Foods I Avoid

My son is allergic to and/or intolerant of, the foods listed below, so these recipes avoid all of them.  Patch testing confirmed a dozen allergies, while intolerances were found via the elimination diet process.

Foods Omitted in All Recipes:

1. Dairy
2. Wheat/Gluten
3. Soy
4. Egg
5. Peanut
6. Tree Nut
7. Corn
8. Oat
9. Beans (including peas)
10. Caffeine
11. Chocolate
12. Salmon
13. Shellfish
14. Acidic fruits

Renovate Your Pantry

This is the most important step in any diet change, renovate your pantry.  Don't keep food around that you cannot eat.  I first removed everything from the kitchen that I couldn't cook with.  It is freeing to look in the fridge and pantry and know everything is an option.  It also highlighted gaps in our nutritional variety.  Below are the main staples of our allergy-free kitchen.

• Capers
  
• Peppers
• Avacado
• Potatoes (Idaho and Sweet)
• Rice (white and brown)
• Rice Pasta
• Plantains
• Onions
• Celery
• Tomatoes
• Artichokes
• Heart of Palm
• Lettuce
• Spinach (including frozen)
• Apples
• Bananas
• Pears
• Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
• Roasted Sesame Seeds
• Meat
• Chicken
• Fish
• Lemons
• Carrots
• Asparagus
• Risotto
• Cilantro
• Parsley
• Garlic
• Goya Adobo
• Cumin
• Balsamic and White Vinegar
• Potato Chips (standard and sweet)
• Tea (decaf)

Elimination Diet Process: Finding food allergies or just intolerances

It's a slow process and requires a lot of patience.  The difficulty in pinpointing the offending foods is that symptoms can occur within the hour or after days and days.  Finding the foods that cause immediate reactions first is easiest; by getting those out of the way it is easier to gauge which foods cause more delayed and subtle reactions.

Starting the process involves several days, up to three weeks, on a completely allergy-free diet.

*TIP for nursing mothers: Extra time = time cleaning out your system, followed by time replacing your breast milk with allergy free milk, then the baby's system getting cleaned out.

1. You stick to a completely allergy-free diet for several days or weeks, until you see a significant reduction in symptoms.  
2. Then you choose what you suspect to be the most offensive food and add it back to your diet and log your reactions, noting times of ingestion and time of onset of symptom.  
3. Between food tests, go back to the allergy-free diet you choose until symptoms are gone for a few days, then introduce the next suspected food.  
4. It's a long process, but results are great!

You can research ways to follow your own allergy-free diet, but we went with the following foods:

a) Turkey breast

b) rice

c) potatoes and other starches like yucca and plantains

d) oatmeal (replaced with plan rice cereal because we later found oatmeal was affecting the baby)

e) soy milk (replaced with rice milk because we later found that he was allergic to soy)

f) fish (only salmon caused a bad reaction - we have no idea why)

g) non-acidic fruits, like bananas

h) tea (decaf)

i) pears

Thing you want to avoid:

a) gassy foods & spices, like onions, beans, garlic, peppers, cumin, etc.

b) eggs

c) nuts

d) candy

e) all processed foods (or anything with more than a few simple ingredients on the label)

f) caffeine and coffee

g) chocolate

h) acidic foods, like orange juice, grapes, etc.

i) wheat/gluten

More info on GI issues and gassy foods: 

• Diet Detective - Food and Gas
  
• Colic Calm - The Cause and Treatment of Infant, Newborn, and Baby Gas Problems
  
• About.com - Food Allergy or Intolerance?

ElimiDiet Blog: It's about identifying allergies

How I became an elimination diet chef:

To determine why our four week old baby boy could not stop crying or lie comfortably in his bassinet, we first visited the pediatrician.  It wasn't until the second visit to the doctor when our son offered a visual aid to express his discomfort.  Immediately, the pediatrician ordered a blood test, prescribed an acid reflux medicine (infant Zantac), and suggested that the nursing mother stop eating all dairy and eggs.  Within a about four days the constant crying subsided, which meant our baby was finally not enduring constant pain in his throat and stomach.  We were relieved and life felt manageable once again.

As time went on we eliminated foods from the mother's diet, one at a time, until our baby appeared 100% comfortable.  Within months, we had a very healthy baby no longer on medication who didn't cry or even spit-up.

Eliminating foods from my wife's diet uncovered some food intolerances of my own.  I learned that intolerances and allergies can manifest in very subtle ways, including.  Has your nose ever seemed to be stuffy, your skin turn slightly red, or your eyes water  for no apparent reason?  Do you have eczema or frequent gas or bloating?  All of these things can be symptoms of food allergies, or intolerances, and can be helped by avoiding certain foods or ingredients.

Through personal experience and some research, here is a list of benefits of eliminating allergy foods from your diet:

1) Increase sense of taste  -  since your nose isn't stuffy, you experience more smell/flavor

2) No more gas  -  I never feel gassy or burpy after eating, ever!

3) Comfort  -  I feel noticeably more comfortable in the abdomen region.

4) Avoid disease  -  Subjecting your digestive system to foods it is allergic to can increase the risk of various diseases as your GI tract either cannot process these foods or your system overreacts to them, taxing your system unnecessarily. Consult a physician or medical resources for more information.

I hope blogging my family's experience with the elimination diet and allergy-free eating, we may help other people learn how to get through such a life change in a manageable way and without sacrificing flavorful, savory meals (and certainly without starving).