A Dish for Adrienne

Tonight we had our friends, Byron and Adrienne, over for dinner. They are expecting their first child next month (a girl!) and Adrienne, unfortunately, has developed preeclampsia and subsequently has to avoid salt to keep her blood pressure from spiking. Now, I know some of my loyal readers have personally experienced this in a more severe form, so there is some familiarity here. Luckily, Adrienne's hypertension is not severe enough to put her on bed rest or anything drastic, though if she doesn't do well at her next doctor's appointment this week she might be cut down to half days at work, or even put on bed rest. The catch 22 is that Adrienne, herself, is a doctor. She knows the ins and outs of this condition, and because her job is quite stressful (we swapped some medical nightmare stories today, though hers were obviously much worse than what I deal with at a chiropractic office) she is welcoming the idea of bed rest. I can't say that I blame her when she told me about having to deal with drug addicts and other stress-inducing people that come in to her office. Nonetheless, she is being extremely careful to watch her sodium intake and I wanted to make sure to serve her something tonight that was 100% salt free.

Mission, accomplished.

Tonight's dinner was linguine with roasted vegetable that were seasoned with one of my favorite salt-free blends from The Spice House, Sunny Paris Seasoning. The dried shallots and pink peppercorns came to life with the roasted squash and zucchini, and added to the lovely caramelized flavor of the onions. For the boys and myself I served an Italian Sausage with it, though I could have been more than happy eating just a large bowl of the linguine and vegetables. For Adrienne I served her pasta and veggies first and then lightly salted everything for the rest of us. Adrienne loved the pasta, and I was really happy she liked it so much. To me, it was a fun challenge cooking without salt and still making something flavorful. When you are used to editing and altering recipes for food allergies, taking out the salt is a very similar challenge and I welcomed it. Everyone commented on how the pasta was "buttery" tasting even though there was no butter in it- you don't get compliments better than that!

Adrienne's preeclampsia has me thinking though. Despite her stressful job, she is a really healthy eater by most standards- she prefers vegetables over meat, she has ALWAYS restricted salt because she sees what it does to her patients everyday, she never overeats, and all-in-all has a really healthy relationship with food. She will tell you that she's not perfect with her diet, though I would attest that she eats healthier than 95% of the people I know. Then I think about my coworker who developed gestational diabetes and then severe preeclampsia at the end of the pregnancy and immediately after (she almost died a week after delivery her blood pressure was so high). My coworker doesn't eat healthy (had a hard time with it even during pregnancy- she almost cried when her doc told her to eat Romaine lettuce), but her baby is healthy as can be. Then I consider another friend who has always been a very healthy eater, is a trained psychotherapist who specializes in treating eating disorders, and she developed gestational diabetes. Come to find out years later, she has Celiac disease, but that's another story.

The stories go on and on. The question I ask is, why are pregnant women getting so sick? Maybe I missed something growing up, but just like food allergies, you didn't hear a lot of stories before about these severe conditions years ago. Now, it seems that you hear about preeclampsia and gestational diabetes and other awful conditions that can develop during pregnancy more and more... same as you are hearing of more and more children (and adults!) developing food allergies. I would even add to that the staggering growth of the number of women experiencing infertility.

So, this has me thinking. I can't throw out any definitive answers on this one, or even good speculations. I would love to say it's all about the diet, but given the instances I've seen of "healthy" eaters developing these conditions, it seems to me that it goes beyond food alone. But then, I think about how tainted our food supply is and I suspect there is something with that- we eat a lot more meat than we ever used to, and that meat is loaded with antibiotics and synthetic growth hormones, so even "healthy" eaters may not be immune to side effects we can't see to consuming that food. What else can it be? Stress, yes, there is no denying that our lives are filled with constant stress- especially as women are pulled in many different directions between career, family, and community. But, I still keep swaying back towards food... what other connection can there be to explain these conditions becoming more common? What other connection can there be to explain so many diseases becoming more common?

Isn't the common denominator between us all food? Perhaps the very thing that sustains and provides us life is now making us, our children, and our unborn children, sick. What else can it be????