> A friend of my son who ate Paleo for 3 months stopped when everybody
> around him called him slow.

This "ADD and diet" thread fascinates me.  We are a homeschooling
family, and consequently we know many families where the kids have
learning differences such as ADD, Asperger's, CAPD, autism, etc.  Every
such family we know has had positive results from cleaning up the kid's
diet (and
removing them from the classroom --- but that's another story, and
off-topic for this group).

The most dramatic occurrence was the most recent:  a 15-year-old girl,
a  friend of my daughter's, who had been on Ritalin for years due to her
"behavior issues" at school.  She was born with some neurological
differences that rendered her unable to cope with the pressures and
super-stimulation of her public school environment.  Her behavior is the
type commonly associated with ADD: too lively, too loud, says whatever
is on her mind whenever it occurs to her (personally, I've always found
her quite charming, but obviously her teachers couldn't handle this sort
of "acting out" in the classroom --- one teacher, 30 kids, been there,
done that, no fun!).  No doctor has ever been able to say once and for
all that yes, she definitely is "ADD", but they have been able to detect
real differences in her neurological patterns.

One of the most obvious (and to the girl, most worrisome) side effects
of her medication (and, possibly, her disorder) was a long delay in the
onset of puberty.  When she was already past 14, she still looked about
10, and she was *very* concerned about this.  Her mother decided to take
every positive action she could think of:  carefully withdrew her from
the Ritalin (she had already withdrawn her from school to give her a
break from the constant disapproval, bullying and tormenting she
experienced there), initiated a total ban on junk food and other
processed foods, and started supplementing her diet with a balanced EFA
supplement.  It was amazing.  She went through a dramatically
accelerated puberty over the last 6 months --- just turned 15,
*definitely* looks 15, and her cognitive skills have taken a giant leap
forward.  She still has that cute, quirky personality, but she's
maturing into a young adult who is learning to manage her energy much
more productively.  Her mother was so impressed with the results that
she put the whole family on "the good diet"!

Pat