A major study conducted in the United Kingdom and reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, examined children suffering from vomiting, diarrhea, colic, abdominal pain, eczema and urticaria (hives). It found that 40 per cent were sensitive to cow's milk, with the remainder being affected by a wide range of other intolerances.
Food allergies can commence during the first six months of life. If children are introduced too early to cow's milk, cereals, orange juice and other substances, such as those contained in manufactured baby food, there is a great danger that they may become intolerant to those foods, and will remain so, for the rest of their lives. This paints a bleak scenario for the child. It will mean that throughout childhood, he will be encouraged by well-meaning parents to eat foods which are semi-poisonous to him. As a result, the child will develop chronic medical symptoms. In some fortunate cases, the symptom or symptoms may be easily linked to a specific food. For example, the child may react quickly, after eating an orange or drinking a glass of milk, with a hay fever attack or vomiting. More often than not, however, the child will exhibit a continuous range of symptoms such as irritability, lethargy, respiratory infections and catarrh, to name but a few.
The well-meaning parents then proceed to consult doctors and specialists throughout the early life of the child. In time, they may be advised to remove a food from the child's diet to see if there is an improvement. Sometimes there is and the problem is solved luckily for the child. However, often it is not so simple. The child, having been exposed to several foreign substances too early in his development, may have developed more than one allergy. The removal of one food may not cause the symptoms to go away, as this allergy is masked by the others. This results in the child being allowed to recommence eating a food, which, amongst others, is making him ill. Eventually, the child is classified, by doctors and parents alike, as 'prone' or 'delicate' and his activities are restricted accordingly.
The problem is further complicated by the child appearing to 'grow out' of the symptoms at some future stage in his development. There could be several reasons for this. Firstly, as the child gets older and stronger his system becomes more robust and, for a while, may overcome the allergenic poisoning being done to him. However, it may be just a matter of time before other illness or injury may overstress the immune system, causing it to break down again. Secondly, he may, through a change of diet and habits simply stop eating the offending food. This can happen when the child has become old enough to assert himself. If addiction to the allergen has not set in, he may be in a position to reject instinctively the food as being bad for him. This rejection would be strengthened in his subconscious by the resultant immediate improvement in health.
Parents should take note of a child's constant rejection of a known allergy-causing food. This is often the first sign that the child has some sensitivity to it. The child, after being forced to eat the food for a while, will most likely overcome his instinctive aversion and, instead, develop an addiction to it. Whilst the parents may think that their child is finally co-operating, he has in actual fact, become 'hooked' and a masked addiction/allergy process, with a range of perplexing symptoms, has begun.
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