Anti-Stress Nutrition Programme to Improve Mood,
Health, Behaviour and Learning
By Brenda Sampson
THE FEINGOLD GOOD-TEMPER, GOOD-BEHAVIOUR NUTRITION PROGRAMME TO IMPROVE MOOD, HEALTH, BEHAVIOUR, AND LEARNING
The Feingold programme is a nutrition programme designed by an American allergy specialist, Dr. Ben Feingold. Feingold found that the programme helped children with behaviour problems and learning difficulties. But actually he came to it through an allergic adult with hives. He treated the hives successfully with this programme and the woman simultaneously recovered from emotional disturbance and aggressive behaviour. This first gave Feingold the clue that emotional and behaviour problems are linked with food sensitivity.
The Feingold programme is an anti-stress nutrition programme. It reduces physical stress. The human body copes with both physical and mental stress in the same way, by producing hormones to help the body adapt to the stress. If excessive stress makes too great a demand on the coping glands, (adrenal glands) they weaken and fail.
In our society there are many anxieties and emotional stresses, and most people have few techniques for dealing with them. But if we can lighten our physical stress load, our adrenal glands will have better resources for coping with mental and emotional stress.
The Feingold programme reduces physical stress by reducing the quantity of food additives. These are chemicals, often toxic, added to food to preserve it or to make the manufacturing process more convenient or profitable for the manufacturer. The Health Department restricts the quantity of additives than can be added to a measured quantity of food. But the total amount of the poisons that we eat, depends on how much processed food we consume.
Many food additives are petrol derivatives. The chemical revolution of the last 50 years has been based on the discovery of how to turn petroleum into new chemicals that never existed on earth before. Our bodies do not want new chemicals; they only want the original chemicals needed for life and growth; anything else is toxic and causes stress. People living in cities get more than enough petro-chemicals in their blood by breathing motor car exhaust fumes, and have difficulty in coping with others in their food. But in any case, most people will meet with some emotional crisis at some stage of life. For children it often comes with adolescence. Why not eliminate food toxins and conserve our coping resources for the time when they will be needed? We can do this by using the Feingold programme.
HOW TO USE THE FEINGOLD NUTRITION PROGRAMME SUCCESSFULLY
When our association started in 1977, there were thought to be over a million American children being given drugs to sit still in school. Feingold said, "They are not abnormal children; they are normal children living on abnormal foods". He meant that much of the food sold in dairies and supermarkets at the end of the 20th century, is not fit for human children to eat; it is too loaded with chemicals.
Feingold wanted to make things easy for mothers. He said "If you will cut out the four commonest poisons from your children's food, you will benefit them greatly". Two are artificial food dyes, and artificial flavours. Artificial flavours are by far the commonest food additives, found in almost every processed food. Thousands of chemicals are used in flavours; the recipes are top-secret; the ingredients are not known and there are no regulations controlling their use.
The third item is anti-oxidant preservative used to preserve fats and oils. Most preservatives are toxic, but this is a particularly harmful one; it blocks the use of valuable essential fatty acids in the body. Oil sold in supermarkets will say on the label, "contains anti-oxidant". If you want to use oil, buy cold pressed oil in a health shop; it does not contain anti-oxidant. It is better not to fry in oil; heating oil to high temperatures makes it cancer-producing. A smear of dripping in the pan is better. Margarine probably contains antioxidant as it as made from oil.
The fourth poison often surprises people; it is a natural preservative found in fruit, called salicylic acid, or salicylate. The human race has lived on fruits for so many millions of years, that our bodies have found a way to get rid of this toxin by washing it out in the urine. But allergic children and adults do not seem to do this efficiently; it stays longer in the body and accumulates; when it accumulates one can see how toxic it is; it affects the skin causing rashes; and it can affect the central nervous system, making children irritable, aggressive. In children it causes overactivity, sleeplessness, bedwetting. It can also cause headache, or swollen and painful joints. Salicylate-sensitive people should not drink fruit juices, even pure ones.
Feingold said, "Eliminate food colours, flavours and anti-oxidants from your children's food permanently; never use them again." He did not want to deprive children of fruit permanently, so he said, "Use only the low salicylate fruits for 4 to 6 weeks". These are pears, bananas, pawpaw, lemon juice. When the child has calmed down, test the other fruits; each week try one fruit to see if it is tolerated. If the child reacts with a return of symptoms, you know not to use it. If not, it can be considered safe and used in moderation. Remember that you can get a reaction from an accumulation or build up of salicylate from various fruits.
Berries and stone fruit are high in salicylate, but they are usually only eaten in summer. If you eat strawberries in December and get a rash, you know that you are allergic or sensitive to strawberries, probably the salicylate in strawberries. Other high salicylate fruits are apples, oranges, tomatoes, and grapes, raisins, sultanas, currants. These are eaten all the year round, so if they cause symptoms, the link between the fruits and the symptoms is less likely to be recognised. Australian research shows that apples vary in their salicylate content; golden delicious and red delicious are lower; grannysmith apples are high. People sensitive to salicylate should peel fruit as it is concentrated below the skin. For further information about salicylate see Information about salicylate.
Feingold died in 1982. Since then a lot of information has come out about Candida (thrush). This is an unrecognised epidemic today. Most women who contact me say that they have had thrush. It starts in babies, who can be infected in the birth canal. I read once, that a baby is born with its interior completely sterile, but within a few hours, it will have millions of living organisms inside. Most are beneficial; they are "intestinal flora" which help to digest food and make vitamins for us. A doctor said, "The first thing that goes into a baby's mouth should be the mother's nipple, to establish the right organisms in the gut."
Everybody has some thrush in the intestines, and it is harmless in small quantities. But if it proliferates, it produces toxins that are harmful; they damage and weaken the immune system; they cause allergy and chemical sensitivity, and make people tired and irritable. Thrush overgrowth causes digestive and bowel problems; it is probably common in both children and men as well as women. In women it also spreads to the vagina.
Antibiotics favour thrush overgrowth because they kill all the bacteria in the bowel, good as well as bad. Thrush is not killed because it is a fungal organism and not affected by most antibiotics. After antibiotics it has no antagonists or competitors, plenty of room to grow, a comfortable environment, and plenty of food; because the food it likes best is sugar and modern diet gives it plenty of that. So it proliferates rapidly. Because its poisons weaken the immune system, children get infections; especially ear infection and chest infection; they are given antibiotics which give the thrush another boost; so it is a vicious circle.
The result of bowel thrush is so devastating to a child's health and personality, that it pays to remove from the diet, all sugar, honey and sweet foods that feed thrush. A sugar free Feingold programme will improve most health and behaviour problems.
