The Foods We Don't Eat and Why

Our journey to our current food philosophies started when Halle was 6 months old and had a very stubborn diaper rash that I could not clear topically. Being exclusively breastfed, I needed to address my diet to see if something was triggering the reaction. I cut gluten and soy and within a few days, the rash disappeared. Great! I tried reintroducing them a couple of weeks later and was in gut-wrenching pain within half an hour of eating a Reuben sandwich that I couldn't move from the couch for most of the night. That was the last time that I purposefully ate gluten or soy. Any accidental exposure for me since then has resulted in nearly-immediate intense pain for me, and a rash shortly following for Halle.

When Macy was younger, she had pretty strong emotional reactions. I tried gentle parenting methods, I tried time-outs, I tried reasoning with her (I say "I" because as a stay-at-home-mom, I am with her nearly every waking moment. Ben tried the same). Nothing seemed to help. She was starting to hurt herself when upset- pulling her hair, once gnawing aggressively on her crib so hard that I feared her teeth were going to be damaged. She would scream at you over seemingly nothing, sprint across the house to push Halle over and run off laughing, start laughing uncontrollably for a half-hour at a time, and melt into a puddle on the floor, crying.

I was told that it was just "typical toddler behavior," "the terrible two's," "just normal," but I didn't buy it. She seemed to have more reactions after eating, and then I read this article and for the first time, understood that food can cause a behavioral or neurological reaction. It doesn't always cause a digestive upset or rash.

Macy's reactions aren't to the extreme as the child in the article linked above, but I knew that something was amiss and immediately cut gluten and soy from her diet as well and she seemed clearer with fewer meltdowns within the week. And then she got a serving of goldfish crackers. She screamed, she hit, she refused to get into her car seat, she could not listen to any basic instruction for several hours. That sealed it: no more gluten or soy for her. Her body cannot process them and it causes her distress. It's not worth it.

In the year since those first eliminations, we have also expanded to our diet to exclude all grains (even soaked, soured, sprouted and organic), hormones, chemical additives, antibiotics, gut-irritating ingredients like carrageenan, guar gum and xanthan gum, pesticides, dyes and most food in cans.

We don't feel deprived. It is rare that there's a food we can't eat that I have a craving for, but those items just aren't worth it to us.