Sue specialises in helping people who suffer from food intolerances.

Chemicals which occur naturally in a wide variety of foods can be responsible for hindering your quality of life!

Have you heard of salicylates, amines and glutamates?

Are you aware of the fact that you can be intolerant to food additives and preservatives?

Did you know that the following symptoms could be related to food intolerances?

The Elimination Diet and challenge protocol developed by Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) Allergy Unit is the only way of working out if you suffer from food intolerances.

The Failsafe Diet, developed by Sue Dengate, is essentially the same diet.

Sue can guide you through the entire process. She has had years of experience guiding people. Sue has also undertaken the diet herself, so knows some tips to help you get through. She also has plenty of meal and snack ideas.

The Elimination Diet is best undertaken with supervision from a Dietitian experienced in this area for the following reasons:

• Sue can help you decide which foods can be left in your diet (there are various ‘levels’ from which to choose, and decisions to be made about specifics such as whether to eliminate wheat, dairy, oats, FODMAPs …)
• Sue can help you work out what you might be able to eat, while restricting so many of your usual foods. Sue can suggest recipes and food ideas, to help with the practical aspects of what to eat, as well as to provide some flavour and variety. Sue can save you hours of time by summarising much of what you need to know to get started.
• The elimination diet is designed as a short term ‘test’ diet. Following the test period, you need to find out which particular chemicals are problematic for you. You will also want to, and need to, broaden your diet somewhat. You only restrict the diet for a relatively short time, so you can answer that important question “Are food chemicals causing my symptoms?.
• After this, you need to answer the question “which food chemicals are my problem?”
• Sue can help guide you through the ‘food challenges’ process. This enables you to see how sensitive you might be to a food chemical group. Sue helps you to then understand how much of it you may be able to include back into your diet on a regular basis.
• Understand about ‘threshold levels’ and find out what yours might be for each of the relevant chemicals
• Sue is like a ‘diet detective’ when it comes to food intolerances. Sue knows which chemicals are ‘hiding’ in foods, so when she listens to your story, she can easily work out potential triggers to your system. This helps her to explain it to you easily, so you can understand what may have been your issues.
• Sue can save you from making ‘diet mistakes’. When you decide to ‘do’ the Elimination Diet Sue suggests that you really only want to do it once, so it is best to do it ‘properly’ the first time. You can ‘waste’ time thinking that you are following the diet ‘properly’ when in fact you can be still eating foods containing potential problems. If you don’t follow the diet accurately, you may never really get to answer the question “Does my diet cause my symptoms?’ Then you may never really know and understand what ‘causes’ your symptoms.

People frequently report that making the diet changes produces almost ‘life changing’ improvements.

Don’t put up with your symptoms any longer! Why not phone Sue to organise a time to sort this out once and for all!

What is the difference between food allergy and food intolerance?

Food allergies can be detected by blood tests. They are usually detected when you are a child. An immunologist specialises in sorting this out for you.

Food intolerances can only be detected by looking at your diet. Food intolerances can develop at any age, and can not be detected by blood tests. There are various practitioners who are happy to conduct a raft of other tests and give you a long list of what foods you should avoid. According to the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA), there are no reliable blood tests for diagnosing food intolerances. They are considered to be unreliable and a waste of money.

If you follow the advice of some of those people, they will have you cutting out many of the vital food groups, often unnecessarily. Following some of their advice is not only really hard, it can also lead to dietary deficiencies. This can be dangerous to your health. Sue has seen may people who have been advised to avoid large groups of foods, which they find nearly impossible to ‘stick to’. The end result is that they don’t, and, even worse, there problems are not resolved. In addition, they ‘feel bad’ for not ‘sticking to’ the diet, and they feel bad because they still suffer the symptoms….. As a Dietitian, Sue wants to make sure you are getting the important nutrients that you need for long-term good health.