Have you wondered about which food chemicals cause most reactions?
The following reactions were found in my detailed study of 113 families which I followed up very carefully over 18 months for my Masters Degree. My work had followed up a study of 500 families published in the Australian Journal of Dietetics.
Of 100 people who react to artificial colours and flavours:
87% still reacted to flavoured but uncoloured lollies
87% reacted to chocolate (even though cocoa was allowed in the Feingold Diet, that started the thinking about additives back in the 1970s)
80% reacted to tomato sauce
77% reacted to smells, especially paint and petrol
69% to perfume, especially to bubble bath
67% had symptoms get worse when they had an infection
65% reacted to soy sauce. Now we know that soy sauce contains monosodium glutamate but is also high in amines!
57% reacted to the benzoate preservative in naturally flavoured canned lemonade when they did not react to the naturally flavoured, non preserved Schweppes lemonade in plastic bottles.
53% reacted to the BHA or BHT preservatives in oils. (Nowadays oils no longer contain these.)
49% reacted to the nitrate in bacon or ham. (There would be amines there too.)
44% reacted to Vegemite (high in amines).
44% reacted to natural lemon flavour in the Schweppes in plastic bottles (so these did not even get to test for the benzoate preservative in the canned produce).
43% reacted to carob powder in home cooking.
42% challenged with mint toothpaste but reacted.
37% reacted to lemon juice cordial with sulphite preservative, but not to home-made.
30% reacted to propionate preservative in bread.
28% reacted to vanilla in all natural ice cream
27% reacted to plain ice cream with artificial vanillin flavour (so the reaction is to the flavour itself)
17% reacted to natural coloured margarine.
It is interesting to look back at what needed to be clarified in the 1980s and 1990s. Now more information on the risk of a reaction to over 300 foods is available in my book Tolerating Troublesome Foods https://foodintolerancepro.com/tolerating-troublesome-foods/
You can read about much of my research in the section called Evidence Base in the Articles section on my website especially about Basic and Applied research in https://foodintolerancepro.com/evidence-base-food-sensitivity/
My thesis details the early development of the low chemical diet. Available here https://foodintolerancepro.com/product/thesis/
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