While it’s true that an elimination diet could help you discover which foods are causing symptoms, they are not for everyone. So it makes sense that they should be supervised by your doctor or dietician, especially for those under 18 years of age.
That said, food processing requires a healthy, properly adapted gut microbiome. When we damage the gut with medications and poor diets we reduce diversity of microbes and also reduce the number and kinds of digestive enzymes in our gut. That is the reason why there are so many people struggling to deal with carbs (think grains and legumes) these days.
We’re not eating enough of these seemingly offensive foods to train our gut, and then we’re damaging our gut with other aspects of our lifestyle – processed food, meat and dairy, antibiotics, medications, hypersterility, and sedentarism.
The irony is that we NEED complex carbohydrates in our diet because they are our prebiotic foods. So this vicious cycle where complex carbs cause digestive distress, which makes us reduce our intake or eliminate them will ultimately weaken the microbiome and make it less capable of processing carbs next time. So the next time you try eating your carbs your digestive distress is even worse. So then we label all carbs as being inflammatory and bad for us when in fact they’re really our solution!
The above scenario is a common mistake that’s been prescribed by many fad diets and the doctors who promote them. At best it’s a short-term gain with long-term loss.