THE ELIMINATION DIET: THE REINTRODUCTION PHASE SHOULD TAKE ABOUT SEVEN OR EIGHT WEEKS
The reintroduction phase should take about seven or eight weeks. If it takes any longer than this, there is a risk of lost sensitivity: the food-intolerant person becomes less reactive after avoiding the culprit food for a time. If you are still testing foods eight weeks after starting the exclusion phase, then you need to test the foods more rigorously still. This means eating each reintroduced food every day for a week before declaring it safe.
If there are some foods that you have still not tested after 12 weeks then you have two options. One is to reintroduce all those foods for three to four weeks and see if any symptoms return. If they do, cut all those foods out again, wait until you feel better, then reintroduce them one at a time. Use three-day testing for preference, or one-day testing if you have a lot to get through.
The second option is to reintroduce each of the foods in turn, one per day. If there is no reaction, continue eating the food, but only on a once-every-four-days basis, for about six months. After that time, you should have become much less sensitive and be able to eat all these foods more freely.
If you suspect that you are sensitive to pesticide residues, you should be eating mainly unsprayed food during the exclusion phase of the diet. When you come to test foods, you should test unsprayed versions first, then a sprayed version of the same food, to see the difference. Leave a gap of at least four days between tests – try some other food in the meantime.
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