Christmas food – and how to deal with it

Christmas party food can cause health and behaviour problems
culprits can include nasty food additives or "healthy” fruit eg berries, grapes, citrus
after Christmas can be a good time to try diet

Reader reports

Severe rash reaction to additive 635 in the Christmas turkey

“My 21 year old daughter came down with an allergic reaction on Christmas Day.... She went to the doctor the next morning with this awful raised red rash all over her… That night we had to take her to emergency at the hospital … She ended up staying in for 3 days on cortisone injections”… from story [257]
(see more about Ribo rash and other reactions due to flavour enhancers 627, 631, 635 that are often used in chickens and turkeys)

Behavioural reactions to party foods

"Last year when my daughter was 2 years old she had two nights where she only slept for 2 hours, and was a flailing, intolerable child... this reaction was likely caused by the 'party foods' she had eaten for the first time at a playgroup Christmas party... During the first two weeks of the elimination diet, our little devil turned into an angel…" - from story [216]

"Three days after Christmas (five years ago), my 8 year old daughter went off to such a degree that all I could do was hold on to her while she bit, kicked and screamed until she was physically exhausted... Within a month (on diet) I went from thinking my daughter was destined for jail to thinking what a lovely young girl she is turning into" – from story [461]

”I ordered your books after a very very BAD Christmas Day with my son Nathan aged 12 … For the last four weeks of the school holidays, all 4 of our boys (and us) enjoyed a peaceful school holidays” – from story [358]

Christmas was great due to diet

"I have never felt better over Christmas than I did this year on the elimination diet ...” – from story [1396]

"We've just had Christmas day...totally failsafe for everyone...no-one missed out, we had what the kids could have and everyone had a top time not like the previous Christmas with it ending it tears" - from story [546]

Dealing with Christmas – facebook thread

Help! request from Liz
“We have been failsafe for about 8 weeks and my daughter is doing amazing … The problem is school holidays 😩 we are going away … Do I throw caution to the wind because it’s only a week or do I try to stay on track and help her make the best of the situation? What is everyone doing over this crazy period?”

Supportive answers
“We stay on track. It’s not worth it for us. We have failsafe treats available etc” – Carie and many more in story [1629]

If you’d like to try diet

We support the RPAH Elimination diet (from Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney). There are 3 steps

elimination for 3-6 weeks
challenges
gradual reintroduction

For best success we recommend seeing an experienced and supportive dietitian from our list:

Support

People find my books and DVD extremely helpful and dietitians say it cuts an hour off consultation time if people have read my book Fed Up https://store16061019.ecwid.com/
before they go. You don't have to buy – my books and DVD are available in libraries
Our free booklets show how manageable this diet can be
People say our facebook group is friendly and supportive: Sue Dengate Failsafe Group