In our survey, we looked at how frequently the diets were used. The topmost used diet was a gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diet. Second, was a healthy diet. Third was a casein-free diet by itself and fourth was a gluten-free diet by itself.

The GFCF diet is a popular diet among autism families and as we will see, provides good benefit and symptom improvement. Additionally, some of the diets that were not as commonly used, were highly rated and had some of the higher symptom improvements. For example, while the Feingold diet was only used by 74 people compared to 221 on the GFCF diet, the Feingold diet was the second highest rated diet with no adverse effects reported and was the number one for symptom improvement in 6 symptoms. So it’s advantageous to look not only at the most commonly used diets, but to also look at diets based on what symptoms that an individual is looking to address.