What Are Food Chemicals?
These are substances in many “healthy” plant foods and animal products that protect the plant from it’s natural predators. Many of the chemicals in plant foods are there as a defense mechanism for the species to survive.
A healthy gut and digestive system will process these chemicals out of the body without a problem. However, when your gut is unhealthy they can build up and wreak havoc. So, it’s important to note that most people don’t have food chemical challenges.
But, if you struggle with digestive health challenges, have tried to clean up your diet, and are still having symptoms on a “healthy” diet. Food chemicals might be something you want to look into.
Besides an unhealthy gut, other things that contribute to the likelihood of food chemical sensitivity are genetic predisposition (but don’t worry there are still things you can do!), stress and trauma, and your overall toxic load from food, water, cosmetics, and your environment can all contribute to your system becoming overwhelmed and causing uncomfortable symptoms.
How Do Food Chemicals Affect Your Digestion & Physical Health?
If you have food chemical sensitivity, you’ll also have inflammation that increases as you eat the foods you’re sensitive to. This inflammation can be in your gut and also throughout your entire body.
When you’re eating foods that are inflaming your body consistently, this is a constant source of stress. These chemicals build up in your system and become toxic affecting the balance of microbes in the gut, the gut lining, and your overall ability to digest and process foods.
These food chemicals need to be eliminated the same way as other toxins in the body, and the more toxins you’re exposed to the more likely your body is to become overwhelmed and present with symptoms or disease.
How Do They Affect Your Mental and Emotional Health?
If you struggle with bloating, constipation, abdominal pain, low energy, brain fog, etc, I’m sure you know how much it wears on you. It’s exhausting. Especially if you’ve tried a myriad of things and aren’t getting better.
When your body doesn’t feel good, it massively affects your mood, your patience, and your motivation to continue to heal.
Hang in and remember you’ll get there and you’ll feel better. When you figure out the exact foods that make you feel good and the ones that don’t… you’ll be in control of your symptoms and well on your way to healing.
It’s like magic! When you consume foods that are serving you… your body feels good, your mind clears, and your energy comes back.
Speaking of… brain fog is a real thing. With food chemical sensitivities and digestive issues, many people experience having a “foggy” brain, memory challenges, or word loss issues.
What you eat impacts your ability to think clearly and rationally and can even affect your memory.
In addition, your gut has a massive influence on many of your neurotransmitters and the things that directly control your ability to be happy, calm, and handle stress. Dysfunction in these neurotransmitters can cause anxiety, depression, and a variety of other mood and emotional challenges.
My Story
My gut challenges started years ago with gluten intolerance, digestive upset, bloating, constipation, abdominal pain and stomachaches, brain fog, and chronic anxiety. I removed gluten first, then dairy, then sugar. After that, I went almost exclusively organic as I learned more about the detrimental effects of glyphosate (aka Roundup) on my gut bacteria and health.
I’d tried a variety of cleanses, detoxes, and programs and saw countless practitioners looking for answers and help. It took me years of research and trial and error before I learned about food chemicals and the awful challenges that they can cause.
As I got “healthier,” went grain-free, and focused on eating mostly a plant-based diet, I expected to heal. But I wasn’t… in ways I felt better but there was still something that was holding me back and affecting my gut in a big way.
My body was reacting to the massive amount of oxalates I was eating. When I went grain-free, I was eating tons of nuts and seeds along with juicing beets and celery which are both high in oxalates. I wasn’t eating dairy (which I still don’t), so I added in cashew cheeses, dips, and sauces and it turns out cashews are high in oxalates. I was downing chia pudding and eating tons of sweet potatoes both of which are high-oxalate foods.
My diet was also high in salicylates and nightshade. Although my reaction to these is much less, I now know to eat these in moderation so I don’t experience symptoms.
As I decreased oxalates in my diet, I started to notice less bloating, bowels improving, and my energy came back. Figuring out this piece has been a huge turning point in my healing journey. And, I only wish I’d learned about food chemicals much sooner.
Here Are the Food Chemicals To Be Aware of:
Here are a list of some foods in each food chemical category. Many people find that they struggle with more than one food chemical sensitivity, but that’s not true for everyone.
Oxalates
Oxalates are found in foods such as beans, spinach and greens (dino or lacinato kale is an exception), chia and sesame seeds, nuts, sweet potatoes and potatoes (red potatoes are an exception), quinoa, green and black tea, chocolate, and nightshade vegetables.
A few of the common and identifying symptoms of oxalates are digestive issues, urination issues including UTI, fatigue, & low energy. However, oxalate toxicity can present in a variety of ways depending on the person.
If you choose to decrease your high oxalate food intake, do it super slowly and work with a practitioner. There is a “dumping” that happens that can overwhelm our body if not done properly.
Salicylates
Some foods high in salicylates are herbs, spices, and teas. Many fruits and vegetables are high salicylates such as grapes, pumpkin, nightshade vegetables, nuts (except cashew), spinach, sesame seeds, citrus, and berries (blueberries are the lowest), and fermented foods.
Histamines
Histamines accumulate in your system over time and can be due to decreased levels of DAO, the enzyme that metabolizes histamine. When the gut lining is damaged, this enzyme is often reduced affecting your ability to break down histamines.
Also, bacterial overgrowth can increase histamines because certain bacteria actually produce histamine. This happens in a gut where the bad bacteria outweighs the good, which is called dysbiosis.
Some foods that are high in histamines are chocolate, berries (except blueberries), nightshade vegetables, seafood, meat, citrus, black and green tea, and fermented foods.
Leftovers (especially meats increase in histamines over time and can be loaded with histamines. Freezing your soups and leftovers and buying super fresh or freshly frozen meat and seafood helps to decrease histamines.
Nightshades
Nightshades include tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers, chilis, and goji berries. Other foods, like ashwagandha, a popular adaptogenic herb is in the nightshade family as well.
There is a toxin or chemical in nightshade vegetables that can build up in your system over time if your body isn’t processing it properly. Many people react through symptoms such as joint or muscular pain, swelling or inflammation in the body, among other symptoms.
Some of the Most Common Symptoms For Food Chemical Sensitivity Include:
Headaches/migraines
Flue-like aches and pains
Joint pain and arthritis
Swelling and bloating
Hives and itching
Sinus congestion
Mouth ulcers
Stomach and bowel irritation, IBS, diarrhea, digestive challenges
Irritability, moodiness, restlessness
Brain fog
Urinary challenges and UTIs (mainly with oxalates)
Vaginal pain
From what I’ve seen, food chemical sensitivity can present in a wide variety of ways for different people. We’re all unique, so don’t rule out these sensitivities based on a symptom list.
What Do I Do Now?
Now let’s talk about what do you do if you have unrelenting symptoms and suspect you have food chemical sensitivities.
The key is to scale back on your foods to a place where you feel good. By taking out foods that you know trigger you and others that you suspect, you’ll give yourself a clean slate to test various foods.
I highly recommend finding a practitioner who’s knowledgeable about food chemicals to support you through this process. It can be confusing, complex, and even dangerous (as with oxalate toxicity) to determine which foods are triggering you when you’re not familiar with food chemical sensitivity.
Which Food Chemicals Are You Sensitive To?
Figuring out which food chemicals you are sensitive to can be done through a careful process of elimination and observation that will help you identify which category affects you the most and determine your individual threshold level. This process starts with a pretty minimal diet but then adds in foods to expand to as many foods as you can tolerate.
We each have a threshold for how much we can handle of a particular food chemical before noticing symptoms. This can make it difficult to determine the specific foods causing a reaction, because the reaction may not happen straight away.
As your gut heals, these sensitivities will decrease and you will be able to eat many of the foods that are causing a reaction for you now. I highly recommend varying your foods as much as possible within the realm of what you tolerate well.
Connecting What You Eat to How You Feel
The goal is to figure out which category affects you the most by eliminating a variety of specific foods to let your body reset. Then, slowly and strategically add foods back in and observe your body’s reaction.
Do you have bloating, bowel irregularities, pain, brain fog, or anxiety? How’s your energy and mood? This process can boost your awareness of what your body is trying to communicate.
Play detective and gather clues as you go and don’t rule out any foods as possible suspects. Once you identify a category that’s bothering you, start scaling back on the foods that are high in that particular chemical. Next, look at other categories to see if those also impact you and experiment with those foods to figure out your sensitivities and threshold to each.
The goal isn’t to eliminate these food chemicals completely or long-term, since that would be impossible! The goal is to reduce them to an amount your body can handle at this time, on your healing journey. By doing this, you allow your gut to begin healing and can increase your foods as you tolerate them.
Fortunately, your sensitivity to these chemicals will decrease as you heal and your gut becomes stronger. So, keep testing your tolerance and thresholds into the future. You may be surprised at how much more you will be able to eat later in your journey.
Empowered with Awareness
Your newfound awareness will allow you to make food choices that serve you way into the future. When you know what you can tolerate, your symptoms become a choice.
Sometimes I choose to splurge knowing I’ll likely deal with symptoms. But, most of the time it’s worth it to me to to eat an increasingly diverse diet of healthy foods that make me feel good.
Of course, you get to be in control of when you splurge and when you choose foods that support you. Any choice is ok, but it’s incredibly empowering to have the awareness to make that decision versus just not knowing.
Foods High in Multiple Food Chemicals
Here is a list of foods that are high or very high in food chemicals. If you want to test your sensitivity, I would start with reducing these for a period of time (Not forever!).
Nightshade vegetables, spinach, kiwi, chocolate, berries (except blueberries), nuts, peanuts, beans, chia and sesame seeds, citrus, green and black tea, fermented foods, dates, prunes, figs.
This is a great place to start and see how you feel. If you feel amazing without these foods in your diet, you might want to dive deeper into figuring out which specific food chemicals are causing your symptoms. Then, you can start to add the other foods back in and gather even more information.
Remember you may feel worse before you feel better so give it a couple of weeks at a minimum and notice how you feel. Especially with oxalates, go slow removing these foods, especially if you eat them regularly as you may experience some “dumping” that can overwhelm your body if you go to fast.
Don’t hesitate to reach out for support. I can walk you through this process and help you figure out what your main sensitivities are. Having someone by your side will speed up the process and move you towards truly healing your digestion and leaving bloating, constipation, pain, brain fog, and low energy behind.
THIS IS TRUE FREEDOM!
Are you lost on what your next healing steps should be and need more support? Do you struggle with food sensitivities, bloating, and constipation?
Message me here and sign up for your free clarity session, so we can put together an individual healing plan and help you be on your way to healing your digestive challenges.
