Thought I would start a thread about salicylates instead of PMing everyone who is interested. This is a PM I orginally did for one of the mum's on the reflux board.

Here is what I posted on the gasbaggers board when explaining the diet to them:

Food which is grown (that is fruit, veges and nuts, spices and herbs etc) have natural preservatives in them. The plant has a job and that is to propogate and grow more plants. To help the plant to succeed in this mission it protects it's seeds (inside the fruit) by using preservatives. One such preservative is salactic acid. This is higher in the fruit of the plant when it is immature - the plant doesn't want it's fruit eaten then as the seeds are not mature enough. As the fruit ripens and the seeds mature the plant produces less salatic acid as it has finished it jobs and it's OK for the fruit to be eaten then. Which is why people will have a bigger reaction to new season strawberries for example, but might be OK to eat strawberries when they are a bit riper. Also small kids have more issues with salactic acid than adults because it's a ratio thing between body mass and salactic acid ingested. Reactions can take many forms, skin rashes, gut reactions, loose bowel motions and even asthma it is believed all can be reactions to having an overdose of natrual preservatives. Also, it's incredibly difficult to not have any salacylates in your diet, which is why we go for a low salacylate diet and then you get what is called a base line. For example you can eat lots of stuff with salacylates in them but one thing will send you over the edge of what you can handle and it will be fingered as the culprit. Like a whole group of kids jostling outside a classroom when they are in a line. Little Johnny on the end will fall over and get bolloked for it when really, he wouldn't of fallen over if the rest of the classroom weren't pushing and shoving. So, Katey's baseline is quite high. If she has pineapple or tomatoe it pushes her beyond what she can handle and we see a definite reaction. If we lower her base line then when she eats a tomato or a piece of pineapple she will still have the same size reaction but it won't be enough to trigger a bad response because the gap between her base line and her reaction line is bigger.

Oh, and salicylates live under the skin to whatever fruit or vege - so if you peel thickly an apple for example, you will have less salicylate and therefore less of a build up.

Oh and as for how the food intolerences interact with reflux; the food intolerence makes the reflux flare up, therefore the reflux medications appear to help. Some big discussions with GP's over that one have been had I tell you!

So, what can she eat? We have a booklet which lists foods as Low, Moderate, High and Very High foods regarding their levels of salactic acid. Low and Moderate are good. The change from Moderate to High is about x5 the level in Moderate, and the change from High to Very High is x10 of the level in High - so the increase is exponential.

VEGES:
- low
Bamboo shoots
Brissels sprouts
Cabbage
Celery
Chives
Choko
Dried beans
Dried peas
Green beans
Leek
Lentils
Lettuce (only iceberg)
Mungbean sprouts
Potato (white peeled)
Red cabbage
Shallot
Swede

- moderate
Asparagus
Beetroot
Carrot
Chinese Vegetables
Lettuce (except iceberg)
Marrow
Parsnip
Potato (new, red)
Pumpkin
Snow peas
Snow pea sprouts
Sweet potato
Turnip
Green peas

FRUIT:
- low
Pear (ripe, peeled)
Pear (canned in sugar syrup)

- moderate
Apple (golden, red delicious, gala, pacific rose)
Custard apple
Loquat
Mango
Pear (unripe, unpeeled)
Pear (canned in juice)
Persimmon
Rhubarb
Tamarillo
Banana
Pawpaw

CEREALS, GRAINS AND FLOURS:
- low
Arrowroot
Barley
Buckwheat
Cornflour
Malt
Rice
Rice flour
rice cereals (plain)
Rolled Oats
Sago
Soy flour
Rye flour
Wheat
Wheat flour
Wheat cereals (plain)
Cocoa

MEATS, CHICKEN, FISH AND EGGS
- low
Basically everything is OK except for those things with herbs and spices in them so sausages, salami etc are out.

She is no dairy and soy so we didn't even discuss those!

DRINKS:
- low
Carob powder
Cows milk
Goats milk
Lamonade (schweppes)
Soy milk

FATS AND OILS
- low
Buuter
Ghee
Margarine (unpreserved, no antioxidant)
Safflower oil (no antioxidant)
Sunflower oil (no antioxodant)
Canola oil (no antioxidant)
Soy oil (no antioxidant)

HERBS, SPICES AND CONDIMENTS:
-low
Chives
Garlic
Parsley sprinkle
Poppy seeds
Saffron
Sea salt
Shallots
Vanilla

-moderate
Malt vinegar

JAMS, SPREADS, SUGARS AND SWEETS
- low
Caramels
Carob
Golden syrup
Malt extract
Maple syrup
Sugar
Toffee

- moderate
Molasses
Raw sugar

NUTS, SNACKS ANS CRISPS
- low
Cashews (raw)
Plain potato crisps

- moderate
Corn chips
Tacos

I have included all the soy and gluten containing foods in here as I wasn't sure what the restritions you had were - just the dairy.soy options as in milk, cheese etc which we didn't discuss at all that I haven't included.

So, hope that helps! Ask me any other questions you have and I will try to answer them .

Here are some more links to other salicylate stuff that will also be helpful

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~ataraxy/Salicylates_list.html

http://users.bigpond.net.au/allergydietitian/fi/salicylates-list.html

http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/Food/Salicylate.html

Claire

OmG Madam Chatsalot, what does Katey eat?

Wow, just looking at the list I can see that I need to find out more about this. My middle boy eats virtually no fruit and vegies except one banana every morning and I have noticed that if I can slip some into his food without him noticing he's a very unhappy boy. I hadn't really considered it much but I can see that it might require a bit more thought.
Thanks so much

We're currently restricting salicylates from DD's diet (working with a dietician). She had reflux as a small baby and has had eczema from about 5 months. Her allergy tests have all come back negative but I recently noticed a rash on her face after eating tomatoes and apricot yoghurt.

We're only on about day 5 of a 3-week trial, and to start off with her eczema seemed to be a bit better but today it seems back to normal. Guess it's still very early days though. Also, after dinner she had a rash on her face even though she hadn't had anything at all with salicylates. I've realised that she did have sunscreen on her face today, although I think the ingredients in our one are OK. It's very strange as she's being quite picky with her food (she's normally a very good eater) and she's been a bit "teary" as well. I'm wondering whether she's missing her favourite grapes and raisins!

Anyway, even though I feel like giving up, I know that we need to continue with restricting DD's food to find out whether this is a problem for her. This is probably the wrong thread, but does anyone know how long it takes for salicylates to be eliminated from the system (ie, when would we be likely to start seeing results?), as I forgot to ask the dietician.

Thanks
Kris

I saw results in a few days. But the trickiest part was identifying where they were all hiding. At first we elimintaed all the obvious ones and things were a little better. And then after dicussions with dietitian we discovered other things I'd not known about those being, minty toothpaste, vegemite, cheerios, and corn.

Elise has really struggled with food elimintions and it has taken her about 3 weeks to be happy with what I am serving up. She loved raisins and grapes too.
Claire

We saw results almost immediately - as in we gave her something we shouldn't of on day 3 and man, did we notice the difference! How old is your DD? Katey also misses her kiwifruit and raisins and it's a sad, sad thing to take the good stuff off her ... but she is better off for it and after a week or so she didn't mind .

Salicylates are all about having a weekly 'budget' and making sure you don't go over that level ... that's when you see the reaction. You have to make sure you find the 'baseline' first and you have to make sure you have a really low level os salicylates in your diet for that to work properly.

Good luck, it's not much fun for anyone , but once it works !

I hadn't thought about toothpaste... will have to check it. DD is 18-months-old. I'm hoping salicylates are the problem because it would explain a lot - including her reflux when she was younger (I'd tried eliminating most things while breastfeeding but didn't know about salicylates and my diet is very high in them). Then again, I think it would be a shame for her if she couldn't eat many foods with salicylates in them because they're all the yummy ones!

DD doesn't have eczema on much of her body, but where she has it, it's fairly entrenched. So I'm wondering whether we might not see a major improvement very quickly (compared to reflux) after salicylate elimination as the skin has to repair itself?