Rotation Diets & Food Allergy

Popular food allergy books suggest that new "sensitization" to foods occurs because a food is eaten regularly. This argument is used to support that idea of Rotation Diets. The idea is to rotate or alternate foods on a 4-5 day schedule.

Food immunology tells us another story. Here are the main rules:

We are rapidly immunized to any food we eat. We do not have to eat a lot of a food to be "sensitized" to it.

New sensitization to food does occur by a lottery-type production of new immune cells. Eating the food does not induce the sensitization, but merely provides the opportunity for it to occur.

Food rotation is unlikely to prevent immune response to incoming antigens, but reduces the total dose of the food ingested over time. A reduced body burden of specific antigens may the most helpful function of rotation diets.

A safe food is presumably safe because it is well-digested and does not contribute an undue body burden of antigenic macromolecules. The rotation of safe food is not necessary. The dose and frequency of ingesting any food are interdependent variables. The rules for dose/frequency distribution are never easy to establish.

Patients often report the feeling that they have a measuring device or "allergy meter" in their body which decides how much is too much. The trick is that the allergy meter changes its threshold values all the time.

In general, higher risk foods (e.g. milk, wheat and other cereal grains, eggs, soy, corn, nuts) are eaten in smaller quantities with a reduced frequency or not at all.

lower risk foods (e.g. rice, broccoli, carrots, peas, sweet potato, cauliflower, yams, peaches, pears) are eaten in increased amounts with increased frequency.

As you follow the Alpha Nutrition Program, you tend to increase vegetable intake and reduce or eliminate your intake of North American staple foods; cereal, bread, milk, eggs, beef, corn, potatoes, coffee, tea, alcoholic beverages, and all manufactured, processed foods. If your tolerance permits, small infrequent servings of allergenic foods may be OK. Most people who recover on the Alpha Nutrition Program and then relapse months later, make the mistake of assuming that if a small dose of the high risk food is OK, then it is permissible to eat as much as you like. They discover the next rule - if you too much of a high risk food you get sick again. The secret of long-term success is to learn how to stay within a safe-eating zone most of the time, allowing just the right amount of exception-foods for enjoyment without crossing the threshold into pain or other suffering.