The Brown's GFCF Diet

If you haven't been following our food allergy saga (BTW - anyone else inherently add hash tags to terms like #foodallergy from too much tweeting?) we recently found out that the protein casein in milk can affect behavior in people who can't digest it. It's referred to as a "dietary opiate". We took our 4 year old, Fletcher, off milk immediately after finding that out and his behavior, attitude, mood and personality took a complete 180...for about a week.

I was thrilled to meet this happy little man I'd never seen before and equally distraught when his behavior returned to normal. I high-tailed it to the library and started pouring through several diet and behavior related books. One of the best I found was Special Needs Kids Eat Right which described how gluten was also a dietary opiate, similar in structure to casein.

Mr. Greenhab, who happens to be a the-Man-is-always-trying-to-get-me-to-spend-more-money conspiracy theorist and, officially, Cheapest Man on the Planet was not buying it. Or, I should say, he wasn't buying special gluten-free food.

So I worked and nagged and berated him with facts and figures. I explained how this will help with our goal this year of eating less processed foods and more natural / whole / raw / recognizable foods. And, perhaps his "all in" moment, I promised not to buy all the pre-made gluten free snacks and goodies and save some money by making them myself.

Not only did Mr. Greenhab agree, he also decided (all by his little ol' self) to go dairy-free himself. He's suffered from allergies and asthma his whole life and has some wicked GERD now. Evidently somewhere in my spiel he heard something that hit home about dairy and allergies.

Tomorrow we start our GFCF diet (that's Gluten-Free, Casein-Free)...and I start doing a lot more cooking. We went out in style tonight with our Super Bowl party. "Style" might not be accurate actually. We went out like a meth addict about to check into Celebrity Rehab...or K-Fed joining Celebrity Fit Club. (Yeah, junk food wasn't all we had this weekend, we watched a lot of trash TV as well.)

Wish us luck. Oh, and if you have any great GFCF recipes or resources, please share them with me!