Food Allergies -Roger Mason

We all have multiple and unknown food allergies. The best theory for why we cannot properly digest all normal foods is "leaky gut syndrome" where our intestines are weak and allow toxins into our blood. Unfortunately there is no reliable scientific way to test for these intolerances to common foods. All the blood and skin tests you read about simply don't work. That's right, none of them work, so don't waste your money. Muscle testing (kinesiology) is a joke accepted by the naive and gullible. Please read the article on that. In the next 20 years we will find a way to accurately test our food allergies using blood, skin, or (ideally) a body field test similar to brain wave (EEG) measurement. Yes, there are a few sensitive people who can use a pendulum for testing, but this is in the realm of psychic phenomenon and not science.  
 
There are only a few basic food groups, so let's see which of them have the most common allergens.  
 
Allergies to grains are rare despite the usual rant about wheat and corn allergies and gluten intolerance. Grains as a group are the most compatable of all foods by far. Whole grains are the staff of life, and should be the very basis of your diet. People who feel they cannot digest gluten can simply eat other grains than wheat until their digestive systems are stronger. Rice, corn, buckwheat have no gluten for example. Wheat can be introduced later when your intestines work better. Bean allergies are also rare despite the unfounded claims of soy allergies. Westerners eat so little soy foods this really doesn't apply anyway. The most common soy food for us is soy milk, so if people don't like soy they can simply use rice, oat, or almond milks instead. Find a brand you enjoy and you will come to prefer it to dairy milk.  
 
Most vegetables are well digested by most everyone. It is good to avoid the Nightshade vegetables or at least use them only occasionally. This include tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. They contain large amounts of toxic solanine and other danger-ous alkaloids (please read my book Zen Macrobiotics for Americans for more discussion of these). Vegetables with high amounts of oxalic acid should also be avoided. This would include such vegetables as spinach and Swiss chard. Many people have candida yeast overgrowth in their intestines which makes them sugar intolerant. Diabetes and insulin resistance are epidemic in the West largely due to intake of ALL sugars. This means they should not eat sweeteners, even natural ones such as molasses, honey and maple syrup. It also means they should not eat fresh fruit, dried fruit or drink fruit juice. Sugar is sugar is sugar. Period. All sugars are "natural" if you stop to think about it- white sugar is simply refined more. Raw sugar and agave nectar are jokes with high price tags. Tropical fruits are much more allergenic than temperate fruits and should only be eaten by tropical races in tropical climates. Indians in south India should eat mangoes and bananas. Europeans in America should not.  
 
Beef is uncommonly allergenic, but is obviously not a good food choice due to the saturated fat content. Pork is more allergenic and lamb even more allergenic. Poultry and eggs are the worst. These are the most allergenic of animal foods. Americans consume an unreal amount of chicken, turkey, and eggs which is a major cause of their epidemic disease rates. Stop eating poultry and eggs. Chicken is not a health food. 
 
Fish and seafood is a good choice for most people who do not want to be vegetarians. There are some people who are allergic to seafood, however, and should not eat it. If you feel you react negatively to seafood then take it out of your diet. Sea vegetables ("seaweed") contain such extreme amounts of iodine that many people cannot tolerate them except, say, sushi once a month.  
 
The very worst allergen on the face of the earth is milk and dairy foods. All adults of all races are lactose intolerant especially blacks and Asians. Everyone loses the enzyme lactase after three years of age. The dairy protein casein is also very deleterious. Take milk and all dairy products completely out of your diet. Use soy or other vegetable milks, vegetable meltable cheeses, soy sour cream and other such foods. You'll come to prefer them. If you do only one thing to change your diet it would be to remove all dairy products. Period. 
 
Nuts need a special mention. There is no botanical food group known as "nuts" so there is no allergy to nuts per se. People who talk about "nut allergies" or “tree nuts” are nuts! Pecans are completely unrelated to cashews botanically. The real problem is peanuts which are one of the ten most allergenic foods known. Use other nuts than peanuts in your cooking.  Peanuts are tropical legumes and not nuts anyway. 
 
You can strengthen your intestines by EATING WELL, not having bad habits such as alcohol, and taking the supplements acidophilus, FOS and L-glutamine. Eat only two meals a day. Fast one day a week on water from dinner to dinner. Please see the library for articles on all these subjects. The macrobiotic diet is the least allergenic of all. Everyone has unknown food allergies and many of the effects are delayed and subtle.

Everyone is unique biologically. It will be a long time before we can scientifically and accurately test for food allergies.