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.