174 Diet Wise
A child’s preferences, if you will allow them, may be a guide to you.
A strong aversion to a particular food may be nature’s way of pointing out
that it is an incompatible food, thus parents should never force their children
to eat foods they dislike. Yet the other side of the same coin is that once
food addictions have become established, then the child’s ‘preference’ is
really only a craving for a food. So when it comes to the diet I usually advise
parents to tell the child that he or she may not eat the banned foods but is
not compelled to eat the allowed ones.
This puts hunger on your side: the child either eats the right food or
goes without. After a day or two of sulking and getting over the withdrawals,
the child will invariably co-operate; yet he or she has the option of avoiding
foods that are deeply and instinctively disliked. The difficulty I always find
during this period of laying down the rules lies with the parents: to many
of them it seems downright heartless to be so unyielding on the subject of
what their youngster may or may not eat. I only ask them to try, and in most
cases it works very well.
The fact is a lot of children are picky eaters because of their
addiction to the wrong foods. Parents sometimes complain that their child
already eats very little, so further restrictions mean that they may not eat at
all. I explain that this pickiness is really due to the fact that the child is being
poisoned by what he or she is already eating. As soon as the bowel clears
of these harmful substances, the child’s appetite always returns and little
Johnny will often show an astonishing gusto for eating, where before he
showed only apathy and indifference to food. In the meantime, the previous
paragraph applies. If the child does not eat on this plan, he or she will get well
nevertheless. It is vital to understand this is about exclusions.
Does your child have food incompatibilities?
The self-inventory in Chapter 10 will provide you with many clues that
may make it obvious that your child has allergies. Nevertheless, many of
the symptoms are very subjective: you wouldn’t know if your child were
experiencing many of them. Accordingly, I have supplied below a table of
objective signs and observations that may help you to decide. Once again,
it should be pointed out that the symptoms may have other causes, but the
more of those below that are positive, the more certain it is that the child’s
problem is an allergy or genetic food incompatibility: