My 3 1/2 year old Luke is a lover of anything sweet. He loves cookies, candy, gum, cupcakes, chocolate... anything made with sugar, and sprinkles make things extra special.

Last week, he found a new bag of mini chocolate cookies in the pantry when he was rustling through there looking for a snack. I found this yummy new product at Whole Foods the day before. He brought the bag to me and asked "Can I have some of these for my snack?". I poured about 8 in a bowl for him and he wanted the details...
"What are these called?"
"When did we get these?"
"Is that all I am having?"
"Are these gorganic?"
That last one stopped me.... Gorganic? Oh, ORGANIC! He wanted to know if the cookies were organic.
"Yes, Luke, these are organic. And they don't have any yucky stuff in them".
"Good," he stated and happily ate the little cookies.

I didn't realize until about a year ago the importance of ingredients in our food. I always look at vitamins and fats and calories, but I justifed a lot of the food I was giving my children by thinking "there are vitamins in there, and that's the most important thing."

Not so much.

Like many of my friends who have children on the spectrum, those first early years are spent living in your car, driving from therapy to therapy to therapy. I got into a bad habit with Sam of driving through for lunch, and sometimes dinner depending on the day of the week. He was such a picky eater, and would gobble down a McDonalds cheeseburger or Chick-Fil-A nuggets and I'd justify that to myself by thinking, "Well, at least he's eating protein, and, at least he is eating." We also used food a lot as reinforcers during those early months of ABA- my child probably consumed 4 bags of gummy fruit snacks and a pound of goldfish crackers every single day.

Thanks to the knowledge and influence of dozens of incredible moms on a yahoo forum I belong to, I started paying more and more attention to special food diets, additives, food colorings, etc, and finally decided last summer our eating had to change. We put Sam on the GFCF diet and removed everything from our home that had artificial colorings or flavorings, partially hydrogenated oils, and high fructose syrup (except for my big splurge, Coke) , and started buying as much organic as possible. I had been buying organic rice milk and organic cows milk for a few years, but now just about everything is organic in our house. The more I read and the more I learn about our environment and the impact it has on our bodies and brains, the cleaner I want our little environment at home to be.

The fact that my 3 1/2 year old son wants to check that his cookies are organic, or "gorganic", is a sign that I am doing something right in teaching my children the importance of cleaner food, too. However, I'll feel even better when he craves blueberries like he craves chocolate. :)