Food additives – these are probably what a standup comic meant when he discussed reading ingredient labels on food packaging and stated, “I’ll never eat what I can’t pronounce or spell.”
To get the best nutrition out of what you eat and drink, it’s worth educating yourself.
According to the Oxford Languages online dictionary, a food additive is “a substance added to food to enhance its flavor or appearance or to preserve it.”
The online list of food additives in numerical and alphabetical order uses numbers that begin from 0 to 9 and all the alphabet except for the letter U.
Some of food additives’ purposes include acting as an antioxidant, added colour, a flavor enhancer, a preservative, an anti-caking agent, an emulsifier, an artificial sweetener… and we are nowhere near the sum total.
I like to apply statistics and the element of chance. If food additives are a recognized migraine trigger for some sufferers, how likely is it that you and your doctor will quickly be able to zero in on the main culprit among that long list of potential triggers and eliminate it from your diet? What if more than one food additive is a trigger of yours? How long is your personal list?
I would begin with the simplest diet and add ingredients or dishes until I got a negative reaction. Then, I would be cautious with that food.
Your research will be more complicated if you have more than one trigger among the dozens I’ve mentioned in part articles. What caused this particular migraine? Was it the other trigger? Was it the food you just added to your minimalist diet?
If you have a nutritionist as a resource in your group of health care providers – ideally an integrative medicine practice – a nutritionist with a list of triggers that are statistically more likely than others to affect the migraine sufferer population, then I would ask to be guided by that specialist.
Be patient – it may take a while for your body to detox from every remnant of that food trigger.
Kaiser Permanente’s website states: “Kaiser Permanente took the top spot in Insure.com’s list of best health plans of 2024. The rankings are based on the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s annual health plan ratings as well as member surveys — and Kaiser Permanente was number one overall.”
I have no link to Kaiser Permanente. What caught my attention and impressed me favorably were online lectures by some of that organization’s doctors holding seminars on diets that are more likely to keep Kaiser Permanente’s clients healthier on average. A worthy goal, indeed!
Like any serious corporation, let’s give Kaiser Permanente the benefit of the doubt that they aim to provide a service and turn the maximum profit in running their business.
What is that diet that the corporation’s statistics indicate that it costs it less to keep its client base healthier and its financial bottom line more profitable?
Even though I no longer suffer from migraines, I still need to care for every other part of my body. I would be curious to learn more about this corporation’s dietary recommendations.
Are this one company’s dietary recommendations best for a migraine sufferer looking for significant pain relief? Maybe, maybe not. I am not trained to evaluate. However, it is an excellent place to start and compare to what clinics specializing in migraines offer.
Once you are on a path toward healthier living in every way possible, I am willing to bet that it will take you less time to rid yourself of the effects of that food additive trigger than it took for you to suffer the years of torment it created for you in the first place.
