In my last post I discussed elimination dieting. Now let’s talk about the 8-food plan.
Not as severe as a fast but tougher than the previous regime, is what can be called the Few Foods Diet; I prefer to use an 8-food plan. Obviously it is more likely to succeed than the previous plan, since you are giving up more foods. Any determined adult could cope with it, but on no account should you subject a child to this diet without his, or her, full and voluntary cooperation. It could produce a severe emotional trauma otherwise (factually, there is rarely a problem — most children don’t want to be ill and will assist you, providing they understand what you are trying to do.)
The basic idea is to produce one or two relatively safe foods for each different category we eat. Everyday foods are avoided since these include the common allergens. Thus we would choose fruits such as mango and papaya, not apple and banana; flesh such as duck and rabbit, not beef and pork; quail and ostrich, not chicken. The diet below contains my suggestions. You can vary it somewhat according to what is available to you locally.
the few foods diet
| Meat, protein | rabbit, venison |
| Fowl | ostrich or quail |
| Fruit | mango, kiwi fruit |
| Vegetables | spinach, turnip |
| Starch | buckwheat, quinoa |
In addition to the stipulated foods, you are allowed salt to taste but not pepper, spring water but not herb teas or juices. Even herbs and pepper must be challenged correctly on introduction. Note that neither of the starch foods are in the grains family.
If you still don’t know what food families are click here
The main problem with such a restricted plan is boredom. However there is enough variety here for adequate nourishment over the suggested period of seven to ten days, providing you eat a balance of all eight foods. Exotic fruits can be expensive, but you won’t need to eat them for long and, in any case, few people would deny that feeling well is worth any expense.
The chances are that, on a diet like this, you will feel well within a week, but for some conditions, such as eczema and arthritis, you will need to allow a little longer. Be prepared to go the full ten days before deciding that it isn’t working.
A variation of this diet is the exotic food diet. Don’t worry how many foods you can round up to eat, choose as many as you can find; just make sure they are all unusual, you personally have never eaten them and they are not related to any common food category. You will need to learn about food families (groups of foodstuffs that are related.
In my next post, I will discuss the the Fast.
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