If a correlation could be found that would be ironic. For millions of years humans have been struggling to get sufficient nutrition or even enough calories and fat to survive. New studies have shown that autism may be related to a lack of pruning of neural connections around the time of birth. Its long been known that humans in fetus form have far more connections (and neurons too?) than will be required later in life. Its possible that an overabundance of neurons and connections is causative in autism.
What if the great abundance of nutritious food that mothers and infants get these days has the unfortunate side-effect of causing the connections (and extra neurons) to stay around for longer than they are needed. That might lead to autism being a side-effect of the rich calories and nutrition seen in wealthy nations in the last 50 years.
I have not dived into researching this myself nor can I cite any any study to this effect. Its an original hypothesis as far as I know. I hope to see it tested by a study of demographic data. I am not suggesting that expecting mothers and infants be starved or fed only white rice. There has been a enough trouble already with badly-supported notions of cause and effect in Autism, such as the purported vaccine correlation.
There are plenty of other examples of bad side effects: Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer. Variety of food may have have side-effects regarding mental health for example Casein, and Gluten.
Finally, severely restricted calorie diets have been shown to increase longevity in lab animals. Why not at least research the possibility that a restrictive nutrition diet might stave off Autism?
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