Is it true that a good response to the diet depends on 100 percent compliance?
No, not usually. In the Rowe & Rowe Study in 1994, the researchers used a diet that eliminated only the synthetic food coloring, yet 75% of the 200 children in the study improved. These 200 children — 1/4 of all the 800 children who were evaluated at the hospital clinic for ADHD during that time — were thought by their parents to be sensitive to foods. By imagining that ALL the other children also tried the diet but without any success, you can still say that almost 19% of ALL the children seen for ADHD by the hospital clinic improved on this simplified diet. When researchers like Egger want to maximize their result in the minimum time, they use what is called an “oligoantigenic” diet — very few foods, of a type that most children are not allergic to. In the Egger studies, however, we suspect that he would have achieved an even higher level of response if he had used pears instead of apples, since apples are a salicylate. ( See some of the Egger studies: 1983, 1985, 1989, 1992) As s
