Can food chemical sensitivity explain reacting to both healthy and processed foods?

[SomehowItsMay]

In case you are someone who seems to 'react to literally any food', I wanted to share what I've learned about my own digestion in case it helps.

I worked out by myself that my gut reacts badly to all additives - so I thought it was a 'processing chemicals' intolerance. But it also sometimes reacts randomly to seemingly 'healthy' food, even when it's organic and homemade etc (cocoa, root veg crisps, pesto, cranberries).

With help tracking from AI, it's suggested that I have 'food chemical sensitivity'. People who are intolerant to processing chemicals are also intolerant to a selection of 'naturally occurring chemicals' - salicylates, glutamates, amines.

It's annoying, because it means I can't just ignore it and keep hoping for the best, but so far, it's been bang on for predicting anything that would set off my bad stomach.

This rings very true and its very tricky because salicylates and amines especially turn up in things that look "clean", so cocoa, cranberries, pesto and veg crisps all landing on your list makes complete sense.

One thing I'd add, gently. AI pattern-spotting is a good clue but could mean you end up cutting far more than you actually need to. The worked-out version of what you've found is the RPAH elimination diet (the Australian one, sometimes called FAILSAFE): you strip back to the lowest-chemical foods for a few weeks, then challenge each chemical group one at a time to find your real threshold. Done that way you tend to get foods back rather than losing more, which matters a lot when the list is already short.

If you possibly can, it's worth doing that with a dietitian who knows food chemical intolerance rather than solo — partly to keep it nutritionally safe, partly because they'll catch amine build-up (leftovers, ripe or aged foods) that a day-by-day tracker misses.