A good report from the dietitian

Oscar’s visit to the dietitan went very well.  He’s now eating small amounts of moderate salicylate foods in his diet most days and having no reactions, so these foods will become a part of our regular diet.  Our next step is to start including high salicylate foods and continue to build up his tolerance.  These include lots of yummy fruit such as mangoes, apricots, berries, grapes (great time of year to have these) and some more vegetables such as pumpkin.  We are starting off at 1/4 of a serve (which is 1/8 cup or 25g) every second day – at least that’s what we aim for – we can never predict how much of anything Oscar will actually eat!

To put this into perspective: peeled ripe pears are a low chemical food.  Peeled red delicious apples are have a moderate level of salicylates, which is 10 times more salicylate than the pear.  Mango is a high salicylate food, so has 10 times more salicylate than the apple and 100 times more than the pear.  Tomatoes are in the very high salicylate category, and are 10 times higher than the mango – 1000 times higher than the pear.  Going up a level is a bit scary!

We are also going to try and introduce some of the day care lunches into his diet which is a big experiment as they mostly contain additives such as preservatices, colours or flavour enhancements, and many have some Very High Salicylate foods.  We are going to try and pick the one each week that appears to be the “safest”.  There are 6 weeks until Christmas, so we’ll try it until then, and go back a step in January if it doesn’t work.