Let them eat dirt! Our obsession with hygiene is jeopardising our children’s health – Telegraph.co.uk

She suggests we eat food grown in rich organic, biodynamic soil which hasn’t been power washed to within an inch of its life, and help children to spend as much time as possible outside.

“Encourage them to play in the dirt. Join them if you are so moved! Make mud pies, and don’t be afraid to take a bite or two,” she says. “Spend hours a day in forests and parks, on mountains, and play sports on fields instead of astroturf.”

If anyone knows how a change in lifestyle can affect a poorly child, it’s her. As a pediatric neurologist, Dr Shetreat-Klein admits she initially knew little about nutrition.

“We get rather little education in nutrition in medical school – anywhere from zero to a couple of hours,” she says. It wasn’t until her own son Erez began to encounter mysterious health problems at the age of one that she decided to explore how nutrition can affect not just our bodies, but our brains.

On his first birthday, Erez suffered a severe episode of asthma which marked the beginning of a downward spiral in his health and early development. “He started to have actually breathing issues and had a runny nose for 10 months straight,” she says. “He had been a really early speaker but he stopped gaining brand-new words and started falling over a lot.”

Doctors put Erez on a cocktail of steroids and medication which seemed to make little difference, until a simple allergy test showed her little boy was suffering from a soy allergy so severe that it was actually inhibiting his brain function.

Just three days after removing all soy from his diet, his breathing issues had improved dramatically. A few weeks later, his issues had dissipated. He is now 10 and has actually no problems along with asthma or balance.

Now, the way Dr Shetreat-Klein feeds her family has actually changed dramatically. Her husband and three children all hike at the weekends and spend as much time in the outdoors as possible, as well as keeping to a diet high in the vegetables grown in their garden. Even though it hasn’t cured Erez’s allergy – he still must avoid soy completely – the experience taught her about the links between what we eat, how we live, and our physical health.