How much truth is there on the subject of food intolerance in people with autism, and how important is it?
Food intolerance, however it is defined, is a relatively frequent condition and many people in the population (non autistic subjects) experience food intolerance. It is therefore expected that subjects with autism will also be found to experience food intolerance at times as there is no reason to believe that autism would protect them against experiencing food intolerance. Therefore, having the two conditions does not mean that there is an association between the two. Whether or not food intolerance is raised above what you would expect is not well established. In order to test this hypothesis, epidemiological data on representative samples of children with autism would be required but they are currently lacking. Some caution should be exerted when reviewing data based on clinical samples that are more likely to over-estimate this association. Some parents have reported that their children improve on gluten-free and caseine-free diet but these are anecdotal reports which need to be bac
