Special Foods Diet
Dietary Intervention Program
For Food Allergies, Sensitivities, and Intolerances
by Karen M. Slimak, MS

The purpose of this booklet is to suggest to you what we believe is the best method for fast, total relief of symptoms due to food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances. In spite of the complexities associated with determining specific food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances, the Special Foods Diet represents a fast, accurate way to find a set of foods that are the best, most well tolerated foods that exist anywhere. It is based on the philosophy that in the same way there are foods that cause people problems, there is a set of foods that are the best in the world for a person, so right that the body seems to say ...Ahhh! A sigh of relief. These foods are most likely unusual foods that have never been eaten before, that are specially prepared to avoid molds and chemical contamination, that are eaten in a 7-day rotation plan with optimum balance and quantities of calories, carbohydrates, fats and proteins. So this diet becomes a wonderful experience in which your body receives the most nourishing well-tolerated food you have ever had in your life. The results are fast, frequently occurring within four to seven days, and by staying on this diet long enough, complete recovery from food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances is possible for many. We will tell you how to determine the best foods in the world for you, how to develop a diet based on these foods that is the most nourishing you have ever experienced, how to achieve all the variety in serving choices you desire, and we will tell you how to give your self the best chance of recovery possible.

The symptoms and problems that have been associated with food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances are many and varied. The symptoms and problems can involve virtually any system of the body, often in combinations involving multiple systems simultaneously, and can express themselves in symptoms of varying intensity, ranging from barely noticeable to life threatening. Often the simultaneous expression of symptoms in multiple systems occurs together with this widely ranging array of intensity of symptoms, with some symptoms being obvious and others being barely discernable. Of the rare times when it has been possible to fully identify and describe the complete symptom expression pattern for food reactions, the results show that each food tends to cause a unique pattern of expression and that this pattern is different for each person.

For this reason food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances have been called the great mimicker, because the array of symptoms can appear to be like any number of chronic disorders, and can even mimic several at once. Of course it is also possible for there to be both chronic disorders and food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances occurring simultaneously, making diagnosis even more complicated and difficult.

If this is not bad enough, there seems to be a feed back loop that causes an over reactive (thus hyper strong) immune system to behave as if it were very weak! When the immune system over reacts, for example to a food, there appears to be a feed back loop that tries to compensate for this over reacting. It is an attempt on the part of the body to reduce the tendency to over reaction. Unfortunately, it appears that the immune system, instead of dampening responses to food reactions, actually dampens ability to resist infections. Thus persons suffering from prolonged problems related to food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances frequently suffer from repeated infections of various kinds, and appear to have difficulty overcoming infections. It can be a vicious cycle: food and other reactions causing various mucous membranes to become swollen and irritated, providing an improved site for invading bacteria and other organisms, while at the same time providing reduced ability of the body to fend off these organisms. This may be the reason that many persons report a history of frequent, repeated treatment with antibiotics.

Consider also the recently published studies indicating that many chronic disease processes have systemic infections as underlying causes. Ulcers are now known to be commonly caused by Helicobacter pylorii, and more recently infectious organisms have been linked to ulcerative colitis, Chrons disease, arthritis, and diabetes. This means that the person suffering from food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances may be at greatly increased risk of such disorders, and of experiencing great difficulty responding successfully to antibiotic treatment for these disorders.

In addition food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances can express their effects in a myriad of ways that result in substantial alterations of biochemical processes and substantial interference with the body's ability to absorb and assimilate nutrients from food. This causes a 'chicken or the egg' type of dilemma, ie, which comes first, the malabsorption and/or biochemical imbalance or the food sensitivity? When dietary intervention is accomplished first, all food-related causes of altered biochemical functioning can be eliminated and the body will finally have a chance to function in its own normal way. Only then is it appropriate to consider whether biochemical imbalances remain. Generally the problems that remain are small, if any. And again when dietary intervention is accomplished first, other contributing factors, if present, will be much more easily discerned and addressed.

It would be nice if there were a 100 percent accurate test available for food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances, but alas, there probably never will be. Foods contain literally hundreds of thousands of substances. Some food intolerances are simply the lack of a particular enzyme; some allergies are clearly immunological in nature; the underlying biochemical mechanisms of many sensitivities have yet to be adequately described or understood. In any person food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances can occur at any step in the cooking process and in the metabolic processes of breakdown, assimilation and elimination. It is hard to imagine that there will ever be a test that measures every metabolic step of digestion for all of the substances in a food in the cooked and uncooked form, and peeled and unpeeled form, accounting for immunological responses and enzymatic and other insufficiencies possible in skin, in mucous membranes in the mouth, stomach, intestines, and those possible intracellularly.

Fortunately, when searching for the foods that are most well-tolerated, tests are not essential nor very useful. Because the most well-tolerated foods are unusual foods, a person is not likely to have eaten them before, and they are not likely to have been included in testing protocols. Testing may be more helpful after well-tolerated foods have been included in the diet, after a person is symptom-free, and when a person needs guidance in selecting foods to add back into the diet.

The only universally accepted approach is to believe what your body actually tells you. It is true if you eat a food and it causes problems, and you can reasonably correlate the cause and the effect, you can believe the results. It is also true that, if a food causes problems of some type and you do not eat that food, it can not cause those problems. Because most people eat so many different foods, because of the times period involved for digestion, assimilation and elimination, because reactions many be immediate or delayed, and because reactions may be short or long in duration, accurate dose-response assessments can be very difficult. In individuals who have been carefully tested, food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances are almost always accompanied by chemical sensitivities. Because of this, eating a diet of only well-tolerated foods is important because it eliminates the symptoms caused by foods and thus makes it easier to correctly interpret symptoms caused by all other remaining factors. Food allergies and sensitivities can be completely avoided by changing the foods one eats, and thus it is relatively easy to eliminate food-related problems. When this is accomplished first, other contributing factors, if present, will be much more easily discerned and addressed.

Considering the above, a Dietary Intervention Approach that quickly and effectively eliminates symptoms due to food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances is important to a great many people:

Goal:

• Try to eliminate as many symptoms as possible while eating as many of the 'old foods' as possible.

Strategies for nutrition:

Beliefs:

We have found that the goals, strategies, and beliefs listed above are wrong.

Eating as many of the old foods as possible, means that foods knowingly causing symptoms are included in the diet and symptoms are managed by strategies such as medication, by reducing quantities (I can eat a small amount at one meal, but not more during the day), by eating less frequently (I can eat a small amount once every two weeks without getting into too much trouble) and so forth. This means that the immune system is always being challenged with just as much problem foods as it can possibly handle without causing overwhelmingly serious problems. Continual tottering on the brink of overload is not a scenario that logically leads to the prospect of symptom relief or recovery. Following this approach generally guarantees that, at best, the person will never improve from his current state and is very likely to worsen over time.

Strategies for nutrition that emphasize supplementation and simply 'eating what you feel like' miss the critically important fact that it is essential to make sure that you eat enough. Supplements do not contain calories, they provide vitamins and minerals, not carbohydrates, fats and proteins. In addition supplements may contain allergenic food residues, how does one know how to choose supplements when one does not know which foods are well tolerated and which are not?

When person with food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances modify their diets and 'eat what they feel like', they almost always eat too little. With the common reference points gone, most people eat only 20-25% of the carbohydrate calories they need. For example they may eat a regular serving of potatoes at mealtime, but skip the bread, milk and any dessert, which are other common forms of carbohydrates. Over time the lower calorie levels result in massive weight loss and can cause the general level of health of a person to drop to a much lower level; this generally results in food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances becoming more extensive and more severe.

When a person or his health professional believes that compromises are necessary, the tradeoffs do not eliminate all of the problems and thus the immune system and the body always has a lot to deal with. Doing only part of what is needed, hoping for the best, but not really expecting to really recover is not a scenario that leads to improvement.

At Special Foods!TM we have a unique opportunity to see the results people experience from virtually every dietary approach that has been suggested, since we serve the thousands of most sensitive persons in the world. The troublesome truth is that it is rare for persons suffering from food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances to experience long-term symptom relief. Most persons improve temporarily and then the symptoms begin returning, becoming as severe and frequently more severe than previously and gradually the patients become sensitive to new foods one at a time.

The eventual increase in severity and extent of the problems in individuals experiencing food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances generally happens because the dietary guidelines given frequently include the following serious errors: 1) people are allowed to eat the next nearest neighbor to food that made them sick in the first place; this is the food for which the chances of developing sensitivities are the greatest, 2) people are allowed to eat the closely related foods frequently, generally not rotating over enough days, and 3) people are not told how much to eat, and so they unintentionally eat far less than they need to maintain themselves, and accidentally starve. Accidental starvation causes the general health of the body to sink to a lower level, and all physical problems become worse. For persons with food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances, 'worse' means that the food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances become worse.

Accidentally starving ones self while eating the closest relative of the food that already makes you sick virtually guarantees that a person will become much worse, instead of better. And this is what happens to most people!

The Special Foods Diet avoids these pitfalls, recommending instead: 1) eat only foods that are not related to the ones that make you sick, 2) rotate them with many days passing before eating the food again, and 3) eat lots - at least the recommended daily allowance (RDA) for carbohydrates, protein, and fat, if not more. Is it any wonder that virtually everyone experiences rapid symptom relief and a very large majority eventually experience complete recovery. This is why we feel that the Special Foods Diet is so important for person with food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances to consider.

Eating as many of the 'old foods' as possible, although they are familiar and comforting, are foods from the very group causing the problems and must be avoided.

When foods are the problem, the goal has to be to find foods that do not cause the problems.

Goal: Eat only foods that are completely well tolerated (causing no symptoms) in optimally nourishing combinations for as long as it takes for the immune system to return to normal function

Accomplishing this goal relies completely on finding the truly well tolerated foods, the ones that are as totally 'good' for the body as the previous foods were 'bad'. It is widely accepted that the food allergy testing strategies are not as accurate as would be liked, so how does one find the well tolerated foods?

The simplest strategy is to:

Strategy: Rotating only optimally nourishing, body friendly (well-tolerated) foods selected from unusual and uncommon sources in balanced food combinations in a 7-day rotation plan while avoiding all other environmental exposures to achieve total food and environmentally-related symptom relief for at long as it takes.

This strategy is simply not possible to achieve with a belief system based on compromises. The immune system needs complete avoidance to begin the process of recovering. It is extremely important to find ways to eliminate all substances causing the immune system to over react; only when this is achieved can the immune system begin to respond more normally. It has to, because it does not have anything to react to!

Belief: Expect to achieve total symptom relief from symptoms caused by foods and environmental exposures. Know that this is possible to achieve; this is the Zero-Symptom Baseline.
There is no room for compromise.
Expect that if total symptom relief is achieved consistently, for a long enough period of time, eventual recovery from food-related sensitivities is a very real possibility.

The goals, strategies and beliefs that are so fundamental to the approach and philosophies of the Special Foods Diet were developed during a desperate search for foods for the infant son of the founder of Special Foods when he was desperately ill, suffering from extensive, severe food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances. His symptoms included severe GI irritation, nausea, vomiting, alternating diarrhea and constipation, severe asthma, repeating ear infections, repeated viral infections, swelling, hives, rashes, screaming in pain, inability to sleep, restlessness, irritability, and numerous, severe neurological symptoms.

Please view this story in several ways: as an illustration of the improvement possible with the right dietary intervention, as an example of how ill a person can be and still recover completely, and as a narrative telling how the underlying principles were developed, how they were and can be implemented, and how important they are in creating the opportunity for successful dietary intervention.

'When my son was 5 months old, he was discharged from our local hospital, essentially to die from his extensive, severe food allergies and sensitivities. Knowing he had reacted severely to each food that had been offered, they tried to soothe my fears with the words, Somewhere in the world there are foods your son can eat, and we know you will find them! I realized that the only one standing between my son and almost certain death was me!

I wished for the right foods in a hurry. Because there was very little time - literally - I wished for, not the familiar foods closely related to the foods that already made him so ill, I wished for the foods with the best chance of agreeing with him. Those foods would be absolutely the most hypoallergenic foods in the world! The foods the least likely to cause his problems, the foods that would agree with him so completely, that it would be like a sigh of relief to his body.

Where were my chances the best? What are the foods with the highest probability of being well tolerated? I reasoned, I now know correctly, that the best chances would be with foods that were totally unfamiliar and preferably from entirely new food families.

So I made a list of every food that had been fed to the baby, his reactions, and classified the foods into food families. Then I crossed each of those food families off of my list of possibilities, and did not consider that food family again.

Next I made a list of the food families that were left. Then came innumerable trips to grocery stores, gourmet shops, and ethnic markets, simply looking for anything. I had my best results in ethnic markets where I would wander the isles, pick up strange things, ask customers to tell me the name of the food in their language and write it out for me. I then went to the library where I translated the words into English, and classified them into food families. I then selected the ones to try that came from new food families. If the baby reacted to any of these foods, I eliminated the entire food family.

The good news is that I slowly began to find foods that worked, and I mean really worked well! As soon as I found a few well-tolerated foods, I based the baby's entire diet on them, and within four days, ALL of his symptoms disappeared.

While my son was feeling well, no, wonderful, I began to work quickly to exploit these few food families by finding many foods, not just one from each of the new food families I had found. For example, I learned that sweet potato leaves are edible, and that the leaves of most exotic roots are edible. From sweet potatoes alone, you can have green, orange and white vegetables to eat. Similarly, virtually every part of the lotus water lily is edible.

Although I worked hard to provide variety in a rotation diet, so many vitamins and minerals and enzymes would be included in the diet, I followed the accepted wisdom, that children should be allowed to follow their own instincts. I relied on what I was told, that children on their own would eat until satisfied, and would eat all they needed.

Well, this was just not true. In frequent pediatrician checkups, the doctor became alarmed as the now toddler slipped farther and farther behind in the growth charts in both height and weight. He was happily satisfied with a few bites of food and was much more interested in playing with the other children. I realized that on rotation diets where few foods are available, it is very easy to eat far less than the body needs.

Back in the library I worked with nutritional guidelines and translated them into daily quantities (pounds) of the basic macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins the child would have to eat every day to meet his basic needs for calories. I learned first hand that balanced quantities of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins were essential. Too few calories results in stunted growth and being too thin; too much fat produces rotund children who are too short; too little protein may cause bruising.

So I learned that the right foods alone were not enough. The very best foods, from the very best food families had to be rotated and absolutely had to be eaten in well-specified quantities and with an optimal balance of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

It was when I began achieving all of these simultaneously, that I watched with wonder the amazing blossoming of health in my son, that I realized that there just might be hope for recovery. I could tell that my son, in spite of being so horribly ill, had achieved a 'zero point'. He was truly experiencing no symptoms at all, and you could see the health and vitality returning and increasing.

I vowed that my goal for my son would be to see him leave home for college without having to consider diet or sensitivities at all. I reasoned that if I took him off of his diet too soon, or if I started introducing closely related foods, or if I juggled foods, for example, one meal every 6 weeks is okay, but two meals every six weeks gives him problems, that he would likely always be ill. So instead, I stayed with the good diet, and waited. I watched him grow up as a pillar of health in the community! Everyone else got the colds!

Once or twice a year, we would gingerly let him try something and would track the symptoms. At first the reactions were severe and prolonged, lasting over four days. Gradually over the years, the reactions got shorter and shorter and less and less in severity.

The day did come when we could not tell a difference between his well-tolerated foods and the old foods that used to make him so ill. We waited two years after that, and then began slowly expanding the diet. As the foods were added, we watched for signs of viruses, infections, congestion, food cravings, anything. We saw absolutely nothing, and it became clear that his immune system had become normal in virtually every way.

No we did not have to wait his entire childhood; the process, although gradual, was actually much faster than expected.

Although rotation diets are not new, it is the combination of expanded rotation of only well tolerated food families simultaneously accomplished with the optimal nourishment obtained from the foods and allowing enough time for the body to heal, that represents the important difference between long term gradual worsening of health and achieving the long term improvement and eventual complete recovery that so many have now achieved with this method.

The basic philosophy was devised from the urgent struggle to save the life of one severely ill child, and that experience was used to fashion a protocol and framework that could be applied to others in many circumstances, and has now been successfully used by many thousands of individuals over the last 15 years. The possibility of actual recovery is not commonly encountered elsewhere regarding food allergies and sensitivities. We are proud that so many have gone on to careers in business, finance, theater, and the home without having to give a thought to their foods. And the children? Well, they just grow up!

I remember a frantic call from a mom who had worked so hard with her son. She called, worried about her son, who was eating standard 'teenage' foods away from home. When asked, she realized that absolutely no symptoms were occurring and absolutely no indications of possible symptoms were occurring nor had been occurring for months. I was pleased to remind her, that this was the moment she had been working toward since he was five years old, when he had been so severely ill with extensive food allergies!

What we learned, and have now shared with so many, is the fact that not compromising on foods at all, not compromising on macronutrients at all, and not compromising on time at all is almost always just what the body needs to relieve the burden on an overworked immune system, and to make possible the slow, steady and continual improvement in immune function as the immune system begins to return to normal, that makes complete recovery a very real possibility.

The best and quickest way to find out just how many of your problems are related to food allergies, sensitivities or intolerances, is to temporarily (we recommend five weeks) place yourself or your child on a diet of unusual foods and uncommon foods that you have never eaten before - the Special Foods! Diet. After the five-week period you will have a very good idea of just how many of the problems are food-related. If after five weeks without a slip-up you notice no appreciable change in your condition, then you may be able to reasonably conclude that this is not the answer for you, but if you experience 50-100% improvement in symptom relief, then you will know that this approach to dietary intervention is for you, and the improvement will be worth all of the effort up to this point and beyond.

We strongly recommend the Special Foods! Diet for the following reasons:

We highly recommend the Special Foods! Diet as the best, fastest way to know the improvement possible from food-related changes in diet. You may wish to discuss this approach and its appropriateness with your doctor or other health professional.

The Special Foods!TM Diet is a simple, fast way to determine the maximum benefit in terms of symptom relief that is possible to achieve from an elimination diet, while at the same time optimizing nutritional content and minimizing the chances of developing new food sensitivities.

Table 1 below is the Special Foods Diet. It is a gluten-free, casein-free, sugar-free, yeast-free, 'everything-free' diet that is based on the most well tolerated, hypoallergenic carbohydrate foods in the world, tropical roots. These complex carbohydrates are also very high in soluble and insoluble fiber, and contain very high levels of many vitamins and minerals. This diet is also for individuals who have been diagnosed with leaky gut, Candidiasis, and who have mold sensitivities (see Table 2)

The diet is really more like seven diets, since drastically different foods are included each day. The foods for each day are simple, and fairly few in number. Keeping the diet simple is very important; this makes it easier to find any problem foods, should there be a few still present. It is important that the diet also contain only foods that you or your child has not eaten before and experiences no known symptoms from.

Table 1: The Special Foods Diet

Therefore, for best results possible, before starting this diet, evaluate each food in Table 1 (or 2) and adjust the diet for you or your child to make sure that the Special Foods Diet contains only foods that have not been eaten before and you or your child experiences no known symptoms from. Proceed as follows: 1) Evaluate each food and determine whether you or your child has eaten that food more than once or twice a year; if the answer is 'yes' for a food, cross that food from the list. 2) Next consider the remaining foods; are there any that you know from personal observation that you or your child experiences symptoms from? If so, also cross out those foods. Refer to Appendix B for suggestions of replacement foods. This will be an individually tailored diet for you or your child.

As we have said many times already, nutrition is extremely important in any diet, and particularly important in this diet. When a diet is comprised of unusual foods and one carbohydrate per day, the standard frames of reference become almost meaningless. For example, when one carbohydrate source, ie, potatoes has to be the sole carbohydrate for a day, it must replace several forms of carbohydrates, ie, bread, milk, dessert etc, and multiple servings of the one food must be eaten. This is where most people make their mistake and end up eating only 20-25 per cent of what their body needs.

We have translated the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA) into quantities a person needs to consume throughout the course of a day in order to meet the requirements of the RDA. Although these numbers seem high, they accurately reflect the RDA values, and illustrate very vividly why so many people get into trouble when they try to make dietary changes.

Table 2. The Special Foods! Diet for
Mold Sensitive Persons, and Yeast Overgrowth