<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> Hi, I've been enjoying reading postings from you all for about three months now, but I haven't written anything till today. It seemed appropriate to do so now, this month being the second anniversary that my ten-year old autistic son has been on a gluten-, casein-, and sugar-free diet.I am happy to report that he gained 20 pounds in the two years, when typically in the past he gained at most 2-4 pounds a year. We haven't found the diet to be the nightmare that I anticipated. Andrew is incredibly catholic in his tastes and cooperates fully, and of course this helps tremendously. We celebrated the anniversary with a delicious (but of course expensive) gluten- and dairy-free pie from the Natural Feast Corporation which I highly recommend. The crust is composed of rice, tapioca and potato starch flours which is so delicious that I had to limit how much my daughter (who has no digestion problems) ate. For your information four of their pies are dairy free, two are not. I think they're located here in Massachusetts, but they have a toll-free number (1-800-748-2772). I'm not sure how they ship them since the pies are frozen and uncooked, but I pass this information on anyway for all of you who like yummy desserts. For those of you with autistic children, I'd like to suggest that you consider some other tests that our holistic doctor suggested. She wanted to get assessments of Andrew's vitamin, mineral, and amino acid profile. Of all of these the most interesting results came from the latter test which showed that Andrew had enormous deficiencies in over half of the twenty or so amino acid, and interestingly, all of them were the essential amino acids (i.e. the ones you get from diet, the body can't make them). He now takes two daily supplements (branched chain and free amino acid capsules) and when we repeated the amino acid test a year later he was well within the normal range. I'm happy to expand on any other findings we've had for the subset of you interested in food intolerances and autism, a most intriguing topic. Harriet Barnett MIT Cambridge, MA <[log in to unmask]>