How to wean from junk food to food that enables functional behavior
Junk food causes and makes worth a lot of the behaviors that are the most challenging.
A perfect storm of ingredients that all jangle the nervous system and brain, cause inflammation, and promote general ill health, not to mention hyper activity and anxiety comprise the cocktail of ingredient found inmost fast food, candies, baked goods and so on.
Fortunately, there are now a wealth of products that are designed to look like junk food, but are in fact healthier and have better or less harmful ingredients. Over the past 20 years since the autism pandemic really hit our society, many people have put their mind to creating these products and so weaning from the harmful to the less harmful to the down right healthy is no longer quite the challenge that it used to be.
The first thing to identify with any diet is whether there is a Gluten or Casein intolerance with your child.
These two intolerances are pretty common with autism, especially in North America where enriched flour has triggered Gluten intolerances in many people, autistic or not. A lot of negative behaviors can be traced to these two culprits and so when you are approaching anything to do with diet it’s a good idea to eliminate these from the picture.
Not every kid will show up as intolerant to them, but many do. If you have not seen it yet, check out the movie “The Autism Enigma” with talks in detail about wheat and its effects on kids on the spectrum. The movie also includes a experiment with rats in which researchers gave rats the preservatives found in many wheat products and the result was that the rats showed autism like behaviors similar to stimming, they ignored other rats with them in the cage and paced seemingly randomly in circles and other patterns.
Other food intolerances can be hard to trace. A lot of our parents have had great success with cutting out any GMO food, especially corn and soy. The reason that it appears that these products are full of trace amounts of glyphosate, which has all sorts of deleterious on the human body and brain.
Given that glyphosate was originally developed as Agent Orange in the Vietnam war, it’s not surprising that products containing this herbicide might be a bit of a sledgehammer to an already oversensitive nervous system.
Another issue with junk foods is that they are often packaged in plastic and then microwaves in plastic. There is a lot of research now showing that plastics breaking down in the body can act like hormones, creating problems especially for males with infertility, prostate cancer, and so on.
The next issue is sugar. We all know that sugar rots your teeth and is a hyper activity trigger. But the real issue is inflammation. Sugar causes inflammation in many parts of the body. A lot of kids on the spectrum are already suffering from inflamed gut which leads to impaired brain function and autism brains can also have issues with inflammation too.
So, feeding a lot of sugar is a bit like adding a bicycle pump to an already over inflated tire. The results can be explosive. Additionally, at least in the US most “regular” sugar is derived from the sugar beet and the sugar beet is one of the genetically modified plants. If you want to learn more about GMO foods check out “The Genetic Roulette”. There is also a ton of information on the ill effects of sugar available online. Here is some recent research on sugar and cancer: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/10/18/relationship-between-sugar-and-cancer-now-clearer-scientists-say/775963001/
Chemicals – think food dies, flavor enhancers, anything on the label of a food product that you basically can’t understand or pronounce are yet another set of artillery ranged against your child’s brain and body. Also be careful with anything that says “natural” as “natural” is not regulated in the US and there have been products that have disguised things like corn syrup as “natural” ingredients. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that this kind of deliberate misinformation is the norm.
The way around it is either to exclusively by organic which can be extremely expensive and is not everywhere available, or research the brands you are currently purchasing. E.g. Udis Gluten Free products are not certified organic because some of the ingredients they are using are not yet from an organic source, however reading what they do do, it seems clear, that they at least try to do right by the consumer.
Other pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and growth hormones all come with their own set of problems.
These problems are just the tip of the ice berg really with junk food. Fortunately, there are now a wealth of products designed to look and as much as possible taste like junk that are not junk.
The first thing that children see which junk food is the packaging.
Lots of super clever psychologists are hired by the food companies to work tirelessly on ways to present these products so that children fall over themselves to get them.
Make this work in your favor!
If your kid is addicted to happy meals, keep the happy meal boxes and present whatever foods you want to give in these boxes.
Add a toy.
This way you let the junk food companies do about half your work for you and you follow their psychology protocols but in reverse – using their clever packaging to promote healthy rather than unhealthy foods.
But don’t fill the box with stuff that is radically different from the junk food. If your child likes for example Kentucky Fried Chicken nuggets, then sneakily put one or two organic or natural ones in with the main batch. Make sure that the new nuggets you choose look as close as possible to the KFC ones and also that their taste and texture is as close as possible.
Little by little, you decrease the bad and increase the good but don’t try to do this fast or your kid will smell a rat and shut the process down.
The same goes for any product whether it’s a drink, a candy, a meat product, or French fries and pizza, go down to a place that stocks organic and healthy junk food substitutes – many regular super markets have them now – and the specialist organic supermarkets have even more choice – and look for and taste products that are as close as possible to the ones your child eats.
Then begin the switcheroo: slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.
If you tell yourself that you are going to take, say 24 months over the process, you will probably achieve it in less time, but you will resist the temptation to push forward to quickly, which risks undoing all the good work you’ve done.
The process is not as difficult as you think, if you go slowly.
Avoid the peer pressure. It’s natural to feel when talking with super moms about how healthy their kids eat.
Also, we are not saying never allow any kind of junk food ever.
What we are saying is minimize it so that the kid only has it occasionally.
What you will find however, is that many kids – especially as they get a little older – really begin to take on board the concept of healthy eating and start to notice how bad they feel, when they eat, for example mass produced birthday cake at someone’s party or fast food.
Pretty soon, you are likely to get to a point where your kid starts to reprimand you in the supermarket when you buy non-organic foods and frequently your child will start to scrutinize labels and so on.
This has been the experience of many of our families who started with kids so addicted to junk food that they couldn’t see any way out of the whole. Important is, that you tell your child why it’s bad, once the early weaning stage is done, and have all the good products always lying around so that your child gets use to and familiar with them.
Remember also, that even if your child is not verbal yet, they do understand much more than you may think, so conversations about certain foods are good and others are bad will be taken in.
Another good strategy once the children get older is to watch documentaries together like “Food Inc”, “King Corn”, “The Autism Enigma” and so on which are both informative and entertaining to watch. “Supersize Me” is another one.
We have been surprised over the years by how into these documentaries the kids get, especially once they hit late childhood/early adolescence.
Every parent who goes through this has a fund of information to share on what worked and what didn’t. Please submit your comments below.
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