Bo­bie-lee Dixon

If their son hadn't been di­ag­nosed with mul­ti-chem­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty- a med­ical con­di­tion in which tiny amounts of every­day chem­i­cals and fra­grances cause mul­ti­ple acute symp­toms - at age four, Al­lan and D Christo­pher would not be proud own­ers of Be Free Foods to­day- an all-or­gan­ic gro­cery store lo­cat­ed at San­ta Maria Plaza, Mu­cu­rapo Road, St James. The T&T Guardian paid a vis­it to the busy cou­ple, who was hap­py to in­tro­duce the pub­lic to or­gan­ic prod­ucts, rang­ing from chew­ing gum to house­hold clean­ers.

How it all be­gan

"Our son's di­ag­no­sis meant he had an in­tol­er­ance for chem­i­cals in food," said D. "This was a very try­ing time for us be­cause once we dis­cov­ered his con­di­tion, we would have had to change the food that our son ate en­tire­ly. It was not like go­ing on a 'health' di­et. Our son se­ri­ous­ly could not eat a reg­u­lar sand­wich loaf or a choco­late chip cook­ie any­more. "But find­ing a reg­u­lar sup­ply of or­gan­ic prod­ucts in T&T was ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult." Faced with the dilem­ma, the Christo­phers took their son to the Johns Hop­kins Hos­pi­tal in Bal­ti­more in 2009, and even con­sid­ered mi­grat­ing in or­der to have eas­i­er ac­cess to or­gan­ic foods. "We were con­tem­plat­ing to move to the US, be­cause if he lived abroad he would have ac­cess to what he need­ed. How­ev­er, be­cause of our at­tach­ments to Trinidad, that would not have been fea­si­ble. So we de­cid­ed to bring his world here, and that's how the idea for the gro­cery was born.

The has­sle elim­i­nat­ed

"When you have a child with al­ler­gies, you have to walk every­where with their food be­cause they can't eat any and every­thing. This was a re­al has­sle for us. "Now that we have the store it is avail­able to oth­ers in his so­cial cir­cle, so he can now ac­tu­al­ly have a 'nor­mal' life," ex­pressed D.

Tak­ing on a whole new re­spon­si­bil­i­ty

While on one hand the Christo­phers could have breathed a sigh of re­lief that their son had all he need­ed to re­main healthy, man­ag­ing the busi­ness did pose some chal­lenges. "Be­sides the store we both have very de­mand­ing jobs," dis­closed D. Al­lan, a man­ag­er, and D, a full time ed­u­ca­tor, have de­cid­ed that run­ning the store would be a com­plete fam­i­ly busi­ness. "Every­thing re­gard­ing this store is done by our fam­i­ly. From the de­sign of the gro­cery to the pack­ing of the shelves-it's all us. So be­tween our reg­u­lar jobs and the store it can be­come very hec­tic, but that's our on­ly chal­lenge."

Re­search is key

Get­ting in­volved in such a busi­ness al­so re­quired con­tin­u­ous re­search by the Christo­phers. Ac­cord­ing to Al­lan, sourc­ing their goods re­quired not on­ly re­search on their sup­pli­ers, but al­so ex­ten­sive re­search on all prod­ucts. "Al­most every­one is be­com­ing health con­scious now and so many man­u­fac­tur­ers work on that. They may put a prod­uct out on the mar­ket and say that it's or­gan­ic or it can do this and that for your health, and with­out think­ing peo­ple just buy in­to it with­out do­ing re­search. "Not be­cause some foods say or­gan­ic, they might re­al­ly be. Or even if they are or­gan­ic, they might still con­tain chem­i­cals in them that can trig­ger some­one's al­ler­gies. "We go through the list of every­thing thing we bring in. Be­cause or­gan­ic is a 'buzz' word, we make sure it's not just hype," re­vealed Al­lan.

A cost­ly lifestyle

Go­ing or­gan­ic is a bit of an ex­pen­sive lifestyle. The Christo­phers said that the cost of their goods from the sup­pli­ers was very cost­ly. How­ev­er, they al­so in­di­cat­ed that they had found that some items were on par with con­ven­tion­al prod­ucts. There were a few items, they said, where mak­ing the change would on­ly be a ques­tion of a dol­lar or two.

How can we help you

"Many of our cus­tomers have spe­cif­ic or mul­ti­ple al­ler­gies. So lets say you are al­ler­gic to dairy. There are many things that are made with al­ter­na­tive milk prod­ucts that you can use. These in­clude rice milk, oats, co­conut soy, and we have choco­late that is dairy free so it is made with rice milk. We have or­gan­ic ice-cream, and a large num­ber of gluten free items as well be­cause we have found many peo­ple are al­ler­gic to gluten," D said.

Not a health shop

The Christo­phers al­so em­pha­sised that they did not wish to por­tray them­selves as a health shop, but rather an al­ter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al su­per­mar­kets. "We sell every­thing you can find in a con­ven­tion­al gro­cery store, with the on­ly dif­fer­ence be­ing that our prod­ucts are all or­gan­ic. 'We are just giv­ing you the al­ter­na­tive to make a choice. "We work with peo­ple who may have a med­ical con­di­tion, or per­sons with spe­cial di­etary prob­lems. They may say that their doc­tor said they can't eat some­thing and we are able to re­fer a prod­uct to them. And some­times peo­ple come and ask for prod­ucts they them­selves have done re­search on."

Watch what you eat

"We are not say­ing that go­ing all or­gan­ic can com­plete­ly pre­vent you from al­ler­gic re­ac­tions. We just want peo­ple to be­come more aware of what they put in­to their bod­ies," ad­vised D. "Read your la­bels, do re­search on in­gre­di­ents found in the foods you eat. Find out what type of ad­di­tives, preser­v­a­tives, and colour­ing your food has in it and ed­u­cate your­self on what they can do to the body. The say­ing is true-you are what you eat."

For more in­fo on Be Free Foods call 620-3246/735-0727.