STEP 1: TRANSITION TO A HEALTHY DIET

Ok so. Now I am reading book #2, Eating for Autism to help me understand why I have to delete so much out of his diet and what I need to introduce.

It is a great book. It is teaching me to take it one step at a time. It has 10 steps in total. It says that for some kids it is not necessary to go through all 10 steps. One family may only need steps 1 - 3 and that will be sufficient while others have to do all 10 steps. In either case, you cannot skip steps and you have to start with step one.

STEP 1: TRANSITION TO A HEALTHY DIET

Basically it tells you that though the FDA has approved 24 different types of additives to foods called 'generally recognized as safe' (GRAS) there are 4 specific ones that dietitians, scientist and doctors are concerned with regarding how they effect children with disorders. Those four are: artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial preservatives and artificial sweeteners.

yada yada yada... at the end of the day I have to read all labels and get rid of everything that has the four "bad" additives

Artificial colors: Artificial Color FD & C, US Certified Food Color, FD&C Blue No 1 (brilliant blue), Blue No 2 (indigotine), Green No 3 (fast green), Red No 40 (allura red) Red No 3 (erythrosine), Yellow No 5 (tartrazine), Yellow No 6 (sunset yellow)

Artificial Flavors: Monosodium glutamate (MSG), disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate.

Preservatives: Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)

Artificial Sweeteners: Saccharin (Sweet'N Low), sucralose (Splenda), aspartame (NutraSweet and Equal)

Refined Sugar: Sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)

Fat: Trans fat, partially hydrogenated oils

Ok so this is a very heavy step just to start with. Just for fun go into your pantry and put some items that may have one or more of these ingredients and you will get an idea of the things we buy regularly that may have an effect on our Nemi... basically everything except the olive oil.

We have a long road ahead, but we are excited and looking forward to it. We just ran out of bread and today I will buy autism appropriate bread and I am excited... weird... who am I becoming with all this talk about health food. I am the queen of junk food... ok well, we are going down this road and not looking back.