Eat only foods allowed on the diet; choose only foods the child can tolerate and digest.

You will be pleasantly surprised to discover a wide range of permissible foods exists on the SCD diet. Not everyone will be able to tolerate every food but tolerance often increases. Some foods that don't seem acceptable at first may be fine later as healing proceeds.

The permitted foods also called "SCD legal" should be introduced carefully at the beginning to evaluate the child's tolerance level and to determine the proper amounts to feed. The most important thing is to go slowly, adding new things gradually in small amounts and recording the results. This will help you to judge your child's degree of tolerance. If a negative reaction occurs, do not be discouraged. It usually does not take long to rebound from setbacks. Rotation is not required on this diet but it may be tried of a child is very sensitive or limited an the foods he/she will accept.

Link to SCD legal foods.

Explanation of gradual introduction of food

Instructions for introducing foods

The most common SCD legal foods that are not well tolerated by beginners are nut products, beans, and peanut butter. Carrots are difficult to digest for a small subgroup of people. Cashews contain more starch than nuts and should only be started when the child is doing very well. Peanut butter is a bean and therefore its consumption should be delayed; it seems to cause many symptoms in ASD children. If a child did not start out with the recommended gradual introduction of foods, the elimination of these foods will bring dramatic improvements. There might be other SCD foods that might be difficult to your child to digest. The tolerance for foods vary with every individual.

If doing the intro diet is too hard for your child, just start the diet. Once your child gets used to SCD, do go back to the intro diet! You will get even better results when you eliminate the difficult to digest foods. WARNING: There is a small subset of children who can only tolerate the most easy to digest foods. Determined parents have been able to make even the most picky eaters comply with SCD. Instructions concerning methods to make children transition to SCD are found on this website.

IMPORTANT: The premature introduction of nuts can be an extremely serious error. SCD is not a "nut diet." They are an option but not a requirement on this diet.

Dr. Haas made no specific recommendations about nuts, however Elaine realized they would allow her to prepare baked goods and other foods that usually require flour. ( Many claim recipes containing nuts are even better tasting than ordinary baked goods). Unfortunately, nuts may be difficult to digest for some children during the first months of SCD. If a child did not follow the recommended introductory stages of SCD, then the elimination of nuts may well bring an improvement.

Tolerance of nuts varies. Every child is different. Children might not tolerate any nuts during the early months of SCD. Some children may only tolerate small amounts and only if finely ground, while others do well with large amounts.

Almond flour, in particular may be difficult. Try other nut flours instead.

Nut butters are easier to digest than nut flours. They can substitute in recipes calling for nut flour..

Whole nuts are the most difficult to digest and should be postponed until a child reaches the advanced stage.

You may introduce the almond or pecan muffins very gradually once digestive symptoms have improved. Start with 1/4 muffin every other day and increase to one a day if all goes well. After, you can go to about 3 per day. Elaine warned against more.

Cashews are a starchy nut,, beans or peanut butter are not as digestible as other permitted nuts. Cashews also contain powerful enzyme inhibitors. We strongly recommend you delay the introduction of cashews for as long as possible. Beans, even those properly soaked and pre-cooked, have the major disadvantage of containing too much starch and are another food to only be introduced when a child is in the advanced stage.

The same principle applies to peanuts, which are actually legumes, not nuts , as are beans Again, please reserve peanuts and beans until a child is well advanced.

Peanuts have other disadvantages. Click here to find out more about peanuts: Peanut allergy is more common than tree nut allergy, so much so that it is now restricted from many schools and is even being removed from some commercial products. Peanut may also provoke gut reactions and cause GI distress. There is even a possablity that brain function is better on days when no peanut items have been consumed.

During the first months of the diet, fruit and vegetables need to be peeled, cooked and have the seeds removed.

It is very important to cook fruit and vegetables at first because the sugars in fruit are contained within a cell. The cell is surrounded by a cell wall of cellulose which is a "fence-like" structure. When the foods are given raw, often, the milking action of the small intestine cannot sufficiently extrude the sugars because of the rigid barrier presented by the cell wall. This results in undigested sugars being passed on to the lower bowel where they feed microbes. Cooking fruits and vegetables softens the cell walls and avoids this.

There are exceptions; avocados and very ripe bananas do not need to be cooked. Raw fruit and vegetable juices may be given when the worst digestive symptoms subside. The juices must be made using a traditional juicer that extracts the fibrous parts. Blenders and Vitamix should not be used in preparing juices that will be consumed by beginners as they retain the fiber.

Although the fruit needs to be ripe, the vegetables do not. ( Unripe fruit may contain starch, notably unripe bananas which contain a lot of starch). Bananas must not have any visible green on their stem or peel and should be liberally covered with lots of black spots.

If your child does not tolerate seeds, you can still feed strawberries by trimming off the seeds on the outside and slicing up the rest of the berry. Parents have even been known to peel grapes for their children. This is time consuming so you may choose to stick to easy to peel fruit such as apples, bananas and pears.

Good beginning fruit choices are: cooked, peeled, and deseeded fruit such as homemade applesauce or pear sauce and the ripe bananas