Feeding The Brain: How Foods Affect Children

287 Pages·2001·23.48 MB·English

by  C. Keith Conners

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Feeding the Brain
How Foods Affect Children
C. Keith Conners, Ph.D.
PERSEUS PUBLISHING
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Conners, C. Keith.
Feeding the brain: how foods affect children / C. Keith Conners.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7382-0620-2
1. Food allergy in children—Psychological aspects. 2, Behavior disorders in
children—Nutritional aspects, I. Title.
RJ386.5.C66 1989 89-16071
6I3.2'083—dc20 CIP
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10 9 8 7 6 5 43
© 1989 C. Keith Conners
A member of the Perseus Books Group
Published by Perseus Publishing
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any rneans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
The premise of this book is that what children eat can pro-
foundly shape the course of the brain's growth, its functions,
and its capabilities. Children's brains are actively changing, dy-
namic structures, strongly influenced by what, how much, and
when they eat. Food nurtures the brain, providing key nutrients
and energy for growth. Food protects the brain, shutting out
harmful threats from a toxic and polluted environment. Food
alerts as well as calms brain activity. Food changes the moods of
the brain, both through the pleasure it affords and by its chem-
istry.
Foods, like drugs, are ultimately chemicals. But they are
more than that. Foods are symbols, a part of rituals, pathways to
body images, and vehicles through which love is expressed.
Food is part of human culture, habits, and lifestyles. Language,
culture, and social environment are intertwined with food, and
they powerfully affect brain growth in their own right. They
interact with food, determining the course of the brain through
its perilous journey from conception to adulthood.
Important new understanding now exists about the ways
that food changes behavior, mood, and mental proficiency in
children; and how human behavior in turn affects nutrition. But
little of this information is available to parents, educators, and
others who must decide how and what children should eat.
This book tries to help parents and educators to become
V
VI PREFACE
good consumers, not just of food, but of information. We argue
that much useful information is prematurely dismissed by some
scientists with biased agendas. But there is also a good deal of
misinformation, too readily swallowed as if it were fact.
This is not a diet book, nor a self-help book. But we do
attempt to show how one may learn for oneself, through experi-
ments at home, whether some of the ideas in the scientific litera-
ture apply to one's own child. Science is nothing more than a set
of rules, devised to prevent one from kidding oneself and oth-
ers, about some idea of how nature works. Much of this book
presents the back-and-forth dialogue among scientists about
food and behavior. To the lay reader, who wants to know what
to do now, these debates may seem at times to lead to a mystify-
ing impasse. But we argue that the debates show us what to
look for in our own, personal experiments, and how to use food
as a tool in optimizing mental and behavioral function in
children.
I am grateful to Richard Wurtman, John Fernstrom, Bonnie
Spring, and Ernesto Pollitt for inspiration and helpful discus-
sions about many of the issues in this book. Dan Raiten pro-
vided me with many helpful suggestions and the benefit of a
professional nutritionist's perspective.
Grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health, Kel-
logg's Foundation, General Foods, and the Sugar Association
were all helpful in my own research on sugar, breakfast, and
brain function in children. Without the unstinting support of
James Egan, M.D., I would not have had the freedom or re-
sources to pursue my interest in this subject.
I am very grateful for the patience and encouragement of
my editors, Linda Regan and Victoria Cherney, who ruthlessly
pointed out the passive voice, dangling participles, and other
bad habits from a lifetime of academic writing.
Finally, I am especially grateful to my wife, Karen Wells, for
insisting that I eat the way I preach to others; and to my daugh-
ter Katie, for showing me just how marvelous a growing brain
can be.
C. Keith Conners
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Food, Mind, and Behavior 1
Beliefs and Emotions about Food 1
Food and the Brain 6
Food and the World around Us 7
Problems in Studying Food and Behavior 9
Behavior Patterns in Children 16
CHAPTER Two Hyperactivity and Artificial Sweeteners 25
A Case of Severe Reaction to Aspartarne 25
The NutraSweet (Aspartame) Story 28
A Controlled Case Study with Aspartame 38
Dieting and Aspartame 47
Other Controlled Trials of Aspartame in Children 49
Summary 52
CHAPTER THREE The First Meal of the Day 55
Does Eating Breakfast Matter? 55
Supplementing Breakfast 57
vii
viii CONTENTS
Paying Attention 64
Breakfast and Hyperactive Children 68
Breakfast and Hypoglycemia 70
Conclusions on Breakfast 71
CHAPTER FOUR Sugar and Its Effects on Behavior and
Mood 75
What Is Sugar? 77
Sugar, Hyperactivity, and Attention Deficits in
Children 79
Dietary Intake of Sugar and Behavior in Children 80
Why Scientists Disagree about Sugar and Behavior 82
The Cause and Effect Problem 84
Studying Sugar Effects by Adding It to the Diet 87
Hormones, Sugar, and Breakfast 93
Some Speculations about Brain Growth and Sugar 94
Are All Carbohydrates Equal? 97
Summary 98
CHAPTER FIVE Food and Violence 101
Hyperactivity, Aggression, Alcohol, and Criminality 103
Diet and Killer Mice 105
Hypoglycemia and Crime 106
Societies That Kill 108
Blood Sugar and Aggressive Fantasy in Normal
Adults 111
Hypoglycemia and Violent Offenders 114
Diet and Aggression in Prison 118
Conclusions 120
CONTENTS ix
CHAPTER Six Diet, IQ, and Learning 123
What is IQ? 123
Studying Food and IQ in Children 128
Malnutrition and IQ 130
Mother's Diet and IQ in Her Children 132
Diet and IQ in Young Children 134
Diet and IQ in Older Children 136
Tired Blood and IQ 139
Heavy Metal 144
Nutrition and IQ: What Should We Do? 152
CHAPTER SEVEN Food Additives and Food Allergies 157
Food Additives 157
Feingold's Theory of Food Additives and
Hyperactivity 158
Food Allergy 176
Advice on Changing Behavior with Diet 184
CHAPTER EIGHT Megavitamins 187
What Are Vitamins and Megavitamins? 188
Orthomolecular Psychiatry and Biochemical
Individuality 189
Megavitamins and Schizophrenia 192
Megavitamins and Hyperactivity 195
Childhood Autism 204
Mental Retardation 207
Where Do We Go from Here with Megavitamins? 208
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER NiNE Eating Disorders and Stress in
Children 211
Eating Disorders in Children 211
The Experience of Stress 221
How Stress Affects the Body and Brain 223
Food and Stress 226
Stimulant Drugs, Sugar, and Protein 230
Conclusions 232
CHAPTER TEN Tracking Food, Mood, and Behavior in
Children 235
Observing and Rating Children 235
Doing Experiments at Home 245
CHAPTER ELEVEN Conclusions 249
Food Changes Brain Neurotransmitters 249
Foods Protect the Brain 252
Food and the Developing Brain 253
Ideas and Emotions Control Nutrition 254
The Science of Food and Behavior 254
NOTES 257
INDEX 263