Quote from pano200 on November 2, 2020, 1:46 pm

hey there, been on it for 2 years 1 month now. i eat everything you mention: honey (any color), gluten (lots of it; sourdough bread, barley, wheat, etc), ground meat (muscle meat, no pork), pineapple, and bananas. Personally i tolerate all of them.

Good luck on your project :]

Quote from Eio on November 2, 2020, 4:13 pm

I eat honey, ground beef and pineapple almost everyday without problems.  I grew tired of bananas and I don’t eat gluten.  

I also wish you good luck on your blog project.  

Quote from salt on November 2, 2020, 5:40 pm

Quote from Sergio on November 2, 2020, 12:40 pm

Hi everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well and I wish you a great week. I have been on this low VA diet for about 1 year and 8 months now, feeling better and better each day, I can feel and see slow improvements day by day and it keeps me motivated and happy. 

I wanted to ask you guys about honey, gluten ( whole wheat cookies and bread) , ground meat , pineaple and bananas. Have you guys been eating these food ? If so, do you tolerate them well?

I want to start a blog or make a video about vitamin A  and the low vitamin A diet in my first language, which is portuguese..I also wanted to start a blog just like this one, I wanted to help people whose lives were impacted negatively just like mine due to the accutane poisoning. I was wondering if there is another person who speaks portuguese who would like to be part of this project too.

 

All the foods you mentioned, except for refined white wheat, contain significant amounts of VA, and they do give me symptoms. Theoretically you could make a honey that doesn't have carotenoids, depending on what the bees eat. There are some white honeys on ebay that are white-as-paper white. I haven't tried that honey. I don't know if it's a scam or legit. 

Quote from Ourania on November 2, 2020, 7:25 pm

We have been on this diet for 11 months and we eat all you mention. But we do not eat honey anymore, not that it gives symptoms, but we do not have a craving for it anymore. Sometimes we take a little palm sugar with our coffee.

Good luck for your health and your project!

Quote from Jiří on November 3, 2020, 1:14 am

Honey is loaded with fructose which needs to be processed in the liver. Which is not ideal at all for most people with bad health. Same thing with gluten. If you have perfect digestion, good thyroid function etc.. You can eat products with gluten, but most people will do better without gluten. Same thing dairy especially the casein part so cheeses etc.. Ground meat is ok. If it's ground poultry I would be careful, because there can be a lot of vit A and PUFA fats. But if it's grain fed ground beef it is really good source of good balance of amino acids(muscle meat + connective tissue) zinc, creatine etc... I eat a lot of ground beef. First couple of months on low A diet I was eating 400-500g a day. Now I am eating at least 200g every day or every other day.. Pineaples are great for digestion of protein. So small amount with each meat meal is a good idea. Banana is good snack. If you eat one or two a day I don't see a problem with it..  

Quote from Sergio on November 3, 2020, 4:29 am

Thanks for the reply everyone. 

It's interesting, when I eat food that has a bit of vitamin A in it , my hands become itchy and red , I think I have an allergic reaction to it instantly, some other foods don't give me this allergic reaction, instead it changes the colour of my stool to yellow and I also tend to get bad digestion when I eat them. 

Some foods I am thinking to cut from my diet are : peanut , sugar cane, banana( eat them 1-2 month) and maybe I will try cutting gluten and see how I go ...the first year on this diet I didn't eat any of these and my digestion was better and my face was more moist. Some people are in a more advanced stage , I think these people have detoxed a lot of VA and they can tolerate most of low VA foods.

Again, thanks for your answers and I wish you a great recovery.

Quote from Ourania on November 4, 2020, 7:10 am

I am at present reading "Island of the Color-blind" by Oliver Sacks.

Because of the improvement the non vA diet brought to my husband, who is now seeing colors after a life time of Daltonism.

The author goes to a Pacific island where many people are color blind, supposedly due to a defective gene.

I read:

(The meal) three times daily, consisted of taro, bananas, pandanus, breadfruit, yams, and tuna followed by papaya and young coconuts full of milk.... We were all revolted by the Spam which appeared with each meal.

I don't know how much vA per day but I suspect it plays a role in the chromatopsia of the islanders, who cannot bear the light.

Interesting read!

Quote from lil chick on November 4, 2020, 10:26 am

That is very interesting Ourania.  They blame genetics for lots of things.  

The opposite side of the coin is... maybe genetics *IS* involved, such as the ones that cause alcohol flush.  Maybe all of us here have a common gene, and those that think we are crazy, like those who go on wonderfully as WAPF'ers, have different genes.

To reply to the original thread, I eat a very varied diet and don't sweat it.  Because to me, my diet is SO MUCH LOWER in VA than anything I've ever eaten in my life.  And I'm OK with that.  I have gotten to the point in my life, after many diet experiments, that I'm through with crazy diets!  😉    But I do see how some people might really need them, such as Grant when he got his kidney diagnosis.

Quote from Ourania on November 4, 2020, 8:33 pm

@lil-chick Obviously there is a genetic component.

I am further in the book and he says that vitamin A deficiency is rife on the island! Strange considering all the carotenes they stuff themselves with.

He has with him an ophthalmologist who is himself color blind and they treat the islanders.

So, because of genetics, some people get "vA deficiency" (problems with night vision) and others get the color-blindness (those see well at night and have problems of glare in the day).

All this seem to confirm @ggenereux2014 theory.