Char­maine Dais­ley

It is a much-proven truth that ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion; for the Christo­phers ne­ces­si­ty was al­so the be­gin­ning of an ini­tia­tive that is mak­ing a ma­jor pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the lives of hun­dreds of peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Be Free Foods, is a fam­i­ly owned and man­aged or­gan­ic gro­cery and car­ries over 1200 items. It is a busi­ness ini­tia­tive born out of love, and nur­tured dai­ly by a firm phi­los­o­phy of com­mit­ment to help­ing peo­ple man­age their food al­ler­gies. To say that Be Free Foods is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence is per­haps an un­der­state­ment, be­cause in al­most every in­stance it rep­re­sents the fill­ing of a void that des­per­ate­ly need­ed to be filled. While most of us can walk in­to any su­per­mar­ket or neigh­bour­hood mi­ni mart and pick up food items with­out a care in the world as to the in­tri­cate na­ture of their con­tents, many oth­ers can­not.

The Christo­phers used to fall in­to that sec­ond group - they had to seek out spe­cial foods for their son who has been di­ag­nosed with a 'chem­i­cal food al­ler­gy' – that is to say he is al­ler­gic to any chem­i­cal pes­ti­cide or ad­di­tive used to pro­duce food from the stage of grow­ing it to the stage of pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing it. In the midst of their ef­forts to pro­vide the foods their son needs to sur­vive, they were awak­ened to the lack of a full range of stan­dard food items, which were or­gan­i­cal­ly grown and processed, on the lo­cal mar­ket. Af­ter a chal­leng­ing process of ac­quir­ing the prod­ucts for their son, the Christo­phers were in­spired to share their so­lu­tion with oth­ers lo­cal­ly through an or­gan­ic gro­cery store.

The foods in the store are all bona fide or­gan­ic and the Christo­phers re­veal that they are in­debt­ed to Whole Food Mar­ket , a trust­ed name in or­gan­ic prod­ucts, in Bal­ti­more, USA for its guid­ance in point­ing them in the right di­rec­tion and help­ing them get es­tab­lished with the right prod­ucts. The food items at Be Free Foods, in ad­di­tion to be­ing grown and processed free of syn­thet­ic food chem­i­cals and ad­di­tives, are al­so pro­duced to meet the needs of per­sons who have di­etary al­ler­gies to foods such as eggs, dairy, sea foods, nuts, gluten, sug­ar, wheat and ce­re­als such as oats, just to name a few.

"Peo­ple come in from around the coun­try –from San Fer­nan­do, and To­ba­go, and we have a client from Ma­yaro who we deal with via tele­phone. All these peo­ple ex­press joy and re­lief at dis­cov­er­ing and find­ing us," said Al­lan Christo­pher. "We get peo­ple who have been liv­ing with al­ler­gies for years – they have al­ler­gic re­ac­tions to every­day items such as sug­ar, flour, or eggs, or nuts, and some peo­ple have mul­ti­ple al­ler­gies – and I of­ten ask them 'well what do you eat?' and I of­ten won­der 'how on earth could some­body sur­vive for so many years with­out hav­ing ac­cess to ba­sic foods such as bread, pas­ta, rice, oil, peas, that will not trig­ger a se­ri­ous and some­times life-threat­en­ing al­ler­gic re­ac­tion if they eat it'?

"I think some­times peo­ple just eat the reg­u­lar food items, if it isn't life threat­en­ing, and com­pro­mise by tak­ing med­ica­tion to coun­ter­act the bad re­ac­tions – but what a way to live! So when I hear peo­ple talk about what the store is do­ing to im­prove their health and well­be­ing I am re­as­sured that it was a good de­ci­sion to open Be Free Foods," he ex­pressed. But adults are not the on­ly ones who are get­ting the chance to 'be free' to eat cer­tain foods they could not eat be­fore. Among Be Free Foods clients are a to­tal of 35 chil­dren, some with sig­nif­i­cant food al­ler­gies. "Some par­ents of these chil­dren came in the store and cried in a mix­ture of frus­tra­tion at not be­ing able to find the right foods and re­lief at find­ing us and we had to hug them. It's a tru­ly mov­ing ex­pe­ri­ence," Christo­pher re­vealed.

Al­so, some of these chil­dren have nev­er tast­ed ice cream or cook­ies be­cause of a dairy or gluten al­ler­gy, or sweets, be­cause of a sug­ar or cit­rus-based al­ler­gy, but are now able to en­joy these and oth­er every­day, de­light­ful treats – the safe, or­gan­ic way. "Peo­ple might find it strange or fun­ny, but my wife has lit­er­al­ly cried when she saw chil­dren en­joy a sweet or ice cream or a pen­na kool for the first time. I mean, as par­ents of a son with food al­ler­gies we know first­hand what it is to see oth­er kids hav­ing good­ies at par­ties or at an aunt's or grand­moth­er's home and your child is not able to share in the joy of that mo­ment. We are glad that now par­ents have the op­tion to get or­gan­ic snacks at our store for these kids," said Christo­pher.

In ad­di­tion, some par­ents of chil­dren with autism have sought out or­gan­ic foods at the store as they ex­plore cur­rent med­ical re­search that in­di­cates a Gluten/Ca­sein free di­et is like­ly one as­pect of the man­age­ment of autism. "It is a priv­i­lege to be mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the lives of these chil­dren who oth­er­wise might have found it dif­fi­cult to get this range of or­gan­ic foods that could help them live more com­fort­ably and im­prove their over­all health," Christo­pher stat­ed.

Can­cer pa­tients, di­a­bet­ics and per­sons with Celi­ac dis­ease have all found their way to the store and are reap­ing the ben­e­fits.

How­ev­er, every­one can ben­e­fit from an or­gan­ic di­et, and the Christo­phers get a num­ber of peo­ple who do not have al­ler­gies but want to eat cer­tain foods that do not have syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals in them. The Christo­pher fam­i­ly it­self adopt­ed the or­gan­ic food lifestyle four years ago first­ly in sup­port of their son, and is now see­ing sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in their over­all health, in­clud­ing re­lief of asth­ma symp­toms and acid re­flux and some mi­nor nag­ging al­ler­gies. Be Free Foods cel­e­brat­ed its first year in pro­vid­ing this crit­i­cal­ly need­ed ser­vice to the peo­ple of TnT in De­cem­ber 2010, and "by God's grace", ac­cord­ing to Christo­pher, will be able to in­creas­ing­ly sat­is­fy the needs of more per­sons need­ing the store's sup­port, in the months and years to come.

The store is lo­cat­ed at San­ta Maria Plaza (lev­el 2), 13 Mu­cu­rapo Road.

Con­tacts are: Tele­phone 735-0727 or 620-3246,

or by email be­freefoods@gmail.com.