Dietary Patterns and Anthropometric Measures of Indian Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Seema and her team visited 45 Indian families who had a child with autism .

They weighed and measured each child and gave parents a simple food checklist.

The list asked how often the child ate fruits, vegetables, milk, sweets, and fried snacks.

A dietitian then turned the answers into daily vitamin and mineral totals.

Nine out of ten kids ate fewer fruits and vegetables than Indian guidelines say they need.

Average vitamin C, folate, and iron fell short every single day.

Kids who ate the least plant foods also had lower weight-for-age scores.

In short, the children were both picky and under-nourished.

ALee et al. (2022) gives hope: they used praise and small toys to get non-verbal autistic children to taste new foods.

After four weeks the kids doubled their bites of fruit and vegetables, showing the deficit Seema found can be fixed with simple ABA.

Barnhill et al. (2017) looked at bone density in boys with autism and found weak bones even when calcium pills were taken.

Seema’s data now supplies a likely reason: low fruit and vegetable intake also means low vitamin K, magnesium, and other bone-building nutrients the pills did not replace.

Kaiser et al. (2022) add a warning: children with autism have higher odds of later developing inflammatory bowel disease.

Poor fiber and micronutrient intake, shown again by Seema, may add fuel to that gut inflammation.

You now have three clear next steps.

First, screen every child with autism for fruit and vegetable intake; a one-day recall is enough.

Second, start a tiny-tastes program: one bite of a preferred-color fruit, heavy praise, then build up.

Third, tell parents why this matters for bones and bowels, not just weight.

A five-minute nutrition check can prevent years of growth and gut problems.