Dietary Issues and Autism

This post could also be titled: Rowing Out to Meet the Boat I Missed...

Last week was Autism Awareness Week at DietsinReview.com. I was honored that they asked me to write about my experiences with the GFCF diet, so even though we only did the "CF" part I was happy to oblige. (I don't think I've ever had that many links in one paragraph before!)

It was interesting to choose an angle to talk about, since the posts are limited to 350 words. Would I talk about how, once I shared with other moms at school the improvements I'd seen, 2 of them tried it, and several others said something like, "Oh, yeah, we tried that..." and trail off.

Or would I talk about the fact that of the two moms who tried it simultaneously with me, one found it easier that the other for several reasons: Her Asian background meant that a wider variety of GFCF foods were already in her child's diet, and she was a stay-at-home mom like me. For the other mom, a working mom of 3 kids under age 6, finding the foods and making substitutions was next to impossible.

Part of the diet's success for me was the amount of time I was able, and willing, to devote to preparing things that were not only CF but also would be something DuckyBoy would eat.

It was this past Christmas that we tried going off the diet. Now, he's in love with the grilled cheese sandwiches at the school cafeteria, and some days I find myself wondering what protein he ate on the CF diet now that I pack some combination of cheese sticks, cheese crackers, and Goldfish for his snacks or lunch almost every day.

Another topic I considered for my post was how different eating is from when I was a kid. There just weren't as many processed choices with whey or powdered milk snuck in. But there also weren't as many health food stores that carried alternatives to cow's milk and cheese -- and what available often wasn't so yummy. (I never did find a good vegan cheese. Tofutti cream cheese was as close as we got. Never did make that stuffed jalapenos recipe from their website...)


They even used my photo of Crabby Patties!
Made with dairy-free Tofutti cream cheese, of course.

I could have talked about how much better I felt while on the diet with DuckyBoy. It's all but impossible to avoid cheese now, and I'm back to loving pizza, but I put almond milk in my coffee and find I eat waaaay less cheese than I used to. The less I have, the less bloated and more light I feel.

To check out what I went with, read my guest post. And while you're there, check out the rest of the Diets in Review site. It's a neat idea -- a central place to check out info about all the many diets out there. I'm looking forward to watching the site grow, because for me an important part of evaluating a diet is the success (or lack of it) from people who've tried it.