Saturday, April 7, 2012

G if for Gluten

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. -Virginia Woolf

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For any of you with dietary restrictions, you will be happy to know that this Blog has been 100% GLUTEN FREE for almost 3 weeks, now!   So eat it up and enjoy!

When you enter the no-longer-so-secret society that is Autism, you pretty quickly come upon two pervasive topics. One is the Gluten Free/Casein Free diet (GFCF) – which is the topic of this post.  I will keep you waiting until the letter V for the other topic.  [Okay, l will give you a hint, it rhymes with  back seens].

I am not even close to being an apprentice to an expert, on the scientific theory behind the GFCF diet.  So, I wouldn’t insult you by copying and pasting the Wikipedia summary of it here.  If you are interested, here is a link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free,_casein-free_diet.  But, from my understanding, it is pretty common for those affected by Autism to give the diet the old college try.

However, in our case, there is a BIG PROBLEM. 

The Little Man is skinny.  And by skinny, I don’t mean “I envy that physique” skinny.  I mean dangerous Calista Flockhart  skinny. Like, my wife and I panic whenever he gets a stomach bug skinny.  Add to that the fact that he is a very, very picky eater and that he is lactose intolerant and you have two parents who are afraid to eliminate anything from his diet. 

[As an aside, the phrase “picky eater” sounds a little to serene for what he is, so I hereby coin a new phase: he is a Combatively Restrictive Eater. Try to introduce something new to his diet, and you get an arm flailing, head shaking, whirlwind of a response, combined with a screamed:  “NO, FUNNY!”]

But, yet again, I have something to be thankful for living in this day and age.  There are so many people out there with Gluten sensitivities that a competitive market has developed for Gluten Free foods.  Heck, I have seen that they are even now marketing a Gluten Free beer. So, we decided to introduce the GF portion of the diet slowly and to just replace what he would normally eat with a Gluten Free variety of the same food. There was a little trial and error at the outset where we tried to find the better Gluten Free products, but we have finally gotten to the point, where we have him 100% Gluten free – waffles, pizza, cookies, cake, cheese puffs, pretzels, chicken nuggets, etc.  So far, it’s a little hard to quantify if there has been a measurable impact on him, but we see some hints of positive changes – more clear days than others. Stay tuned.

Now that we have the Gluten out of his system, public enemy number 1 is Casein.  I don’t even know what Casein is, but its days are numbered!


2 comments:

  1. Good luck on Casein--it's in everything.

    Good luck with the rest of the challenge, too!

    Dianna Fielding
    sociologyfornerds.com

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    Replies
    1. We put casein on hold for that very reason. Seems like an awfully big mountain to climb. Ugh. I look forward to reading your e-book at the end of the month!

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