(1) Dr. Feingold was not just “a pediatric allergist” nor a “California pediatrician” … in 1945 he became CHIEF OF PEDIATRICS at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital at Los Angeles, California, while at the same time he was an Associate in Allergy, Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. It must also be remembered that allergy, at that time, was an emerging specialty and he was a pioneer in the field. He wrote the textbook called Introduction to Clinical Allergy used by medical schools. Then, in 1951, he was asked by Kaiser Permanente Medical Centers in California (this is a HUGE organization) to set up all their allergy centers, and he became CHIEF OF ALLERGY. And not pediatric allergy — the entire department.

(2) Yes, the studies done in the 70’s (almost 40 years ago now!!) concluded that the diet didn’t work. First, most of these studies were actually funded by the food additive companies. Next, they were generally very small studies. The Harley study (1978) on 10 preschool children concluded the diet didn’t work in spite of 100% of the children getting better on the diet — now that took some circular thinking!! !! Of course, Harley’s study was funded by the food additive industry group calling itself the “Nutrition Foundation.”

Moreover, NONE of the studies then or now showed 5% of children being affected. This is simply untrue. Yes, it was SAID, but it was never SHOWN, and never PROVEN.

Whenever researchers used any approximation of the Feingold diet, well over 50% of the children responded to it. Then they “challenged” the children with a very small amount of a single food dye. Sometimes only 5% or 10% or even less of the kids reacted to the dye. So what? That does not prove anything except (a) maybe it was too low a dose of dye, (b) maybe dyes are more reactive when consumed in combination with other additives, or (c) maybe out of the thousands of chemicals eliminated by the diet, they chose the wrong one to test. In each case, these “challenge” tests were only proving something about the CHALLENGE … not about the DIET.

75% of children improved on the Rowe & Rowe diet which eliminated only coloring and did not bother with salicylates. This is not 5% …. and yes, over 80% of them reacted to a challenge test, showing a dose response. Another thing that Rowe did was use a more sensitive questionnaire to track reactions.

3. Sue Dengate belittles the improvement on the Feingold diet by saying “Later studies suggest that Dr Feingold’s diet failed to remove sufficient harmful food chemicals. Since the 1980s, a number of studies which have eliminated more foods have achieved success with between 50 to 100% of ADHD ” — but she refutes her own statement when discussing the Schoenthaler school studies and other studies which showed dramatic improvement in behavior with an improved diet that did not even eliminate all the additives and foods that Feingold does, let alone anything more.

Dr. Feingold’s diet did not FAIL TO REMOVE “sufficient harmful food chemicals.” As reported by Dr. Breakey in her review of studies, later studies did remove more items. They used the oligoantigenic (few foods) diet or an allergy diet. It was a nice effort by researchers to avoid the stigma of studying the Feingold diet — other researchers had already told us that they were threatened with being blackballed if they tried it. And while they got good results, their results were no better than the earlier independent studies on the Feingold diet itself.

Just because they chose to eliminate more items does not mean that all those items were REQUIRED to be eliminated. No such thing was ever proven. In fact, their results were no better than we see with the implementation of the diet in the field here in the United States. While itis true that some children are also allergic to milk or other food ingredients, this can often be discovered through our usual dietary implementation, without the major disruption of a few-foods diet.

Another thing mentioned by Dr. Breakey in her suggestion of the importance of a “broader” removal of items is the removal of environmental chemicals such as fragrances. However, this is not news to us — the Feingold diet removes all fragrances in toiletries, cleaning supplies, room deodorizers, etc. Some natural fragrances are tolerated and can be introduced after a good response to the diet.

Sue Dengate discusses the major improvement in New York schools, in which an almost 16% average improvement was seen in almost a million children — it is important to note that they did not ALL improve a measly 16%. Rather, the worst of them improved so much, that it brought the entire group up by an average of 16% — and that is pretty hard to do in such a large group when any individual improvement would be expected to be averaged out of visibility.

And it can be seen that each year as the New York schools approached the basic (Stage Two) Feingold diet, there was more improvement. They never did remove salicylates, let alone all the other chemicals Sue Dengate would have you believe important to get more than a 5% improvement — so where is the failure here?

I know that Sue advocates the Failsafe diet, and that it is more restrictive than the Feingold diet. And it works – we are not surprised. For some children – especially those who are very violent – removal of amines is important, and you can see her book recommended on our website. We refer to her organization in Australia as our “sister group” on our website. There is certainly no need for sibling rivalry.

Shula Edelkind
Feingold Program Research Librarian
Feingold Association of the United States
http://www.feingold.org