Even with the newer pesticides, there is some cause for concern. Some were tested by the discredited commercial laboratory mentioned on p306, in connection with food additives. Despite the doubts that this casts over their safety, these are still in use. More seriously, pesticides are never tested in combination, for any possible ‘cocktail effects’. Such effects are not unlikely. It is known that some insecticides affect

the liver, for example, making it less able to detoxify other chemicals. The safety data on pesticides, like that on food additives, are not open to public inspection because they are covered by the Official Secrets Act. After many years of assuring the public that pesticide residues were insignificant and harmless, the Ministry of Agriculture has recently admitted that there are serious problems. A confidential report, leaked to the press in August 1988 states ‘ consumers may be exposed to higher dosages of these chemicals than has hitherto been suspected. These residues could present a health hazard to man and it is plainly desirable that appropriate statutory controls are enacted to limit human exposure to pesticide residues from food.’ The report adds that even the ‘inert substances’ used to dilute the active ingredients of pesticides may be damaging to health.

In addition to pesticide residues, some foods contain hormones and antibiotics that are routinely fed to farm animals. Meat, poultry, milk, cheese and eggs are the main sources of these chemicals, but fish from fish farms may also contain some antibiotics. Some individuals are allergic to minute amounts of certain antibiotics, and they may react to traces of antibiotic in food.

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If you react to wheat, allow at least a week to pass before testing any more cereals – test something else in the meantime. Rye can be tested as rye crisp-bread, but make sure it is pure rye, because some contain wheat bran. (Also bear in mind that some people who react to yeast also react to malt, which is a common ingredient in crispbreads and cereals.) Oats can be tested as porridge, and maize as sweetcorn or cornflour. Barley can be tested by eating pearl barley – boil about two or three tablespoons of it in plain water or homemade stock. It may seem rather pointless testing a food such as barley if you never eat it normally, but you could have become sensitive to it if you drink beer regularly, or if you are sensitive to wheat. Rye, barley and oats are all quite closely related to wheat and cross-reactions are not uncommon.

Other items to be tested are: eggs, beef, chicken and anything else that you decided to avoid, such as rice or peanuts.

The reintroduction phase should take about seven or eight weeks. If it takes any longer than this, there is a risk of lost sensitivity: the food-intolerant person becomes less reactive after avoiding the culprit food for a time. For some people, it may take many months or years to lose their intolerance, but for others the process can happen within two to three months.

If you have still not tested all foods eight weeks after starting the exclusion phase, then you should reintroduce all those which you have not yet tested. Eat all of them (in normal portions) every day for a week. If, after a week, there is no reaction, then you can consider them all safe. If there is a reaction, cut them all out again, and avoid them for five days, or until your symptoms clear up, if this takes longer. Then retest each of those foods in turn, using the same procedure as before.

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Ironically, the most difficult place to ensure that a baby is given nothing but breast milk may be in a maternity ward. The practice of giving supplementary or ‘complementary’ feeds is still common in some hospitals, and can be very damaging in the first few weeks of life. These feeds contain infant formulas based on cow’s milk, which are likely to be allergenic for the susceptible child. At this early stage in life the baby is very vulnerable to sensitization by foreign proteins.

Giving supplementary feeds can also have more insidious effects that may lead to the baby having to be entirely bottle-fed. Extra feeds from bottles upset the subtle balance of demand-and-supply that is established between a breastfeeding mother and her child. A rubber teat works differently from a real one, and babies that are given bottles do not always suck properly at the breast. Their appetite is also diminished, so they suck less hard, and the mother therefore produces less milk. This sets up a vicious circle, which may end with the mother being told that she ‘does not have enough milk’ and must therefore bottle-feed.

Where there is a hospital policy of not putting babies to the breast during the night, breast milk can be ‘expressed’ and stored, to be given from a bottle by a nurse. This method can also be used at home, for times when breastfeeding is not a practical proposition.

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Following a bout of diarrhoea – due to an infection or whatever other cause – the digestive processes in our intestines take a little while to get back to normal. During this recovery period, there is often far less lactase produced by the gut lining than there is normally. This is something that happens in both children and adults, and it may cause a continuation of the diarrhoea if milk is consumed after an infection. Formula feeds without lactose are available, and your doctor may be able to prescribe one for you for a time, if your baby has had gastroenteritis and continues to have colic or diarrhoea afterwards. In the case of breast-fed babies, it is probably better, on balance, to continue breastfeeding, even though breast milk contains lactose. In general, children and adults should not be given too much milk to drink if they are recovering from a stomach upset. Yoghurt and cheese (but not cottage cheese) are usually tolerated because they contain far less lactose. Soya milk is lactose-free.

It is also possible that some small babies have insufficient lactase to cope with very large feeds – they can digest small feeds, but if their morning feed is larger than usual, the extra lactose overwhelms their capacity to cope with it. This could explain why some babies only have colic in the evening, when the morning feed reaches the intestines and the bacteria that live there begin to feed on the undigested lactose. This theory has recently been investigated scientifically, and the results suggest that it could well be correct.

In the past, it was often assumed that all babies who could not tolerate milk were lactase-deficient, and this idea is still current in some quarters. It is now known that most children who are sensitive to cow’s milk are actually reacting to the proteins it contains. But the diarrhoea produced by this reaction may, in turn, cause lactase deficiency. Doctors refer to this as secondary lactase deficiency. There are readily available tests for lactase deficiency, but these do not distinguish between true lactase deficiency (or primary lactase deficiency) and secondary lactase deficiency. More complicated tests can distinguish the two, and these show that primary lactase deficiency is actually very rare. So if you are told that your baby is lactase deficient after some routine tests, you should be prepared to question the diagnosis and ask your doctor to help you investigate the possibility of food sensitivity, as described in the following section.

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A range of chemicals are present to keep these creatures at bay, many of them being selective toxins that affect one type of creature but not another. The ‘poisonous berries’ of many wild plants are poisonous only to mammals -birds relish them, and are of far more use to the plant in dispersal. The chemicals that stop bacteria and fungi from spoiling the fruit or nut are not always so specific. Although their main effect will be on microscopic life-forms, they may have minor untoward effects on larger animals as well – including human beings.

Clearly, there is a massive chemical arsenal in wild food, even in the foods that want to be eaten. In the course of our evolution, we have adapted to the challenge of eating these chemicals.

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