The News On Food

Food elimination diet – a brief introduction.

It is possible to be suffering from multiple food sensitivities, food allergies and environmental sensitivities. If you have a suppressed immune system or suffer from food intolerance symptom, or leaky gut syndrome for example, then you may find your body unable to tolerate many foods. For some people they are unable to eat most foods or be unable to drink anything except water.

If you suffer from food intolerance symptoms then you need to do a food intolerance test and this is best conducted by doing an elimination diet. What this means is that you take your food right back to basics. You introduce certain foods for a limited time to see if you have a reaction to a specific food, remove those foods, wait until that food is out of your system or if you have a food reaction then wait for a specified period of time and then try the next food.

Food elimination diet – next steps to take

Because we suffered from food intolerance symptoms, these are the steps we took to do an elimination diet.

1. Consult a dietitian about your food intolerance symptoms. It is a good idea to work with a dietitian who is familiar with food intolerance and they can assist you in identifying the problem foods. Do not choose just any dietitian as not all understand food intolerance. To find out the best dietitian for you, ask them questions such as “have any of your clients come to you to do an elimination diet?” “What is your understanding of food intolerance?” “What do you see as a possible solution for food intolerance symptoms?” “What is the age of most of the people you have assisted with an elimination diet or those suffering from food intolerance symptoms?”
2. Consult a naturopath or homeopath about your food problems. While I am not a believer in using vitamins for health or supplements in your diet, consulting this type of professional will help you with allergy tests and food intolerance tests. I’d like to reiterate that it is preferable to find someone who has an understanding and experience dealing with food intolerance symptoms. If you drop some comments in your social circles about food allergy or food problems, you may find a great referral in your local area. You will be surprised how many other people are suffering from health problems or food intolerance symptoms related to food and they just don’t talk about it.
3. Go through your pantry / food cupboard and remove any food that has additives, colours, preservatives, nature identical flavours, HVP (hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein), MSG (Monosodium Glutamate), natural colours and flavours. As mentioned in the Food Intolerance Symptoms post, a book I highly recommend that will assist  you in identifying the nasties in foods is this one called Additive Alert . This step is a must regardless of what you do.
4. Sue Dengate has years of experience writing books related to food intolerance symptoms and doing an elimination diet including cook books. She tours to conduct seminars for those interested in learning about food intolerance symptoms and allergies. She has written, to name just two,  Fed Up, and The Failsafe Cookbook .  Friendly Food is written by the crew at the Royal Prince Alfred Allergy Unit (RPA) in Sydney Australia and all books are well worth purchasing to use during this phase while you are working out what is causing your food intolerance symptoms. These books will assist you with food intolerance information, recipes to use during an elimination diet and reference material. From personal experience, we purchased all three books because you will find a larger variety of recipes that you feel comfortable using and believe me, when you are limited by the food you can eat, the more recipes you have for an elimination diet, the easier life is in the kitchen.
5. Save this free example of a Food Diary to use for your elimination diet because you will need to record what you or your family have eaten and what food problems you have had, if any. If you consult a dietitian as part of your elimination diet, they will want to see your food diary or have you use one to assist you in sorting out your food intolerance symptoms.

Once you have conducted your elimination diet, you will have a clearer idea of what foods are causing your food intolerance symptoms including the food that you can include in your diet and when. The time at which you include them can be important depending on the level of naturally occurring chemicals in each food and your level of food intolerance. For example, to keep your food intolerance symptoms at bay, you may include avocado in your lunch which according to the Friendly Food cookbook, is very high in salicylates and amines. As a result, you would not have avocado at dinner or even the next day possibly but you might have lentils which are low in salicylates and amines. Once you have empowered yourself with the knowledge of what you can or cannot include in your diet through doing an elimination diet, you will find your food intolerance symptoms will diminish. When you are comfortable and settled into your restricted diet, it is a good time to take that next step which is to look at healing the body so that you can increase the variety of food you can eat. After all, no-one wants to be on a restricted diet all their life if they have the opportunity to heal themselves and live a fuller, healthier life.

Disclaimer:

I’m no medical expert and information contained on this blog is written through my own experience. Please consult an appropriate professional about your situation.