His son's brain was damaged by E. coli. Now someone is exploiting their story to sell a questionable product

It's lunchtime in the Parker home in Richmond, B.C. But before eight-year-old Lucas can be fed, his dad checks the boy's blood sugar levels. Nathan Parker figures out the dosages for his son's medications and fills a small plastic bag with liquid nutrition that will be delivered through a feeding tube into Lucas's belly.

"One day," Parker says to his son, "Come on, let's get to steak and potatoes, OK? I think you'd be tired of this food by now? I know I would be."

But that day is not coming. Lucas is considered to be one of the most severely injured survivors of a food-borne illness.

CBC Marketplace did a story about Lucas in 2021, while investigating a rash of E. coli outbreaks involving romaine lettuce in the U.S.

Earlier this year, Parker was looking to show a friend that piece, but he found something else —  Lucas's life story was being used to sell a machine called the Amazing Water Multifunctional Food Sanitizer for $256.

Parker said he knew nothing about it.

"I believe they're exploiting my son — and that's the part that hurts the most." 

The video Parker discovered uses animation to retell Marketplace's original story of how Lucas shared a contaminated romaine salad with his dad while on a family road trip to Disneyland in 2018.

Lucas nearly died when his kidneys shut down from an E. coli infection. And the complications from the illness caused brain damage that left the then-toddler unable to walk or talk, and affected his eyesight so that he can barely see.

The Amazing Water video suggests its food sanitizer could prevent this from happening to another child by removing "harmful toxins, bacteria, viruses and added hormones in food within minutes."

Parker is appalled.

"My son is so unique. The situation that happened to him was unavoidable." 

So, Marketplace launched an investigation. It bought one of Amazing Water's food sanitizers online and sent it for testing at the University of Guelph's food science lab, where researchers inoculated fruit and vegetables with a harmless form of E. coli.

The goal was to see if the sanitizer could remove the bacteria any better than regular tap water. Bacterial cultures would show how much E. coli was left.