What is the Failsafe Diet?
FAILSAFE stands for Free of Additives, Low in Salicylates, Amines and Flavour
Enhancers and is Sue
Dengate's term for the comprehensive low-chemical, low-reactive exclusion
diet formulated by allergists
at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Australia.
The failsafe diet is designed
to treat intolerances or sensitivities to specific chemicals in foods. The
diet is not designed to treat allergies. Reactions to food chemicals are pharmacological
and dose-related rather than immune-system related, but they cause a number
of symptoms that appear to be allergy-like. It is important to understand the
difference between food allergy and food chemical sensitivity.
Though the failsafe diet has been around since the 1980's, few people have
heard of it outside of Australia. A forerunner to the failsafe diet is the Feingold
diet, an incomplete salicylate exclusion diet that is now outdated. Food chemical
sensitivities are quite common, but a lack of knowledge about the syndrome means
that symptoms are rarely understood by the layperson or the medical practitioner,
and are usually dismissed as allergies, psychological, or idiosyncratic.
The failsafe diet is designed to exclude what are called "tasty foods", that
is, foods containing lots of reactive, aromatic, phenolic chemicals - foods
and cosmetics with strong tastes and smells. In particular it excludes:
- Around fifty artificial additives including colours (such as a range of
azo-dyes or coal-tar dyes like tartrazine (E102) and sunset yellow (E110)),
flavours, preservatives and antioxidants (like sulphites
(sulfites), nitrates, nitrites, benzoates (like BHA, BHT), sorbates, parabens,
and others).
- Salicylates (aspirin compounds) found in a wide range of fruits and vegetables
as well as man-made NSAIDs and COX II inhibitors.
- Free neurotransmitters and pseudo-neurotransmitters in foods, such as free
glutamates (naturally and artificially occurring MSG), and biogenic amines
(like histamine, serotonin, dopamine, phenylethylamine, tyramine and others)
found in aged proteins and fermented foods like cheese, game, and hung beef
and some plant foods, particularly tropical fruits.
- Environmental chemicals and strong smells like perfumes, including the use
of most commercial cosmetics, scented and coloured toiletries and especially
mint and menthol products.
From the 1950's onwards several researchers reported that the exclusion of
aspirin and azo dyes produced beneficial results for a variety of symptoms with
apparently unknown causes like urticaria, angioedema, eczema and asthma. Researchers
realised there were a group of people who were suffering chronically from the
symptoms regarded as the side-effects of aspirin. These include diverse symptoms
such as skin problems and inflammatory disorders, breathing problems, digestive
disorders, flu-like or hangover symptoms, chronic fatigue, chronic pain such
as back pain, and mental and emotional changes like depression, irritability,
anger and bipolar disorder. The patients were sensitive to the very small amounts
of aspirin in fruits and vegetables.
The Feingold diet, developed
by the US doctor Ben Feingold MD was one of the first attempts at a salicylate
exclusion diet. Feingold found that not only did an exclusion diet help with
the accepted chronic health problems associated with salicylate ingestion, it
also affected children's and adult's behaviour and emotional state and was apparently
the cause of what was in those days known as hyperkinesis or hyperactivity and
is known today as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD). Since that time it has been found that food chemicals cause
or aggravate a wider range of related conditions, including most Pervasive Developmental
Disorders (PDDs), Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder (OCD), learning difficulties, dyslexia, and autism spectrum conditions
including Asperger's syndrome.
Today many people involved in this field regard the original Feingold diet
as only partially effective. Very little was known about the salicylate content
of foods in Feingold's day, and there are numerous anomalies in his diet as
a result that can catch patients out. When Ben Feingold died, the Feingold diet
was never updated to reflect new knowledge of food salicylate content that emerged
in the 1980's, though an organisation still exists in his name in the US still
promoting the original Feingold diet. Nevertheless, the diet excluded enough
chemicals to produce statistically significant improvements in children's behaviour
and many parents continue to find it helpful in treating their children's behaviour
and health problems.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's a dietician called Anne
Swain analysed dozens of foods and worked in conjunction with the Royal Prince
Alfred Hospital in Australia to develop the exclusion diet we now know as
the failsafe diet. Researchers found that glutamates and biogenic amines in
foods had similar effects on the body to salicylates, and these were also excluded
from the final diet. Some individuals are sensitive to only one group of chemicals
or the other, but many people appear to be sensitive to both groups of chemicals
because of their similar effects on the body.
The full list of symptoms that can be caused by food chemical sensitivity is
very long. It reads like a list of "modern diseases of unknown causes", such
as ADD/ADHD, autism, Asperger's syndrome, reactive hypoglycaemia, fibromyalgia
and chronic fatigue syndrome, brain fog, irritability and emotional disorders
like bipolar disorder, chronic back pain, migraines and sinus headaches, reflux
and GI disorders, particularly IBS, ear ache and tinnitus, skin rashes, eczema
and urticaria, restless legs syndrome, thyroid disorders, heart palpitations,
sleep problems, and even epilepsy in some. Salicylates and amines have also
been found to play a role in some instances of coeliac (celiac) disease.
In practice, the diet limits or excludes virtually all processed foods, many
fruits and vegetables with a small number of exceptions, aged proteins like
well hung beef, game, and cheese, as well as prohibiting the use of commercially
manufactured cosmetics and perfumes (particularly mint and menthol products)
that contain large amounts of salicylates and other chemicals that cross-react
in the salicylate sensitive such as benzoates. It also eliminates aspirin (see
common
side-effects of aspirin, and symptoms
of overdose), NSAIDs and COX II inhibitors. Paracetamol (tylenol, acetaminophen)
is allowed on the elimination diet. Many psychoactive drugs like benzodiazepines,
barbiturates and SSRIs can cause unpleasant or enhanced side-effects in food
chemical sensitive individuals.
The diet is mainly composed of very fresh (non-vacuum-packed or hung) meat
and white fish, eggs, milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese, butter and tallow, grains,
peeled potatoes, beans and pulses, peeled pears, and a few green vegetables
including cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Strong flavours, additives, many fruits
and vegetables and spices are not allowed.
The diet is designed to be treated as an elimination/challenge test. It will
take around four weeks on the elimination diet to see positive changes (in some
this can be as little as two weeks or as long as three months). It is also important
to exclude strong smells like essential oils and perfumes from your environment,
and to only use failsafe approved cosmetics as chemicals are absorbed easily
through the skin.
The diet must be treated as a scientific experiment. All of the variables
in the experiment must be controlled by removing all of the reactive
food chemicals at once. For some this also means excluding dairy products and
gluten or grain products if they are suspected to cause problems. Any wholefood
which is being avoided due to a suspicion that it is causing symptoms of ill
health should continue to be avoided on the initial elimination diet in order
to control the variables. The diet must be followed strictly. In the
beginning, small deviations can potentially cause large, exaggerated relapses
in health.
Once the individual is feeling well on the diet, they can begin the challenge
tests. Each chemical is tested individually. Because food chemicals build up
in the body and effects may not be apparent at first, it is important to conduct
challenge tests that last for five to seven days. As well as glutamate, amine
and salicylate challenges, these challenges should also include challenges of
wholefoods that have been excluded. If the individual does not seem to react
to any of these chemicals or foods, they can challenge different additives.
Some individuals only have problems with certain additives, such as azo dyes,
MSG, or sulphites.
People rarely dispute the effects of additives, but because the diet cuts out
many fruits and vegetables, and because the symptoms of food chemical intolerance
can be so wide-ranging, people may have knee-jerk worries as to the nutritional
content of the diet. Rest assured it is very easy to reach and exceed the RDAs
of vitamins on the diet as animal foods, legumes, pulses and grains are rich
sources of vitamins and minerals. In fact, as salicylates interfere with several
vitamins in the body (vitamins C, K, pantothenate, folate and B12), vitamin
status can improve. Because food chemicals disproportionately affect children,
teenagers, young women of child-bearing age (especially pregnant, nursing and
new mothers) and the elderly, what usually happens is that husbands, partners
and fathers are sceptical of the value of the diet, but eventually come around
when they see the effects of it for themselves on their partners or children.
Today, hundreds
of medical studies back up the work of Feingold, Swain and others, and thousands
of individuals can testify to its enormous usefulness in resolving their 'idiosyncratic'
symptoms of ill health, not only those treated by the RPAH, but those who have
found the diet independently through determination and research into their apparently
'psychological' illnesses. Despite this, awareness of the pervasive effects
of food chemicals on our health and behaviour remains extremely low amongst
the general population.
Please explore this site if you would like more information into the symptoms
of food chemical sensitivities, and how to perform the exclusion diet.
Copyright © 26 November 2006
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