Gluten-Free/Casein-Free Diet: The Facts

A gluten-free/casein-free diet, also known as the GFCF Diet, is a strict elimination eating plan where all foods containing gluten and casein are removed from the child’s daily food intake. Gluten is a protein found in the seeds of grains like barley, oats, rye, and wheat. Casein is a protein that is prevalent in cow’s milk and cheese. Unfortunately, a large number of foods contain gluten and casein, which makes it hard to totally eliminate.

Some people believe that their children are allergic or sensitive to the components found in foods that contain gluten or casein. Among the benefits reported are changes in speech and behavior.

A recent pediatrics report reaffirms the skeptics’ view about diet as a definite positive treatment for autism. Recently, an expert panel came to the conclusion that there is no “rigorous evidence” that digestive problems are more common in children with autism compared to other children, or that a special diet would work.

Actress Jenny McCarthy is one of the more famous vocal proponents of a dietary treatment for autism, as she has searched for solutions for her autistic child. Maybe her high-profile plight has contributed to the fact that nearly one in five autistic children are on a special diet. Surely, the debate will continue.

“I think we still have a lot to learn about the gut and how it contributes to behavioral symptoms,” says Lee Grossman, president of the Autism Society.

(via: momlogic.com & WebMD)

Also read:

Autism Awareness Week – a series of articles by moms and experts related to the diet and fitness role in autism treatment.

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Special Diets for Autism Unproven

Guest blogger Janice Ellen Wright is a former magazine editor and website editorial person, currently being the mother of 7-year-old DuckyBoy and making forays into online information marketing. Janice also blogs about her experiences with her son’s school program for students with high-functioning autism and how this experience got her sent to the principal’s office for the first time in her life. Feel free to search for controversy at Autism and Public Schools.

Part of the casein-free diet’s success for me and my son 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.

Today, eating is so different from eating that I knew 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 was 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…)

When I follow the casein free diet with my son, it’s amazing how much better I feel. But it’s all but impossible to avoid cheese now. 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.

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A Mother’s Experience with the Casein Free Diet for Autism

Guest Blogger Holly Bortfeld is a work-at-home mom to two children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ages 14 and 16. She home-schools her son and writes content for the Talk About Curing Autism (TACA ) site, including the popular series, “Autism-On-A-Budget.” Follow Holly on Twitter @TACAnow.

My son has been on the GFCF diet since 1998. Back then, there was little available as far as information, research or foods that didn’t taste like cardboard. Happily, you can now find an extensive array of mixes and pre-packaged foods now in grocery and health food stores, as well as online grocers.

Why should you do the diet? Because it works! According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, at least 70% of children with ASD have gastroenterological problems and both published and anecdotal research shows diet to be the single-most effective treatment used with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) kids.

Almost all families who come to TACA for diet information report the same thing – “My child only eats a few foods, he’s very picky-eater.” Rarely are any of those foods protein or vegetables and almost none are nutritional. The sensory defensiveness that many ASD children exhibit is vastly heightened before the diet and texture becomes a roadblock to healthy eating as well. Once they are on the diet however, they expand their food choices to include more healthy choices, thus improving their nutrition.

The most common things parents report after their child is fully on the diet is that “he came out of the fog,” started talking, started sleeping, stopped getting sick all the time, the tantrums decreased dramatically and the diarrhea stopped.

For my son, all of those things happened but something else too, his therapies began to work. Before the diet my son had a one-on-one, in-home, 40-hour a week program for months. The problem was that he didn’t seem to know they were there. Once we implemented the diet, it was as if he woke up and said “Oh, you want me to do this? Sure, why didn’t you say so?”

Some people worry that the diet is too expensive, but the diet is only as expensive as you make it. Any diet is expensive if you buy a lot of pre-made foods. TACA has two great articles to help: “GFCFSF on a Budget” and “GFCFSF Diet on Food Stamps.”

Try the diet, you won’t regret it. Your child deserves it!

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Using the Gluten, Casein and Soy-Free Diet for Children with Autism

Guest blogger Jean is a mom to three young sons, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. She has spent many years trying to find ways to entice her autistic son to eat healthy food. She writes about her life and her kids on her blog, Stimeyland.

“C’mon, Jack, just take one bite. Please?”

You hear this a lot at my house. Jack is my autistic son, and he does not care for new food. Nor does he care for familiar food, especially if it is a fruit or vegetable. He has about 15 foods he will happily eat, and he is usually unwilling to stray outside that list.

We’ve tried many things to get him to eat: Fruit in smoothies! Vegetables hidden in spaghetti sauce! Raisins hidden in cookies! But he just takes one tiny sip of the smoothie and walks off. He cleans the sauce off of his pasta with his cup of milk. And if he finds a raisin in his cookie, he will spit it out. In fact, he’s started to avoid cookies because of the unwelcome surprises he’s found in them.

All of this has left me with a need to be even more creative in getting nutritious food into him. I’ve gone so far as to make him brownies stuffed with spinach, (which he actually fell for).

So how do I get him to eat healthily? Vitamins, for one thing. If he won’t eat his nutrients, at least I can give him some in pill form. Age has helped. As he gets older, he has become more willing to take (teensy, weensy) bites of healthy food. I also offer him things that I wouldn’t expect him to like. For instance, he loves cottage cheese. I never would have guessed.

I still only make one dinner and he knows that he eats it or goes hungry. So sometimes incentives help. He’ll often try one bite of a new food if we offer him another dinner roll as a reward. Fortunately, those rolls are whole-wheat! I figure the more bites he takes, the more likely he is to one day take a second bite.

I don’t know that there is a good answer to finicky autistic children. Consulting a nutritionist is always a good idea, but what I’ve found is that we just have to try, try, and try again.

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Feeding a Finicky Autistic Child

Guest blogger Sally Brockett, M.S., is a Berard AIT Instructor/Practitioner and the Director of the IDEA Training Center. For more information and a list of international Berard AIT practitioners, visit Berard AIT.

Berard Auditory Integration Training (AIT) is a sound-based intervention designed to reorganize or balance the auditory system when it is functioning inefficiently. One would not expect a listening program to have any effect on the self-restricted diets and feeding problems experienced by those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There are many reports and data that indicate Berard AIT may, in fact, have an effect, due to its overall impact on sensory modulation.

Berard AIT provides an intensive program of electronically modulated music filtered through the Earducator or Audiokinetron. The training requires two half-hour listening sessions for ten days. The novel stimulation, provided with intensity and repetition, provides the key components to trigger neural plasticity and reorganization of the auditory system, which is home to the sensory processing system. Sensory processing problems underlie many of the behaviors exhibited by those with ASD, including some diet and feeding issues.

Eating stimulates the five major senses: visual, smell, taste, tactile, and auditory. When the senses are hyper acute (over-sensitive) or hypo-sensitive (under-responsive), the individual does not experience the eating process in a typical manner. Foods may look and smell unappealing; the taste may be too strong or too bland. The textures, whether soft or crunchy, may be objectionable, and the sounds of chewing and swallowing may be overwhelming. Any one, or a combination, of these unpleasant sensations can seriously interfere with the desire to eat.

Parent reports and clinical observations indicate that individuals often expand their diets, accepting and actually requesting and enjoying new foods, after Berard AIT. Individuals who refused crunchy foods may tolerate them well after their sound sensitivity is reduced or eliminated. Some who ate only pureed foods accept and chew solid foods. Some who rejected soft or “mushy” foods begin to enjoy them. The sense of smell seems to become more regulated. Those who were overwhelmed by smell seem to become more tolerant, and those who did not notice smells (hypo-sensitive), begin to notice and comment.

If feeding is an issue, consider these possibilities. For some, ten days of Berard AIT contributes to exciting improvements at mealtimes.

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Sound-Based Intervention Offers Eating Hope for Autistic Children

Janice Wright's son's favorite food: Oyster cracker & cream cheese

Guest blogger Janice Ellen Wright blogs about her experiences with her son’s school program for students with high-functioning autism and how this experience got her sent to the principal’s office for the first time in her life. Feel free to search for controversy at Autism and Public Schools.

When my son was about four-years old, and struggling with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), a behavioral disorder of autism, I bought a book titled Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Mother’s Story of Research and Recovery, by Karyn Seroussi.

I had no idea what the GFCF diet was, nor did I want to know. But Seroussi was such a thoughtful writer, I kept on reading. When she wrote something like, “How can you not try removing dairy, for your child’s sake?” I knew I had to try.

I never tried gluten-free because I didn’t know what my son would eat at all. He’s picky, with many sensory oral issues. Eating out was especially tricky – between what he couldn’t eat and wouldn’t eat, we just stayed home most of the time.

My husband thought I was crazy, until we saw some improvement. Our son’s tantrums were less extreme, his ability to tolerate the unexpected increased a bit.

After about two years we tried going off it over Christmas break, and his behavior did not deteriorate, at least, no more than any kid does over a school break. He ate a year’s worth of Goldfish crackers in a month, but still prefers Tofutti Cuties to other ice cream.

Now that he’s seven-years old and can eat anything, I’ve noticed he’s trying more foods – still one reluctant bite at a time, but it’s progress. Parents of kids on the spectrum know the terms “preferred” and “non-preferred;” for my son, foods are much more black-and-white: Favorite or Hated.

We find ourselves struggling to know whether a refusal to eat is a sensory issue or a control issue, spectrum behavior or age-appropriate testing of his limits.

Everything is a battle with my son, and sometimes the food is what I choose to lose on, especially during the school year when so many social demands are made of him all day long. He eats more processed foods than I’d like, and more carbs than I’d like, but his weight and height are fine, so we’ll just keep trying new foods a little at a time, and hope his tastes expand with age, just as mine did.

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Learning to Love the Casein-Free Diet for Autism

Guest Blogger JoAnna Ross is the founder of  Yoga By the Dozen, an online company which promotes a healthy lifestyle for kids through their highly acclaimed ‘Yoga By The Dozen’ DVD and their complete line of lifestyle products for yoga. She has been featured on Broadway, “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” “The Today Show,” and “The David Letterman Show.”

Yoga is becoming one of the newest techniques to help an autistic child develop their cognitive and motor skills; and foster self-confidence and respect. Yoga is a calm place for an autistic child to feel safe in. The classic definition of an autistic child would be problems interacting socially and verbally, limited activities and interests. With the structure of a yoga class, an autistic child starts to develop their coordination and learns how to focus.

I had the privilege to teach an autistic child named Samson. Over the six weeks of class and additional private sessions, I realized his motor skills were changing.

The big question is: “Why yoga? And why pick yoga over other activities like gymnastics and other sports?” The answer is simple. The repetition of doing yoga weekly, plus the calm atmosphere that surrounds yoga, adds to the discipline of the yoga practice itself. Samson’s motor skills developed greatly. Samson was able to move into yoga poses with less coaching and assistance. He was also more determined and focused.

Yoga is like building blocks. If you can’t do the first part of the pose it is hard to go from there. Over time, Samson was able to move his body into these “foundational steps” so that he could build his body into beautiful poses. His confidence soared and his smile was even bigger (if that was even possible) and more importantly he knew he could do anything he put his mind to. Yoga gives the discipline that a child needs to learn a new pose. Yoga also allows a child to be creative in their minds and it was becoming clear that the repetition of doing yoga weekly allowed him to prosper as a child.

Samson is a great yogi and taught me a lot. Just a little bit of patience with these amazing little children makes all the difference in the world.

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Yoga’s Benefits for Autistic Children

Guest Blogger Karianna writes at The Karianna Spectrum. Her oldest son was diagnosed with PDD-nos when he was in pre-school.

Food is sustenance, but it also has sensory and social components. All three of these come into play for individuals on the autistic spectrum.

Many kids with autism are affected by food in ways that neurotypical children are not. My son is on the Feingold Program, a diet that avoids certain salicylates and petroleum-based additives. Other children have found success with gluten-free/ casein-free diets, particularly when they also have celiac disease. Some autistic kids might have lots of food sensitivities, while others may have none.

Even without a specific food concern, kids on the spectrum typically have more pronounced reactions to food, so eating healthfully is even more crucial than for a typical kid who might be “off” after lots of junk food or without a well-rounded diet.

Kids on the spectrum frequently have strong sensory reactions to food. Common concerns include taste, color, and texture. Something mildly seasoned may seem overwhelmingly spicy to someone on the spectrum. A few little lumps in food might be painful or uncomfortable. And then there is the classic preference for a certain color. While the “I’ll only eat white things” might be a common toddler stage, it is a more pervasive problem for autistic kids. Fear of the unknown definitely translates to food, so creating a well-rounded palate is a challenge. For those who use medication to control some of the impulsivity or aggression symptoms of autism, appetite can be a big concern. Drugs such as Risperdal can significantly increase appetite, causing obesity, whereas stimulant-based pharmaceuticals like Ritalin or Focalin can suppress appetite dramatically.

Eating is a social activity. Kids on the spectrum usually already have social challenges, but a picky palate, a special diet, or a depressed appetite can create major challenges for family gatherings, birthday parties, or at school. Situations that would already be stressful become doubly-so when these food-related issues are added. But, despite the hurdles, the behavioral benefits to eating well are profound, so addressing the food-related challenges for an individual on the spectrum is important.

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The Feingold Diet for Autism

Phillip and Amy Parham were contestants on season six of The Biggest Loser where they lost a combined total of 256 pounds. They have three children: Austin, (14), Pearson (12), and Rhett (9). They continue to inspire people through their website and social network PhilAndAmyFitness.com and through “90 day fitness challenges” that they conduct across the country. In June 2010 they will release a book entitled “Dream Again: Phil and Amy’s 90 Day Fitness Challenge” and a companion DVD.

When it was first suggested to me that my son Rhett might have autism I instantly thought about Raymond on the movie “Rain Man.” Suddenly my life became about trying to “fix” Rhett. So I went out in search of every therapy, diet, and program I could find to do this. I soon learned the reason that they call autism a “spectrum” disorder. A child could have autism and not be able to speak a word. Or they could be like Rhett and talk all the time, but not really have a conversation. They could be highly intelligent or mentally retarded. They could take care of feeding and clothing themselves or they could need assistance with these things. We were some of the “lucky” ones. Rhett could go to the bathroom, feed himself, communicate his basic needs, and he kept eye contact and was affectionate towards us. Because autism is different for every child diagnosed with the disorder, not every therapy or diet works for every child.

Although I now know that autism has no cure, I did find things that helped him to function better. I had heard that wheat gluten and the casein in dairy products caused a reaction in some children with autism. So we put the family on a gluten and casein free diet. We did this for about a year, and although it did calm him down some, we had to weigh the toll it had on our budget and our other children. Our children already felt like they were making so many sacrifices for Rhett’s disability. The fact that they couldn’t have pizza every once in a while like “normal” kids became a sacrifice that seemed unnecessary.

Now, since we have been on the Biggest Loser, we have learned that many of the processed foods and drinks high in sugar that we allowed our children to have were just as bad for them. We have eliminated all of those things. We only drink water, skim milk, and juice, and eat fast food very rarely. Our children’s ability to focus and follow directions has seemed to increase tremendously. They also have more energy. We are definitely not perfect and are continuing to try and live a healthier lifestyle, but our children are healthier and we hope happier as a result of the changes that we have made.

Learn more about Amy Parham and Phillip Parham right here at DietsInReview.com.

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A Biggest Loser Family Fights Autism with a Healthy Lifestyle

Jenny McCarthy giving up sugar. (via Oprah.com)

So exactly what is Jenny giving up? Sugar and eating past 7 p.m. And she’s blogging and twittering all about it. As a self-professed sugar addict, Jenny is nixing the sweet stuff just for 30 days and encouraging other readers to give up a vice of their own choice, be it chocolate, gossiping, or coffee and share with others how awesomely well or how devastatingly bad they are sticking to their Give It Up Before Summer challenge.

As an ardent advocate of the Gluten Free, Casein-Free Diet as a way to quell her son’s symptoms of autism, Jenny definitely knows a thing or two about nutrition. But when it comes to sugar, she is just as vulnerable as the rest of us.

Jenny’s blogs about detoxing from sugar are as colorful, comedic and unabashedly honest as her television candor. From providing us with details about how her PMS-induced acne has tempered since giving up sugar and how elated she was after finding fruit juice-sweetened cornflakes at Whole Foods to extolling the praises of agave nectar in green tea, it’s no wonder that both Jim and Oprah are smitten with this dynamo.

So why is it that Americans have such a sugar addiction? Sugar is surprisingly ubiquitous in not just the sweet and obvious sources like soda, juice, candy and sweetened cereals, but it is hidden in our packaged foods. Spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, beef jerky, lunch meats – it’s all over and worse yet, it’s often the second or third ingredient on the label meaning there is a lot of it!

It’s not so much that sugar is bad for you by its own but its the frequency of our consumption of the white stuff especially since half of the time, we don’t even know we’re eating it (sugar in my rigatoni marinara?). Sugar hasn’t been directly linked to obesity, diabetes or heart disease, but a diet high in sugary foods is associated with these weight-related conditions since foods that have lots of sugar are often loaded with calories, empty carbs and fat.

So if you’re like me upon reading about Jenny’s Give It Up Before Summer Challenge, giving up sugar for 30 days has peaked curiousty and offered inspiration. If I do decide to join Jenny and all of her sugar-free, caffeine-free, chocolate-free pals on Oprah.com, you’ll be the first to know.

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Jenny McCarthy’s Give It Up Before Summer Challenge