Feingold Program

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My mom sent me this link... she says that they can make me succeed in school, and not be easily distracted or preoccupied with my obsessions anymore... what do you think?

http://www.feingold.org/

(Incidentally: I don't WANT to get rid of my obsessions! I can't imagine life without my fantasy books and my cats and my astronomy and my old computer games...)

If their website contain lots of verifiable experimental data in support of their claims, and the result was desireable to you, then I'd say go for it.

However, having looked at their website... it contains lots of subjective nonsense. A lot of what they says is true, but it is the way they say it which makes me distrust them. They use emotive words, rather than scientific words (e.g. they say "is loaded with" rather than "contains ??% of"). This isn't a problem in itself, but theying to imply that their program is backedup by science, but their words are just trying to maniuplate you emotionally:

"Those pretty colors that make the "fruit punch" red, the gelatin green and the oatmeal blue are made from petroleum (crude oil) which is also the source for gasoline."
Well, not all of them are, and some of the earlier colourings were made from bugs. It just reminds me of the whole Di-Protium-Mono-Oxide joke... you can phrase any chemical so it sounds lethal. And while most people assume that if those colourings come from petroluem they must be bad, well actually they might not be. And the site certainly lacks the data to show you.

Instead you get "Johnathon's Story", with a picture of a small boy and his courageous struggle and deliverance.

Edit: the site does have links to studies, some quite well documented. However my point stands; this is NOT the first thing they show you. The first thing they shown you is the emotional maniulation stuff, you have to dig for the data.

I think that it's entirely possible /reasonable to think that diet can affect the way we feel or behave and there does appear to be some evidence to back this up.

I spent a couple of years reading up on food intolerance/allergy and was amazed how many and varied symptoms people can get from it. For example, celiac disease can have a purely neurological manifestation (such as gluten ataxia). I know this is getting away from your question somewhat, but the thing is, food can effect the brain.

Getting back to the Feingold diet, I tried it on my son (out of desperation) when he was about 2 – 3. I also tried the gluten and casein free diet (mainly because of tummy troubles and weight loss). I didn't really see much benefit in doing the Feingold diet. The gluten and casein free diet helped initially, but now that he's older he seems to be able to tolerate gluten again.

If you do try it, I'd recommend keeping a very detailed diary, not only of everything you've eaten or drank, but also of other environmental factors which might affect you. It's the only way to tell if something is affecting you or not. Also if you do look into diet forums, please bear in mind that advocates of these diets are quite often very evangelical and are lacking in both objectivity and scientific knowledge. Worse still, I know of one ASD diet 'expert' who uses the associated forum as a means to drum up business for her friends special food businesses.

That's a great critique, Z. I also tend to be very leary of sites like that. They seem to start off from a not very objective point of view to begin with. I think nutritional problems can exacerbate problems and cause people to function at less than their full function, but fixing those issues won't likely make genetic-related problems just go away.

If every child in a family had the same problem, than food could be the cause.

If problems didn't exist decades ago, than the additives could be the cause.

How to make stock go up in the grocery chain Whole Foods, release as many scare stories as possable and make up web sites to cause a stampede to Whole Foods.