The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook, 3rd edition: The Ultimate Guide to the Most Effective Diets -- What they are - Why they work - How to do them

The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook, 3rd Edition explains the best diets for children with food intolerances and hypersensitivities that stem from altered biochemistry and which may be causing problems in learning, behavior, development, attention, sensory responses, sleep, and digestion. The authors provide guidelines to help parents determine which diets may be helpful for their child’s specific symptoms and needs.

One of the challenges that parents face is coping with children who have picky appetites and crave the very foods that negatively affect their behavior, focus, and development. Linked to this is the challenge of finding ways to get their children to eat the healthy foods that will improve their nutrition. This book provides suggestions for feeding picky eaters, including those with texture issues.

The 3rd edition of The Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook provides a current and greatly expanded review of the most commonly used diets that are important in the treatment of ADHD and autism. There are recipes appropriate to specific diets as indicated by icons and descriptors with each recipe. The authors share details about just how and why each diet works, examine specialty ingredients in-depth, and provide extensive resources and references.

The specialty diets covered include:

• Gluten-free, casein-free, soy-free
• Feingold diet: low phenol, low salicylate diet 
• Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet (GAPS)
• Anti-yeast/candida diets, or Body Ecology Diet
• Low Oxalate Diet (LOD)
• FODMAP (Fermentable Oligo-, Di- and Mono-saccharides, And Polyols)
• Anti-inflammatory diet
• Rotation diet

Despite the restrictions of these diets, this cookbook offers an array of tasty choices that kids and the whole family will love, including shakes, muffins, breads, rice and beans, vegetables, salads, main dishes, stews, and even sweets and treats. You’ll also find recommendations for school lunches and snacks.

This comprehensive guide and cookbook is chock-full of helpful info and research, and includes more than 150 kid-friendly recipes, suitable to the variety of specialty diets.

Pamela J. Compart, MD, is a developmental pediatrician in Columbia, Maryland. She completed a pediatric residency at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and fellowship training in Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She combines traditional and complementary medicine approaches to the treatment of ADHD, autism, and other behavioral and developmental disorders. Dietary changes and use of nutritional supplements complement traditional treatments such as appropriate educational placement and speech therapy, occupational therapy, and other therapies. She founded and directed HeartLight Healing Arts, a multi-disciplinary integrated holistic health care practice providing services for children, adults, and families for 15 years.  She is currently in solo practice, focusing on her passions of patient care, teaching, and writing. She is also coauthor of The ADHD and Autism Nutritional Supplement Handbook.

Dana Godbout Laake, RDH, MS, LDN, is a licensed nutritionist in Kensington, Maryland. Within her practice, Dana Laake Nutrition, she provides preventive and therapeutic medical nutrition therapy to adults and children. An honors graduate from Temple University (health sciences, dental hygiene), she received her master’s degree in nutrition from the University of Maryland. She was recipient of the Temple University 50th Anniversary Outstanding Alumnus award. Ms. Laake has served as a Maryland Legislative assistant on health issues, was coauthor of the legislation that established licensure boards for dietetics and nutrition in both Maryland and Washington, DC, and has served four gubernatorial appointments on two health care regulatory boards (dentistry and dietetics). She has been a partner in three functional medicine practices and provides local and national continuing education courses.  In addition to writing and hosting a radio show, Dana is a scientific advisor and content contributor for the Autism Exchange and for the Neurological Health Foundation Healthy Child Guide. She is also coauthor of The ADHD and Autism Nutritional Supplement Handbook.