In the previous post I discussed what the popular “food sensitivity” tests are actually testing, which is exposure and not actual food reactions. This one fact explains why the lists of forbidden foods that people get are so similar: a conventional American diet is going to have lots of gluten, dairy, and corn, with probably a lesser amount of soy. Getting rid of these four items will mean, for most people, a huge shift in their eating, often coming with the possibility of the loss of important nutrients. But the people who go on these diets will almost always say that they feel better. How is this possible, if the whole thing is built on a shaky foundation?
There are lots of possible factors at play, but here are the most likely:
1) First and foremost, the placebo effect can never be discounted, especially when it’s working in tandem with what I call the “investment effect.” Remember, as I said yesterday, these tests are very expensive, and they’re typically not covered by insurance. If you’ve spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on testing and then started overhauling your diet to an almost complete degree, you’re not going to want to admit the possibility that the whole thing is for nothing. You’ll keep going, and your investment grows as you do so. What do the words “feel better” even mean? They’re very vague. We often feel what we want to feel or expect to feel. It’s very subjective most of the time.
2) As a close second, eliminating the Ferocious Four Foods mentioned above is automatically going to mean that you’re eliminating most if not all processed foods, which along with the placebo effect probably accounts for the vast majority of improvement that people report. Here’s a good summation from an expert:
Some observers say personalized test results may not be as important as overhauling a lousy diet. Eliminating processed foods makes almost everyone feel better, said nutrition specialist Kelly Dorfman, author of “What’s Eating Your Child? The Hidden Connections Between Food and Childhood Ailments.” (“Beware of Tests Claiming to Detect Food Intolerance”)
So you say to yourself, “I think I’d like some chicken-rice-vegetable soup.” (Of course you can’t have noodles!) So you take a look at the Progresso brand, but you find that it contains wheat, corn and soy. What’s the alternative? Why, you make your own, and it’s pretty good, and much better for you than the canned stuff, not because your version has no forbidden items but because it’s made from fresh ingredients and also because it almost certainly has less salt. You don’t have to eat tasteless food in order to lower your salt intake; you just need to make more of your food yourself. That serving of canned soup has over 600 milligrams of salt in it, about 25% of the amount you should eat in a day, far more than you’d put in your own version.
3) By sheer accident a food may show up on your list that does cause you problems. We’ll say, just for the sake of argument, that you have an undiagnosed lactose intolerance. This specific condition will not show up on your blood test, because food intolerances can’t be tested for in that way. (If you have true lactose intolerance your body lacks the ability to produce the enzyme that turns lactose into lactase.) But if you’re a consistent dairy consumer your IgG proteins will show that you’re “sensitive,” so you’ll cut it out and feel better. It’s great that you’re experiencing an improvement, but in the process you’ve eliminated lots of other foods that you don’t need to go without, you’ve spent money that you didn’t need to spend, and, most importantly, at least in my opinion, you’ve bought into a whole faulty system of reasoning.
In the end, the best action you can take for your health, in any area, is to be an informed consumer. This can be tricky, though, because we all have access to an unlimited ocean of data via the Internet, and so much of what we see online is from unreliable sources and/or coming to us simply because of the specific search terms we’ve entered into Google. I’ve mentioned before that my son had health problems over the course of a couple of years when he was in lower elementary school; I spent untold hours scrolling through articles on “chronic sore throat,” “pain at base of throat,” “fluid retention in face,” etc. None of these terms led me to his real problem, which had to do with his lymph nodes. And of course we had a similar situation in the spring of 2014 as we were trying to figure out why on earth he was experiencing worse and worse back pain. So often the road to a helpful diagnosis is long and wandering. But at least you can research specific treatments, drugs or supplements. Always look at the source for any reviews that you access. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: reviews and testimonials on the company’s website that’s touting a product are worse than useless. “Believe the evidence, not the vendors.” (from an excellent article, “IgG food Intolerance tests continue to mislead consumers into unnecessary dietary restrictions.”)
So that’s it for this week’s fad diet. Next up: the Whole30 phenomenon.