by Lori O'Day

Created on: January 11, 2007   Last Updated: April 18, 2007

For many people, especially children, medications commonly used for ADHD (such as Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, Straterra...) are not an option. For varying reasons, some people have an intolerance for stimulants. When we founds ourselves in this boat with our 6-year-old son, we felt especially desperate to find something which would help. We knew his success in school, his peer interactions, his sisters' happiness, and his parents' need for family peace depended on SOMETHING to help. Adderall and Ritalin (both long-acting types) proved to be ineffective and detrimental in the way they affected his mood and disposition. This is when we learned about the Feingold Diet.

Dr. Ben Feingold lived from June, 1900 to March, 1982. He worked as a physician in Pennsylvania, Germany, California, and in the US Navy from 1924 until his death in 1982. A great deal of his work was with allergy or allergy research. In the 1970's he conducted studies and wrote about food additives and how they affected behavior in children and adults. Some of his work includes:

# Recognition of food additives as a cause of symptoms of allergy. Annals of Allergy, 1968 Jun;26(6):309-13.
# Letter: Biting insects survey: a statistical report. Annals of allergy, 1974 Aug;33(2):128-9.
# Food additives in clinical medicine. International journal of dermatology, 1975 Mar;14(2):112-4.
# Hyperkinesis and learning disabilities linked to artificial food flavors and colors. The American journal of nursing, 1975 May;75(5):797-803.
# Behavioral disturbances linked to the ingestion of food additives. Delaware medical journal, 1977 Feb;49(2):89-94.
# Food additives in dentistry. The Journal of the American Society for Preventive Dentistry, 1977 Jan-Feb;7(1):13-5.
# Dietary management of nystagmus. Journal of Neural Transmission, 1979;45(2):107-15.
# The role of diet in behaviour. Ecology of Disease, 1982;1(2-3):153-65.

As you can see, he hypothesized that for some people, certain food additives become almost toxic and cause behavioral problems. Based on my personal experience with my son, I would agree whole-heartedly. I found, much to my disbelief, that once we ran our experiment with the "FEINGOLD PROGRAM" (described below), we were easily able to determine which foods caused a behavioral reaction in our son.

What is the FEINGOLD DIET?
Dr. Feingold believed that the food additives which caused problems were:
artificial coloring
artificial flavoring
salicylates
artificial sweeteners (Aspartame/Nutrasweet, an artificial sweetener)
preservatives

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