Food. Should be simple enough. It's one of the basic needs all of us humans have. Yet, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me how crazy food has become. I mean that literally.

Yesterday, a co-worker asked me if I had thought of doing a food journal for Jacob. A what!? Lady, do you not realize that I work full time, go to school part time, have three kids and a husband? I blog, woman. Whatever this food journal is that you speak of is NOT FOR ME. Well...

I couldn't help myself. I googled. So it turns out that maybe, just maybe, food journals are for me. In fact, food journals just might give us another key into this whole puzzle that has been thrown down in front of us by pointing out 'trigger foods' that Jacob's body reacts to adversely. Common trigger foods are gluten (found in grains), casein (a milk protein), corn, preservatives and dyes. This isn't nearly the be all-end all list of potential trigger foods, but they top the list. I don't have high hopes that this will offer us a "cure" but in conjunction with all of the therapies and medications we're already game for...why not.

It does scare me more than a little since it seems that the gluten free/casein free (GFCF) diet is the most commonly used diet for curbing Autism. I'm gluten free, and let me tell you here and now - gluten free ain't easy. Casein free too? And whatever-foods-are-triggering-madness free? Ugh. Sigh. Fine. I'll try it.

So we are going to start with the food journal. If we can identify trigger foods, great! From there we will try the eliminate/reintroduce method. We'll take away common trigger foods for a period of time and then reintroduce them in order to see if the eliminate made a difference. If in fact it did, we add another '-free' designation to our household.

Yeah, I know. If I were you I wouldn't have us over for dinner, either!