Ok - end of week 1 - I have to say - this restrictive diet is making a difference. My retired FL parents are visiting for the summer and even they noted that my DS6.5 is not as angry/tantrum prone/irritable. My father even noticed. This is a person who wouldn't notice if I permed my hair!

I've been analyzing this diet all week; my formal science education ended in high school so I'm doing this from a layperson perspective. Here's what I think:

ADHD are at greater risk for addictions than the general population, from what I understand. They're novelty seekers. I think as soon as food hits the tongue and palate, a message is sent to the brain.

Serotonin includes the regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep. Serotonin also has some cognitive functions, including memory and learning.

Serotonin levels are affected by diet. If we compare what Native Americans or other indigenous tribes (or even rural poor in Africa/Asia) today, you'll find differences in the what/how people eat. Millet is actually older than rice or wheat, but when humans moved from being hunter/gatherers to city/states they specialized labor and developed new crops to avoid spending days hunting/gathering. So there is a connection with food, history, and our diet today.

From a historian's perspective, I think hunter/gatherers were much more in tune with food, and how it affected the mind, body, spirit/universe. You needed to know in order to survive; food provided sustenance and perhaps not so tied to emotion like it is today. With the rise of city/states, you no longer needed to know the ins/outs of mind, body, universe/spirit. City/states enabled division of labor and specialization of work so you no longer had to retain such knowledge.

I came across these 2010 articles on rice, alcohol, diet, and how it's adapted from Neolithic times and affecting China today:
http://phys.org/news183153307.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090123164359.htm

The issue is that rice takes up a lot of land and water and scientists are trying to find alternative crops to feed people and not use up so many resources.

I've lived all my life on cow's milk and cow products. I never thought about alternative milks and the history or why some people (Asians and Africans in particular) have remained lactose-intolerant today. I'm finding it fascinating.