A Practical Guide to the Elimination Diet: How to Avoid Foods Scientifically

The core logic of scientific taboos is "2-4 weeks of hypoallergenic dietary elimination + sample-by-sample recall testing". It does not rely on lists of substances posted online, nor does it rely on single allergen testing. Only the trigger sources tested by oneself are 100% accurate. I accompanied 7 friends who had chronic urticaria, irritable bowel syndrome, and recurring acne through the complete process. In the fastest 3 weeks, I found out the source of the problem that had been bothering me for five or six years. It is much easier than running back and forth to the hospital for testing, but the premise is that you must follow the rules. If you mess around, you will easily cause problems.

Nowadays, there are actually quite a lot of differences in the nutrition circle about elimination diets. One group says that just checking for IgG or pricking for allergens is enough, and there is no need to suffer from taboos.； The other group says to simply avoid highly allergenic foods such as milk, eggs, seafood, and nuts for the rest of your life. The most extreme example I have seen is a 22-year-old girl. Her IgG test showed that she was intolerant to 21 kinds of food. She immediately stopped eating all of them for 8 months. In the end, her aunt, who had a sallow complexion, postponed it for two months. Later, she did an elimination diet and found that the only things she really responded to were fruit drinks with artificial colorings and wheat germ. The other dozen or so were all misjudgments, and she had been hungry for more than half a year.

If you really plan to do it, don’t just cut it off right away. Keep a three-day food diary first, and don’t miss any details, including the pearls added to the milk tea, the mint candies eaten at work, and the compound seasonings used in cooking. I once had a friend who suffered from hives repeatedly. I couldn’t find the cause after investigating for almost a month. Finally, I found out that it was the food additive in the compound pepper he used every day. When I wrote the diary before, I didn’t take the seasoning seriously at all.

The elimination period is generally 2 to 4 weeks. During this period, eat recognized hypoallergenic foods: polished rice, pork tenderloin, cabbage, apples, broccoli, etc. Stop all processed foods, takeaways, and drinks containing additives, and even replace the flavored mineral water you often drink with plain cold boiled water. This period was really difficult. A young man I was following secretly ordered some kebabs in the middle of the night on the third day of the elimination period. The hives recurred the next day. The first three days were in vain, and I started all over again. I cried and regretted it for a long time.

When your original symptoms during this period, such as diarrhea, rashes, and unexplained headaches, have all disappeared, you can start to add food back. Only add one kind at a time. After adding, observe continuously for 48 to 72 hours. If you don’t feel any discomfort, it is considered safe. If the symptoms come back after adding food, then this is the core trigger source of foods you should avoid. Just avoid it in the future.

Of course, to be honest, many clinical nutritionists do not recommend ordinary people to do elimination diets at home. This is really not an alarmist. If you have a history of dieting, are anemic, have particularly weak gastrointestinal function, or your symptoms have not improved at all after 4 weeks of elimination, don’t do it and go to a professional nutritionist or allergist to adjust the plan. I have met a girl before who was blind and stopped all protein foods. In the end, low protein edema was more serious than the original allergy problem.

In fact, the elimination diet is like your phone that keeps crashing. You can't just delete all the apps, and you can't just uninstall them just after hearing others say which apps are prone to crashes. You have to uninstall all the third-party apps first, and then install them one by one. It just depends on which app crashes after installation. Everyone's physique is very different. Some people are allergic to mango, some are allergic to coriander, and some are even allergic to rice. Is there any universal "blacklist" of hair products?

I have seen too many people avoid eating anything they hear others say they cannot eat. They have not touched cakes and milk tea for several years. In the end, it was found out that they have no reaction to milk and eggs at all, and they have lost all their addiction. Scientific taboos never make you act like an ascetic who can't eat this or that. Instead, they help you filter out the things that really make you uncomfortable, so that you can eat and drink the rest without delaying anything.