about what may be in the lining of an aluminium bottle, you can always get a stainless steel bottle instead.  Stainless steel is made of chromium, iron and nickel.  Stainless steel bottles don't generally have lining inside, as stainless steel doesn't leave a metal taste in your month and there is no danger in ingesting the molecules (iron is good for you!).   There are a few brands out their but we bought the Crocodile Creek brand at Le Bon Marché department store in Paris.

Vaccines again

Before we moved the Madagascar, under pressure from our pediatrician and the Frenchman, I allowed the Bambino to get the Hexavac shot.  This shot includes vaccines against diptheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, hiB and hepatitis B.  The Bambino was two and a half months old!

I immediately regretted the decision.

Two days later we moved to Madagascar.  Within the week, Joshua had a horrible upper and lower respiratory infection.  That's pretty unusual for a baby less than three months old who is not in daycare and who is normally still full of antibodies from mama's placenta.  It took him two weeks to recover.

I later read that the hexavac shot had been taken off the market in Europe in 2005, ostensibly owing to the ineffectiveness of the Hepatitis B component of the shot, but more likely because some infants in Germany died after getting the hexavac shot.

I also read this 2000 study, which found that the odds of having a history of asthma was twice as great among children vaccinated with the old diptheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine than among unvaccinated children and that the odds of having had any allergy-related respiratory symptom in the previous twelve months was 63% greater among vaccinated children than unvaccinated children.  


More recently, a study from Canada found that the risk of asthma was reduced to half in children whose first dose of DPT was delayed by more than 2 months. 

Both these studies involve the old whole cell pertussis vaccine rather than the newer acellular pertussis vaccine but is there really necessarily a difference?

The Bambino has had no shots since that hexavac shot at two and a half months.  He is now fifteen months old.  Notwithstanding the aforementioned studies, we are prepared to give him the vaccines that are mandatory in France - that is to say, a combined vaccine for diptheria, tetanus and polio  - because the Bambino will not be admitted to a French public school (be it in France or in one of the public French schools abroad) if he has not had been vaccinated against diptheria, tetanus and polio, or a note from the doctor saying he can't have it.

The problem is that the manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur, took the DT Polio vaccine off the market in 2008 owing to "side effects". They never said what those side effects were.  I do know that the DT Polio vaccine was the only one on the market without no aluminium and no thimerosal.  We are left with the combined pentavac or hexavac shots but both contain more vaccines than the three obligatory ones.  The pentavac contains the vaccine for pertussis and hib and the hexavac has hepatitis B to boot.

So we are left in a situation where we are willing to give are son the obligatory vaccines in France but we have no way of doing this without also giving him vaccines that are not obligatory.  Keep in mind that should we choose to give our son the shots containing non-obligatory vaccines, we have no recourse against the French state should our son suffer any serious side effects from them.

Is this situation the result of joint conspiracy between the French state and drug manufacturers in order to force us to give  our children more vaccines than French law requires?  I don't know but our pediatrician has found a couple of imperfect ways around it.

One way is to have our pediatrician write a letter stating that the Bambino cannot have the DT Polio vaccination because it is no longer available on the market in France and all other shots contain vaccines that are not legally obligatory.  This would be put in the Bambino's health and eventually school records.

Alternatively, we could give the Bambino the adult booster DTP shot, called Revaxis.  This solution has the upside that, since it is a booster shot, the amount of virus in the shot is much lower than the one for children, ironically.  The downside is that the package insert stipulates not to give it to children younger than six years of age.  So if the Bambino received the Revaxis vaccine and then had a severe reaction to it, we would have no recourse against the manufacturer or the French state.

The other downside to the Revaxis shot is that it contains 350 micrograms of aluminium, about 50 micrograms more aluminium than the hexavac shot.

The Bambino is not yet in any kind of collectivity so we're holding off for now.

"But aren't you afraid he'll catch polio?" I hear you asking.  Having looked at the statistics (just check out the vaccine's package insert), I'm just as afraid of side effects from the vaccine.

Getting Burned by Sunscreens

During our summer travels, I have come across many parents who simply cannot understand why my kids wear sunsuits rather than normal bathing suits at the beach and pool. 

"But doesn't it work just as well to slather them in cream?" they ask. 

Here are a few reasons why I avoid putting sunscreen on my kids.

- Most sunscreens protect primarily against UVB rays - the rays that cause your skin to burn.  They do not protect against UVA rays.  When you see a package that says SPF 50, they're talking about the protection against UVB rays.  The protection against UVA rays will be more like SPF 10, at best, but of course the packaging doesn't  say anything about that.   So basically, the sunscreen will protect your child against sunburn but not against melanoma cancer ten or twenty years down the road.

- Most sunscreens contain parabens and/phenoxethanol, preservatives that are believed to be carcinogenic.  Parabens is also a hormone disruptor.

- Many sunscreens contain a synthetic filter called oxybenzone.  Oxybenzone is a chemical that sinks through the epidermis to filter out the sun's rays.  Some of it ends up in your bloodstream and acts as a hormone disrupter, reducing male sperm reproduction in boys and causing early menarche in girls.  That's not something I'm keen to slather on my children. 

- You can't trust anything claimed on sunscreen packaging, so you can never be sure what to buy.  Here are some prime examples of products and players that typify what’s wrong with the sun protection business.

- I do put sunscreen on my kids' faces - the kind with no chemical filters and no parabens or phenoxethanol.  It wears off after an hour.  I can't imagine how burnt my kids would get if I put that stuff all over their bodies.

I just came across this article on sunscreens a few weeks ago.  It reiterates a few of the concerns that I have raised. 

Still not convinced that sunscreens don't do what they are supposed to do and can do more harm than good? Check out the Environmental Working Group's Sunscreen Guide. Make sure you read about their 9 Surprising Truths. I was particular interested in what they said about European sunscreens:

Sunscreen makers and users in Europe have more options than in the United States. In Europe, sunscreen makers can select from among 27 chemicals for their formulations, compared to 17 in the U.S. Companies selling in Europe can add any of seven UVA filters to their products, but have a choice of only three when they market in the U.S. European sunscreens could earn FDA’s proposed four-star top rating for UVA protection, while the best U.S. products would earn only three stars. Sunscreen chemicals approved in Europe but not by the FDA provide up to five times more UVA protection; U.S. companies have been waiting five years for FDA approval to use the same compounds. Last but not least, Europeans will find many sunscreens with strong (mandatory) UVA protection if proposed regulations in Europe are finalized. Under FDA’s current proposal, Americans will not.

So, my kids get sunsuits as their principal sun protection.  Here is a photo of the Bambino in long-sleeved version of a sunsuit from Skin Savers.  If you order one for your toddler, make sure you get the long-sleeved kind.  You would not believe how easily their little arms burn, even with cream on them.

Here is a photo of the Bambina in her sunsuit from Konfidence swimwear.  It looks great on her and she loves the fact that she just zips it on rather than having to pull it over her head. 

The UV Hoodie made by Konfidence is a great option for when we are out on a boat and the sun's rays hit hard.  Both the Bambina and the Bambino wear one when they are not in the pool or sea and they are in direct sun.  They keep you cool and protect completely against UVA and UVB rays. All you need is sunscreen on the face.