There is a not-so-quiet food revolt taking place in my home.
It was early last Sunday morning when my teenage son Julian wandered into the living room, which I’ve appropriated as my office, and asked if he could “check the weather,” which is code for him checking the lineup of songs playing on 106.7 Lite FM. Because he would check it obsessively, he doesn’t have access to it on his computer, and because he caught me in the middle of editing a particularly juicy paragraph, I didn’t protest when he grabbed my phone and punched in his favorite website.
But very quickly, he was on to the Amazon site where he started looking up different pizzas he could purchase. Just the previous night, I had suggested to him to write to Amy’s Pizza and lodge his complaint at the curtailment of Amy’s gluten-free pizzas since the start of the pandemic. Amy’s GF pizzas were one of the prepackaged foods that had, for better or worse, been a staple in his diet before Covid. While I have made my own healthier versions of pizza over the past decade, Julian prefers Amy’s and this is one of the concessions I have made.
For most of his life, Julian has followed a GF diet. At one point, his diet was free of gluten, grains, dairy, and soy; or put another way, his diet was replete with whole foods: meat, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and nuts (legumes and fruit, though offered, have never been of much interest unless the fruit is in the form of a roll-up, what we, once-upon-a-time, called a “fruit leather” and made in our dehydrator).
There’s no question: a nutrient-rich, blood-sugar balancing diet has served Julian well. We saw gains weeks after putting him on this kind of regimen when he was 2, shortly after he had been diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and we continue to see that he is more focused, energetic, and grounded when he starts the day with a high protein/high fat breakfast compared to boxed cereal or oatmeal.
All this good work (and, let’s face it, it is work) was confirmed a couple months ago by his “microbiome score” from Sun Genomics, which has partnered with Arizona State University researcher Dr. James Adams to conduct a study on the impact of personal probiotics on the health of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Ever on a quest to improve our family’s health from the inside-out, I had been looking for ways to enroll Julian in one of Adams’ studies. I had been unable to secure a spot in his recent one involving fecal transplants, so I jumped at the opportunity to enroll him in this one.
Even before Julian started taking the “personal probiotic” that had been formulated just for him—as part of this study of individuals with ASD—his microbiome score was already in the “green zone.” Sure, there is room for improvement, but as the health coach working with us relayed to me, it’s one of the “best scores” she had ever seen.
So when Julian said that he was ordering an Amy’s gluten pizza on Amazon, I willfully mis-heard him. I was in a state of flow, re-writing a critical line. In our house, Amy’s pizza was gluten free. He knew that. And maybe his “complaint” to Amy’s had already been fixed. Maybe there were GF pizzas available at the Whole Foods market to which my Amazon account was linked. Truth be told, I didn’t even realize that my Amazon account was linked to a Whole Foods that offered delivery to our sleepy village 15 miles away.
Silly me. Because three hours later, Julian announced that he was going to take a walk in the rain, only to return moments later with a package. In the next instant, he was in our kitchen, making his pizza.
Though I have cooked with Julian many times, he has been reluctant to do so recently, but there he was, in the kitchen, setting the oven to 400 degrees F, opening the box, unwrapping the plastic covering, putting the pizza on the pan.
It was astounding to witness. This kind of independence is something that a parent of any child, especially a child with a disability, longs for. He was preparing his own lunch!
Except that it was in a package (oy, says the functional nutrition and lifestyle practitioner in me) and that it contained gluten (double oy), an ingredient that I consider, like pork and shellfish, treif in my home. And he was using our pizza pan on which to prepare it.
“Did you sanction this?” my husband asked. He had come in from tending the garden, stunned to see me standing there, watching.
It’s not that I hadn’t tried to stop Julian. I had reminded him of the thyroid-gluten connection, the gluten-leaky gut connection, his gluten allergy, that we don’t eat gluten, and then, finally, how he is enrolled in the Sun Genomics probiotic study for which we have promised not to make any changes to his diet, including introducing gluten.
But this was to no avail.
“It’s my choice what goes into my body,” he responded.
What was I going to say to that?
And so I watched him devour the pizza.
“That was delicious,” he told me, a huge, victorious smile on his face.
I felt like screaming, “What are you doing to your body? Don’t you know that I’ve dedicated my life to your health, which begins in your gut? Do you think you’re going to get away with spending money that wasn’t yours to spend?”
But I didn’t say any of these things. Instead, I said, “I’m so happy you liked it.”
This was unprecedented for me. You see, I’m a nutritionista. That’s according to Dina Rose, author of It’s Not About the Broccoli: Three Habits to Teach Your Child for a Lifetime of Healthy Eating. This is a book that I devoured back in 2014 when it was first published, and I didn’t need a consultation to know that I was the “nutritionista” type: one who is concerned with the kind and quality of ingredients their children are consuming. (Did I mention that our garden is organic?).
How could I not be a nutritionista?
I myself manage my Hashimoto’s disease largely through diet and lifestyle interventions, and I feel my best when I not only think about what I eat, but how and when.
Now, Dina Rose does not approve of us nutritionista mamas. She argues that being so restrictive only encourages disordered eating; there is more, much more, to encouraging a successful relationship with food that also must be taken into account, such as having “eating zones,” (times when eating takes place) as well as rotating foods so that no food is served two days in a row.
I like her advice, and I would do well to do a better job integrating it into our lives at home. But I also believe that Rose, who is a sociologist, isn’t speaking about children with autism: she pays no attention to the gut-brain access, or how what we eat can, in fact, change the microbiome, which can change the way we feel.
Trust me, I am living proof that consistent, persistent change can make a difference. “Change your gut, change your life,” is one of my mantras.
And, yet, I also believe that one has to own these changes. Sure, it’s easy to micromanage the diet of a baby and toddler, especially if you’re the caregiver and you’re okay staying in a bubble, even in non-pandemic times. For years, we eschewed trick-or-treating and even Shabbat get-togethers outside of our home because I didn’t want to deal with saying “no” to the challah and grape juice. Needless to say, we did a ton of at-home entertaining, and when, eventually, when we returned to dining at the homes of family and friends, I’d vet the menu ahead of time and come bearing a couple courses; and, for birthday parties, yes, I was that mom with the special cupcake in hand.
But my children are growing up. They have distinct (big) personalities and are learning to have agency over their bodies. These are lessons that I, in part, take credit for. I’m thrilled to see them advocating for themselves.
The truth is the “gluten revolt” started years ago, with my daughters murmuring that they “wanted to eat gluten and dairy.” I listened then, and though I explained my reasons for why gluten was off limits at home, began to make exceptions for them to have it out of the house, monitoring for any reactions. Frankly, the consequences haven’t always been so sweet, the subject of a future article.
Julian started doing the same thing this year. I can often hear him muttering how “he hates” his diet, which also includes his dislike of us following the laws of kashrut. What I think he really means is that he dislikes waiting to have ice cream after a meat meal; he hasn’t asked to try crab, shrimp, lobster or pork (yet).
I didn’t grow up with the same kinds of restrictions that my husband and I have placed on our kids. Growing up, my family didn’t keep kosher (though we never had anything like bacon or shellfish), and I had never heard of gluten until 2000 when one of my friend’s sons was diagnosed with Celiac Disease.
How times have changed!
Sure, I need to do a better job of not letting Julian log onto my Amazon account. In the meantime, I let him know that it’s still not okay to eat gluten: when he started to prepare the second gluten-enriched Amy’s pizza that he had ordered, I threw it in the trash.
I gently reminded him that eating gluten willy-nilly is not okay, right now, because, at the very least, we had committed to the probiotic study. I did promise that when the study is over, he can do a proper gluten challenge in which there will be lab testing before and after, and that we will track how he’s feeling with a Food, Mood and Poop journal.
Naturally, Julian was disappointed that he didn’t get that second pizza, but I think he also understood that I understand that he has a say, a big say, in what he eats.
The fact is he’s a good eater. He loves broccoli, especially when it’s roasted at 400 degrees F with sea salt and avocado oil, feasts on my kale chips, and has come to devour the “sunnies" (sunflower seed sprouts) that our neighbor delivers fresh every couple weeks. He helped plant our garden, so I’m hopeful he’ll enjoy the bounties of his labor when we harvest the cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and other veggies later this summer.
I am a proud nutritionista but I’m also trying to meet my kids where they are, hoping that as I do, they will eventually meet me where I am.
I love this story about how to manage your top priorities: helping your kids thrive inside and out while also allowing them some autonomy. I would love to learn more about helping our kids be better eaters!