Monday, July 11, 2011

Considering experiments

When Joey was very little, we tried out a gluten-free, casein-free diet. We ended up with a very hungry child, especially since his diet wasn't terribly varied to begin with.

Now that he is older, and we are experiencing an increase in behavior issues, I am considering a cut in the gluten again. The thing about cutting gluten is that if I do it right, it can't hurt him; and if he's sensitive, we should see a difference in behavior or mood, or even weight, which would be a signal to us to go more drastic. It isn't like Joey needs to be eating a ton of pasta and bread, anyway.

Our doctor, clever person that she is, made a pretty big deal about wanting the boys to eat lots of fresh foods, especially vegetables, at their last appointment. We are, of course, going to cheat and remind Joey that the doctor's orders are to eat more fresh veggies. He's been very rule-oriented lately, so this may support the effort.

In the meantime, I think I am going to be at the farmer's market more often, because fresh veggies don't keep too well, especially in summer heat. Next week is Andy's "Mythbusters Camp" so a new diet experiment should fit right in!

3 comments:

farmwifetwo said...

Having been there, done that and discovered my eldest was very casien intolerant... wean the gluten. Everything I read at the time recommended doing so. Casien you could cut immediately but not the other. Also, it may take 3mths for a visible change to occur. Unlike the casien which was quick - for us it was less than 24hrs and the nightmares/terrors/diahhrea were gone.

Bullet said...

If your lads like pizza, then you can make a very nice pizza using mashed potato and gluten free flour as a base. You can also vegetables to the sauce.
Soups are also easy to do, especially if you have frozen mixed vegetables.
You can bulk up bolognaises and curries by adding extra vegetables to them as well.

Tricia from Return to Disney said...

We haven't tried the GF/CF diet yet, but we did have amazing results with the Feingold diet, which removes artificial flavors, dyes, and preservatives - which can't be GOOD for the kids anyway! The nice thing about that was that we didn't really have to cut out major food groups or buy expensive soy alternatives. It might be something for you to investigate!