Regulation of The Diet

Many positive skin tests to foods are of no etiological significance. This is not so likely to be true for babies as for older children. It is probably best in dealing with babies to omit those foods which have given well-marked positive scratch tests, provided there are not too many of them, and see what happens. With moderation, and the admixture of a good measure of commonsense, the same is true for older children.

I will say again that no infant or child should be placed upon a poorly bal­anced or insufficient diet, no matter what the skin tests show. If there is going to be improvement from the re­moval of a food, this will not take place at once, because the skin has been damaged, and it will not return to normal in a hurry, no matter what is done. If there is not decided im­provement at the end of two weeks, it is fair to conclude that the food in question has nothing to do with the eczema. If there is considerable im­provement, and several foods have been removed, so that there is doubt as to which are the important ones, one food at a time over three-day periods is added, and results noted. An almost routine basic diet which I use in dealing with atopic derma­titis is as follows:

• Rice
• Bananas
• Lamb
• Applesauce
• Milk    (or  sometimes soybean food)
• Apricots
• Pears
• Peaches
• Jell-o
• Vi-Penta drops
• Carrots
• String beans
• Squash
• Potato (for older children)

This is a well-balanced diet, and a baby can stay on it for a long time. Most babies will eat the same thing day after day. They do not need a large variety of foods, no matter what the mother thinks about it, and the present fad of feeding fifty-seven different varieties of foods to very young babies, to my mind has no sense to it, although I am sorry that I cannot say truthfully that I have seen it do much harm, except to some allergic babies. All allergic babies with symptoms of any sort referable to allergy should be on a simple diet containing relatively few foods.