Nutrition

The foundation of diet is most important in autism recovery. The hardest change this fast food addict has had to make. Gluten & Casein free with a basic healthy diet is a great place to start.

GENERAL DIET PLAN

READ LABELS ON EVERYTHING YOU PLAN TO BUY-ESPECIALLY INGREDIENTS!

THESE ARE THE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF THE BASIC DIET–. In general regarding ORGANIC FOOD, the rule is if it is AVAILABLE AND AFFORDABLE, buy it. If not one or the other, then don’t and just bless and eat your normal food.

Shop at Healthy Food Stores such as Organions, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, The Grapevine in Newtown, and others of the same sort. Many typical supermarkets now also have pretty decent health food store aisles/sections.

Microwaving

Using the microwave destroys some of the essential nutrients in our foods. Microwave for the shortest time possible. If you are pregnant or have a pacemaker, make sure you stand at least 4 feet from the microwave when it is on. When plastics are heated, they release chemicals and estrogens into the food. This is especially true if you are microwaving anything with fat. If you do choose to heat food in the microwave, use only Pyrex or ceramic, and cover dishes with another dish or paper towel, NEVER plastic wrap.

OILS

It is very important to eat good oils–they contain essential nutrients in them that nourish us and are requirements for us to be healthy and stay healthy. There are also very harmful oils we need to avoid entirely. Good oils will be marked to the side by yellow high-light circles. Neutral oils, found in dairy and fat, are okay usually in moderation only.

Avoid Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs)–Also listed on food labels as Trans Fats, Vegetable Fat and Vegetable Shortening. This type of oil is the number one food additive in our foods, and is VERY UNHEALTHY TO EAT.

READ LABELS!!–Basically most anything that has oil in it will have PHOs in it if it is from the conventional supermarket: margarines and other fake butter products, Crisco/shortenings, cookies, crackers, peanut butter, candy, pastries/muffins, butter-flavored microwave popcorn, Cool Whip, potato chips, tortilla chips, non-dairy creamers, frozen tater tots…essentially most frozen and prepared foods.

At good stores–you can buy most of the above foods, but without the PHOs in them. It’s not really the food category that’s bad, just those specific products that contain the PHOs. Any other oil on a label aside from PHOs is okay to eat.

Good Oils To Use In Your Home: Organic butter; (organic) extra virgin olive oil; refined or unrefined high oleic safflower oil, also known as monounsatured safflower oil; Organic unrefined coconut oil. Some other oils like sesame, or walnut can be used for particular types of cooking. If you are dairy sensitive, you can buy Earth Balance, or Smart Balance instead of butter and margarine. Canola oil is NOT a good oil, unless you must buy a refined oil. Peanut oil can be used for those rare occasions when you do deep fat frying. No margarines of any type are okay.

Refrigerate all oils but the extra virgin olive oil, which you can just store in a cool, dark cabinet.

GRAINS

If you have any sort of weight in your abdominal area, and are interested in losing that weight, grains of all sorts are probably what you should decrease in your diet.

Always use whole grains: 100% whole wheat/other grain bread, brown/wild rice, whole grain crackers/pasta/pancake/muffins, whole wheat bagels, etc.

Crackers: Buy whole grain ones without PHOs. Also can buy Plain Rye-Krisp/Rye-Vita, WASA, Ak-Maks, rice and popcorn cakes (eat only the plain variety in the Quaker Oats Brand; all Haines/Health Valley ones are okay).

Hot Cereals: Any unsweetened one is okay–oatmeal, cream of rye/rice/wheat. No sweetened instant packets. Try to avoid cream of wheat to add variety to your grain intake.

Cold Cereals–There are many different types of healthy cereals at health food stores/healthy aisles at supermarkets. The only regular cereals that are whole grain, sugar free, and don’t have PHOs are Plain Grape Nuts, Perky’s Nutty Rice, and Unfrosted Shredded Wheat.

Various stores have all types of whole grain mixes for muffins, pancakes, waffles.

Try to limit wheat intake to just once a day–Americans eat too much wheat, which is a very common food allergen. There are many other excellent grains out there to eat and experiment with: oats and oatmeal, spelt, millet, barley, rye, corn, amaranth, quinoa, teff, rice. For example, eat a wheat

free cereal for breakfast, have a sandwich at lunch, and then have brown rice or millet or potatoes with dinner.

Vegetables

Eat at least 5-9 servings of vegetables everyday (a serving is ½ a cup): Thus 2-5 cups a day–They can be either fresh or frozen. No canned veggies, no boiling of veggies, no microwaving, no head/iceberg lettuce: use only red or green leaf, romaine, spinach, kale, cabbage, collard green, beet greens, mustard greens, etc. The darker the green the better. Ideally, the best way to eat veggies is to stir fry, steam them, or bake them. If you steam them, drink the water that’s left over. It contains most of the potassium and several B vitamins that get leached from the veggies when they are cooked.

Especially healthy veggies are those from the cruciferous family–broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, radish, cabbage; onions and garlic; the orange veggies–carrot, squash, yams, sweet potatoes, tomatoes; and the deep green leafy ones. But, ALL veggies have their worth and you should strive both for frequency of intake and variety.

Salads can be interesting and fun: Try adding pickles, olives, sunflower seeds, raisins, grated cheese. Avoid heavy dressings like blue cheese, thousand island, etc., and instead just use olive oil with vinegar or lemon juice, Italian, Caesar, vinaigrette. A great dressing is flax seed oil and balsamic vinegar. DO NOT USE FAT FREE DRESSINGS! “Annies” or “Drew’s” salad dressings at healthy food stores are excellent.

An easy way to add veggies into a diet is to add leaf lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sprouts, etc., to your sandwich at lunch; then eat a baked potato and some peas, half a squash (or whatever) at dinner. That would make up two cups. Munch on a carrot, celery, or cherry tomatoes for a snack, and so forth.

To help remove potentially harmful residues, purchase a produce wash. Pesticides are not all water-soluble. They need a soap of some sort to be removed. A wash like Citrus Magic, Fruit & Veggie Wash can be used.

FRUIT

Eat one or two pieces of fruit a day. An easy way to get a fruit in is to eat one first thing in the morning. Eat a real fruit before getting into juices, dried fruits, canned fruit, etc.

PROTEIN

**MEAT:

Game meat and/or organically grown meat is the ONLY meat to eat regularly. The BEST is grass fed/grass finished meat. On the internet there are organic ranchers selling organic buffalo, venison, chicken, beef, ostrich, lamb, pork at cheaper prices than in stores. DO NOT eat a lot of meat if supermarket meat is your only source of meat. Optimally, we shouldn’t eat meat more than once per day. Roasting/baking meat is the healthiest way to prepare meat–frying and barbecuing are the worst.

Avoid high processed meat products unless prepared by an organic rancher: hot dogs; sausage, pepperoni, bacon (the three pizza meats); bologna, salami; and beef jerky. These are poor quality meats full of nitrates, and other chemicals/hormones/etc. which cause cancer, unless organically made.

Organic meat is available in town at Whole Foods, Wild Oats and some other stores.

**OTHER PROTEINS FOODS TO SUBSTITUTE FOR MEAT:

Beans, peas, lentils–use BEANO as a bean digestive aid, if needed. Also, if you are new to beans and fear the gas effects of beans, follow these procedures to decrease such effects: Soak the beans in water overnight, then throw that water out and use new water to cook them in. It is very helpful to–at first–cook beans one type at a time, to learn which one you can tolerate well and which ones produce excessive gas. After you are familiar with the good and bad beans for you, then you can mix and match the good beans together, if you want. Crockpots are an excellent way to cook beans; you can start them cooking in the morning and have them all ready to eat when you get home from work.

You can also simply buy canned organic beans already cooked. Organic companies like Eden also use cans that are free of BPA (bisphenol-A, a compound associated with hormonal and behavioral changes).

Raw nuts (Peanuts should be eaten roasted, but other nuts should NOT be roasted or dry roasted except

occasionally)-Several stores sell raw nuts cheaply. All nuts are good to eat: walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pecans, filberts, almonds, brazil, etc.

Nut butters–particularly almond butter or cashew butter, or tahini. You can get good peanut butter with no added sugar or partially hydrogenated oils in Trader Joe’s brand, at the health food stores. Store these upside down in the fridge for easy use; that way the oil will naturally be mixed in with the nut butter and not sit on top.

a. There is now UNSWEETENED almond milk, which is good to drink.

Soy products— If you start eating a lot of soy foods, then you should begin eating seaweeds, too, as soy can lower the functioning of the thyroid, and seaweeds will help prevent that. Soy products should be eaten in the fermented form, as they have been for generations in Japan. Soy products that are not fermented can be eaten with less regularity and some contain GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Here are the various categories of soy:

a. Fermented soy products: tempeh, miso, natto, soy sauce. These products are in the form that people have been eating for thousands of years. Tempeh is a firm bean product that can be baked or added to pasta sauces. Look in Trader Joe’s for pre-seasoned and marinated tempehs.

Tofu, unfortunately, is not fermented. You may eat this occasionally.

b. Soy meat analogs -eat sparingly(name in parenthesis suggests which company’s product to try first): soy hotdogs (YVES), soy sausage (Tofu Links, Gimme Lean); soy bologna (YVES); soy pepperoni and Canadian bacon (YVES); soy burgers (Garden Burger Veggie Medley); soy bacon (Fakin Bacon).

Morningstar products contain GMO soy.

Boca Burgers contain GMO soy.

c. Soy dairy alternatives: –eat sparingly. UNSWEETENED soy milk (liquid or powder form), soy cheese, soy yogurt, soy ice cream, soy sour cream. Westsoy has an unsweetened milk. Many soy milks can be very high in sugar.

d. Roasted soy nuts and Edamame (cooked soybeans ready to eat). Eat sparingly.

e. Soy Nut Butter-eat sparingly

f. Soy protein powders and soy protein isolate: these products, because they are not fermented, may have hormonal actions that we do not want. They are processed so much that they are devoid of nutrition. Avoid these.

Fish–Eat oily fish 2-3 times a week: salmon (Wild Alaskan canned or fresh), herring (rinse off the pickling in colander), cod, trout, sardines (double-layer taste best),

halibut. Make sure your salmon is wild Alaskan. If not, choose another fish. Canned fish is fine, although don’t get too much tuna that way; cook fresh fish lightly (broil, bake). Avoid tuna, mackerel, catfish, sturgeon, swordfish, and shark due to high environmental toxin content and worries of extinction. All fish are a bit contaminated, but some more than others. Other fish, such as perch, red snapper, orange roughy, tilapia, etc., do not contain good oils in them, but are not overly polluted, so are okay to eat. Shrimp, clams, mussels, crab, lobster and so forth are also okay to eat. It is hard to avoid all farmed fish, but we definitely do not want to eat farmed Salmon, AKA “Atlantic Salmon”.

Eggs-All healthy food stores and many supermarkets generally carry organic eggs, not just “free-range”. We can get Organic Omega-3 eggs at Trader Joe’s. It is thought that by cooking eggs by hard or soft-boiling, sunny side up or poached, that is a healthier way to prepare them, if you are concerned about cardiovascular disease. However, one need not be overly concerned about cholesterol as egg yolks have vitamin E in them, which lowers cholesterol. Eggs are truly the perfect food.

Dairy

a. DO NOT EAT ARTIFICIAL CHEESES–Velveeta, Pasteurized Process Cheese Foods, American cheese.

b. Cheeses: generally buy low fat (made with some skim milk). Buy organic cheeses, as you can.

c. Milk–Use skim milk, or the lowest fat milk you can, unless you can buy organic milk, which will have healthy fats. Pesticides concentrate in the fat so buy organic when you can.

d. Yogurt–Use PLAIN and add your own fruit. All fruited yogurts are highly sweetened.

e. Creams–Creams of all sort should generally be avoided.

1. Sour cream–get soy sour cream or use plain yogurt.

2. Avoid cream soups, alfredo sauces.

FAST FOODS

People should eat out no more than 3-5 times a week.

**AVOID FAST FOODS and DEEP FAT FRIED FOODS–About the only fast foods worth eating are: Whole wheat Subway subs (or other companies) with all the veggie fixings

hold the cheese; Mexican food is not generally that bad (watch the sour cream); Veggies only pizza, and so forth. Arby’s has some healthy sandwiches now offered. Usually I suggest people mostly prepare their own food so that they don’t often have to rely on fast food to nourish them. Other local places would be Chipoltle, Baja Fresh, and any of the other million more healthy places in this area.

**REGULAR RESTAURANTS: Get a piece of meat, fish, or chicken, with baked potato, salad, and skip dessert. Avoid fried foods, creamy pastas, eating too much. Many ethnic foods such as Mediterranean, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, etc. are much healthier than big slabs of steaks or fatty lasagnas.

DRINKS

DON’T DRINK THESE: Pop, sweetened ice tea drinks (Arizona, Lipton, Snapple), sweetened fruit drinks (Ocean Sprays, Lemonade, Kool-Aid, Powerade, Gatorade, Sunny Delight, Hawaiian Punch, all the other sugar water products in pretty bottles on the supermarket shelves, etc.), and most all the colored and caffeinated drinks in the supermarket aisles, cocoas/hot chocolate/chocolate milk. Those “healthy herbal” drinks are also very sweetened. Avoid!

Don’t Drink DIET Drinks: Recent studies show that these cause people to gain MORE weight than drinking regular drinks, which definitely cause weight gain.

Coffee/Decaf-

If you can have it, please limit the amount to a maximum of 1-2 cups a day.

These are okay to drink: water; unsweetened fruit juices (maximum of 4-6 oz/day, though may dilute with water to make 12-16 oz/day); unlimited veggie juices (fresh made, low salt V-8, tomato juice); unsweetened soy/rice/almond milk; herb teas; Green tea; plain sparkling mineral waters/club soda/seltzer water (add lemon juice or fruit juice); Coffee substitutes: Pero, Cafix, Roma, etc. (instants); Teechino (brewed, expresso, or French press)-use 1 TBS per 10 cup pot to start with.

If you take a plastic water bottle with you, make sure it is BPA-free, or use a stainless-steel or glass bottle.

Alcohol–you can have ____1) None or _____2) one drink a day.

SWEETS/SUGAR

AVOID WHITE AND BROWN SUGAR, HONEY, AND ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS! Honey is not this freebie sweet that is okay to use all the time–use minimally. A little mannitol or sorbitol in gum is fine. Stevia is okay if used occasionally. Sugar in any form, “healthy” or otherwise, promotes the need to have things taste sweet to be good.

a. Sweet Leaf Stevia has numerous flavors in liquid form to add to beverages. It dose not cause weight gain and has no calories.

b. Xylitol is fine. It raises blood sugar (causes weight gain) at a much lower rate than sugar

c. No other alternative sweeteners!

Synonyms for white sugar: sucrose, glucose, fructose, dextrose, maltose, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup solids.

Sweets that are okay to eat daily: fruit; unsweetened fruit juice; a small amount of unsweetened dry fruit (raisins, dates, e.g.); canned fruit in fruit juice only (no light or heavy syrup); all-fruit jams (Smucker’s Simply Fruit, Polaner’s Fruit Spread, others at health food stores, such as Sorrel Ridge); all-fruit syrups (at health food stores) or, occasionally, 100% Maple Syrup.

Maximum of 1-2 sugary foods at most are permissible A WEEK. Many people find it is helpful to choose one or two days a week on which they can eat something sweet (e.g.. Sundays and Wednesdays), and then avoid eating sweets on the other 5-6 days.

Alternative sweeteners for baking : unsulphured blackstrap molasses; date sugar (good but expensive); Mystic Lake Fruit Concentrate and/or Fruitsource (pineapple syrup); Brown Rice Syrup; Malted Barley Syrup.

WATCH OUT FOR HIDDEN SUGARS!!–GLUTEN FREE, LOW FAT AND NONFAT FOODS ARE ALMOST ALWAYS VERY HIGH IN SUGAR. Avoid packaged low and non-fat foods. READ LABELS!!

HAVE SOME FUN!!