Why your diary says you react to everything
Two weeks in and the list of suspects is longer than when you started. Onion, garlic, bread, cheese, the wine, the restaurant. That isn't your gut. It's how the diary was counted. Not everything you ate is guilty.
Foods ride along
Cooking starts the same way almost everywhere: onion and garlic in the pan before anything else goes in. So wherever onion goes, garlic goes too, and so does whatever the dish usually comes with. If onion is the one your symptoms follow, garlic is on the plate for every bad night. A diary that lists what you ate can't tell the passenger from the driver. Eating out makes it worse.
A diary by day blames both
Linking a symptom to the day it happened finishes the job. Every food you ate that day gets a mark. Two weeks later, every food that turns up often has marks against it, and the common foods have the most because they're common. Bread looks guilty for being bread.
The way out is to count each food on its own meals: how often a symptom followed it, and how often a symptom turned up without it.
times you ate onion, bloating followed. Usually two to eight hours later.
Without onion, bloating followed two of 21 meals.
Enough to notice. Not a rule.In the same diary, garlic was in five of those eight onion meals, and bloating followed four of them. Counted alone it looks nearly as guilty. But garlic never once turned up without onion, so there's no garlic meal to judge it on its own.
Count a food on what's left
Once onion explains the bad nights, ask what's left for garlic to explain. Nothing, in this diary. NutrUp checks which one the symptom actually follows: it takes the strongest food first, sets aside the symptoms it accounts for, and recounts every other food on what remains. A food that only rides along is marked clear once it has enough meals. If two always come together, it says so and offers to try one of them on its own.
Clear foods
The other half of the list is the foods your symptoms never followed. In the sample diary, eggs turned up in six meals and nothing followed any of them. That's a clear food. It stops you cutting eggs for no reason, and it shortens the list for your dietitian. A food gets its own line once it's in six meals, so the ones you eat most show first, about two weeks in. Before six, NutrUp says not enough data, and the boring meals are the ones that get you there.
Sample diaryOne food, counted on its own meals, with the meals behind it.
Not everything you ate is guilty
A diary that flags everything hasn't found anything. The fix is arithmetic, not a longer list of things to avoid. Count each food with and without, let the passengers drop out, and take what's left to someone who can tell you what it means. One page is enough.
Good questions
Why does my food diary blame every food?
Usually because it links symptoms to days instead of meals, and because foods travel together. Onion and garlic start most sauces, so whichever one your symptoms follow, the other is on the plate every bad night. A diary that only lists what you ate can't tell them apart.
What does it mean when a food is clear?
That you ate it enough times, six at least, and your symptoms didn't follow it. In the sample diary, eggs came up clear after six meals. It's a count from your own meals so far, not a promise, and it can change as the diary grows.
What if two foods always come together?
Then the diary can't split them, and it should say so instead of blaming both. The way out is to eat one of them on its own, on purpose, a few times. NutrUp calls that trying a food again, and it suggests it when two foods come together nearly every time.
Should I cut everything the diary flags?
No. A long list of flagged foods usually means the counting went wrong, not that you react to all of them. Count each food with and without first, and talk to your doctor or dietitian before cutting anything for good.
NutrUp does the counting.
A food and symptom diary for iPhone. Photograph what you eat, tap how you feel, and in about two weeks see which foods your symptoms followed, with the meals behind each one. No account, and the diary stays on your iPhone. What NutrUp is.
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