Who is this kit for? Anyone who wants to get started on a gluten free casein free diet. My son and I started this diet just after he was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, a particular flavor of Autism. My family was completely overwhelmed and I had no idea how to begin or what to expect from the gluten free casein diet or anything else related to Autism. I spent time and money on brands that we couldn’t stand! The tips and ideas in this kit come from my experience implementing the diet and raising a son with Autism. The foods included in this kit have stood the test of time and 4 kids in my house!

What’s included? A week’s menu of kid friendly gfcf meals (including breakfast, lunch and dinner tested by yours truly and my munchkins), Getting Started (things to think about - tips and ideas I wish someone had told me 4 years ago when we started), Our GFCF Story (What the GFCF Diet Did for My Son), a simple food and behavior log and all the products mentioned below!

Now the AllergySense Gluten Free Casein Free Starter Kit is NOT about BAKING ANYTHING. You have enough to worry about when you’re starting this diet! These are direct replacement foods meaning, put your kids’ crackers aside and try the rice crackers in this kit. Stop making your regular pasta, make the corn or rice pasta in the kit instead. You get the idea.

The AllergySense GFCF Starter Kit will include the following: (and here is the usual “subject to change without notice” blurb, however I promise to only include brands that I personally use for my family. Which means they will be gluten free, casein free, tree nut free, peanut free for sure and egg or soy free whenever possible.)

What products are in the kit? For starters.. (pun intended)

Why these brands? Because they have stood the test of time in our house and we’ve been gluten free casein free (and tree nut and peanut and at times egg and soy free) for 4 years.

Where is the bread? The butter? The ice cream?! Well, gfcf bread generally has a very short shelf, life and generally comes frozen – not something I want to try shipping. Chances are there are a few brands to try at your local supermarket. Same for butter, yogurt, ice cream, etc. I’ll tell you my favorites:

• Kinnikinnick® English Muffins (contains egg whites)
• Udi’s® White Sandwich Bread (contains eggs)
• Becel® Vegan Butter (contains soy)
• Coconut Bliss® (watch for almonds) anything

Why purchase this kit? Because sometimes you just need to get started and let someone else do some of the guesswork for you. Going gfcf is not as hard as you think and in our case the benefits have been amazing. I urge anyone who has a child on the Autism spectrum (or even suspects their child is on the spectrum) to try going gluten free casein free! The purpose of this kit is to get you started so you can see if you, or your child’s health and behavior improves the way my child has.

If you are at all unsatisfied with this kit, please send the kit back to AllergySense and we will replace or refund the food items. We are currently only shipping UPS.

Let’s get started! Our order form is below.

I am not an organized mommy. You would think that I would be given that I have 4 children with several allergies among them and one child on the spectrum but no. I am not organized. Getting knee-deep in therapy with my child with Autism made me organized – starting with the gluten free casein free diet.

GFCF dieting is most successful when you have things planned in advance (duh? isn’t this true of all diets??) – plus some 20 minute meals in your back pocket. Here’s how I do it….

First, well, get organized. LOL. What I mean is print out something like this weekly meal planner from www.thebubhub.com and try to fill it in.In fact, why not do this and reward yourself for being so organized at the same time? Have a nice coffee, tea or something else that makes you actually sit down and chill out for a bit. You will need to shop ahead of time and chances are you will forget something (or is that just me?) and then life will throw something your way. But when I have the weekly meals written down I feel less stressed even if I end up completely deviating from the plan.

Second, be realistic. What night are you most tired? Mine is Wednesday. On Wednesdays I make a 20 minute meal. Corn or rice pasta with olive oil and chicken or ham or bacon, or leftover meat, broccoli,  and little baby carrots. 2-3 days before that (in my case Monday) I make something that will give me leftovers like roasted chicken (1 chicken, oven 425, 1.5 hours – don’t get fancy just cook), rice, red peppers sliced, asparagus. This gives me leftovers for the kids’ Tuesday lunch which could be the same dinner reheated or chicken salad with gfcf crackers, rice cake, you get the idea.

More on being realistic. This diet generally requires real cooking. Not the kind of cooking I do after a day at the zoo, or a late afternoon family bike ride, or some other fun but exhausting outing. Planning to have lunch the museum? Great, but also plan on a 20 minute dinner. Years ago I had a thought (yes only one) about how my son on the spectrum needed to have more experiences so we could have more to try to talk about (he was non-verbal at the time). Pretending to be on the beach was meaningless to him since he had never been to the beach. So we ended up doing tons of outings. This was great BUT exhausting and leaves little time for “real food” cooking. Going out? Next meal 20 minutes max.

Third, do go the little extra to make it appetizing to your kids. Now this means different things to different kids. Think sensory needs. My little spectrum guy really hates spots on anything (so there goes Herbs de Provence on my roasted chicken) or any tomato sauce that is not ketchup (“Does it have a scratch mommy? It’s bleeding!!!”). Crunch is a must for this little one so carrots or cucumbers tend to be served at every dinner. Veggies are on the underdone side which suites me just fine. For kids on the spectrum go with their sensory needs be it pureed or crunchy and don’t forget the visuals. I believe my little one thinks “spots” from spices are dirt and after all, we don’t eat dirty food do we? sigh.

Fourth, mind your budget but balance your time. GFCF foods don’t have to be expensive if you have time to make them but do you have time? Case in point: bread. I can pay $7 a loaf or I can spend 30 min prep time to make some GFCF bread in the bread maker and a few hours later I have bread that while edible is generally not as good as store bought. It all depends on what’s going that week. Be realistic and don’t drive yourself nuts.

Fifth, keep snacks easy. By this I mean use minimally processed foods that save you time as snacks. You really can NOT cook 5 times a day without feeling like you just opened a gluten free casein free restaurant where you are the owner, server, hostess and short order cook serving cranky little people who are extremely picky, make a mess and never leave a tip. I generally keep rice crackers, rice cakes, corn thins, and other simple 2 or 3 ingredient cracker like things around to be pared with jam, vegan butter, or plain for snack. If you can sneak some red peppers or carrots in there then you up the veggie count for the day. Good for you!

Speaking of veggie count just how much veggies do we all need? 5 servings a day of fruits and vegetables is considered best. Maybe I should reverse that: 5 servings a day of vegetables and fruits. In that order. Yeah, right. OK well, what’s a serving? For a little one a serving of veggies or fruit is the size of their fist. So for a 2 year old we’re talking about one medium broccoli floret, or 2 baby carrots, or 1 big cauliflower floret, or 1 chopped asparagus, etc. Honestly it’s not that much. Do what you need to do to make it attractive. Dip anyone? We use Paul Newman’s Organic Balsamic Vinaigrette or just olive oil with a little salt. If you get those veggies in there during snack you don’t need to pile them on during dinner.

Sixth, let them watch TV. Or play with toys at the table. Or whatever allows them to eat. When you are starting this diet I think it’s more important to get started and really try it, table manners be damned. If you need to park them in front of Thomas and shovel the food in yourself do it. This is the time to focus on nutrition and actually sticking to the gfcf diet. You can fix the table manners later. Get the good stuff in.

Seventh, keep a food, health and behavior log. Something like this food mood journal from personal-nutrition-guide.com is great. Modify it for your needs like stims instead of “mood before” and you may not need “place” at all unless you want to see if something in the environment is bugging your child. For instance, if the place is dining room table which is next to a noisy air conditioner and he doesn’t eat much, perhaps the noise from the air conditioner is making things worse. Did your child cover their ears a lot? Can’t eat if you are covering your ears. Think sensory, sensory, sensory. Also, I didn’t need to be exact on amounts just the food/beverage.

Keeping a food log showed me that gluten and casein weren’t the only food bothering my kids (yes I kept a food log for them all and sure enough they get wacky after all kinds of things – chocolate, artificial colors and corn syrup – don’t get me started on corn syrup). Soy really bothered my son on the spectrum. It gave him terrible rashes on his cheeks. I never really figured out of this was due to soy being in the peanut family (he has a peanut allergy) or if this was just a general intolerance thing. IGE vs. IGG and all that. I can also say (because of the food/health/behavior log) that I didn’t see any behavioral changes from removing soy, only health improvements. Good to know.

It’s also good to know which one – gluten or casein – is the worst offender and in what way. My son could never NEVER tolerate dairy. For the first 2 years of his life I kept trying to give him formula, yogurt or cheese which he promptly pooed out within 15 minutes. I feel I saw the biggest gains with gluten but then I could never feed him much dairy in the first place. Wonder if he would have been worse if I had been feeding him dairy. hmmm

Eighth and last, keep some gluten free casein free stuff in your purse. Rice crisps, lollipops, raisins, apple sauce in those little containers, for when your little one needs to eat or be quiet. It’s hard to shout when your mouth is busy working a lollipop. There are times when you are standing on a line and just need your kids to behave (i.e. be a wallflower). A well timed Yummy Earth lollipop can be just the trick (assuming you are not tacking and yeast or sugar issue of course – but that’s another post).

Good luck!

Food Additives 2 is a really useful app. It contains a huge list of additives with details on their origin, function, uses and most importantly a safety ranking. It even lists possible side effects, max daily intake and information for special diet like vegan or vegetarians.
For the first 10 minutes I just looked up additives that I see all the time. Like Xylitol. It seems like I see Xylitol gum in every health food store. I was thinking about using it as a reward for my kids (positive reinforcement, blah, blah, blah). According to Food Additives the potential risks of Xylitol are unknown. It’s probably fine but since we are talking about my kids I’ll be extra careful and go with something tried and true. Like chocolate which has some very well known side effects.
I really love the different ways the additives can be sorted – number, name, risk level (my favorite), symptom or diet. The Diet sort is interesting because it includes not just animal derived additives but also bacterial, fish and insect (yuck) derived additives. The Symptom sort includes gluten for Celiac, asthma triggering (personal fav!!), additives for baby and children to avoid, skin allergies and more.

I would like to know how the safety ratings are determined. Not that I don’t trust these people but it’s good to know who is doing the ratings for comparison with other lists. Personally, I could use a “notes” feature so that I could track how my kids seem to react after eating an additive. Also, the reviews on iTunes have some great suggestions for improvements. I do think Food Additives is a really good start.

All of this is a great reminder that I should really just feed the kids real food with no additives. In the meantime Food Additives 2 is a real handy app. Available at iTunes for just $3.99.

Food Additives 2 iPhone App - By IGRASS PTY LTD