Chickpea Dip and the Day Care Experiment

Towards the end of November we started to let Oscar eat one meal at day care each week.  I chose the “best” meal for each of the 4 weeks in the menu cycle, which meant it had the least preservatives and/or the lowest salicylate content.  For the past year we have been keeping a food calendar in which we track when Oscar eats the foods we are introducing, how he sleeps at night and any behavioural issues that occur, so that we can identify patterns.  Last Friday he had the Vegetarian Sausage Roll at day care which contains High Salicylates, on Saturday we had a little terror in the house.  Oscar is normally a pretty easy going well behaved kid, but on Saturday he was very defiant.  I checked our calendar and discovered that I had recorded the same thing the last time he had the sausage roll for lunch.  The first time he had it there was no behavioural or sleep reaction, but as intolerances are all  about the level of the chemical in the body, he may have had lower starting levels of salicylates the first time compared to the second and third time.  Two times is a coincidence, but a third is a pattern.  We will wait and see what happens in 4 weeks time.  If there is a reaction again we will see if we can eliminate it by keeping his diet low in salicylates for a couple of days before he has the sausage roll again.