Feeding the Brain: How Foods Affect Children PDF
Preview Feeding the Brain: How Foods Affect Children
Feeding the Brain How Foods Affect Children Feeding the Brain How Foods Affect Children C. Keith Conners, Ph.D. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 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. 1. Food allergy in children-Psychological aspects. 2. Behavior disorders in children-Nutritional aspects. I. Title. RJ386.5.C66 1989 89-16071 613.2'083-dc20 OP ISBN 978-0-7382-0620-2 ISBN 978-1-4899-6515-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-6515-8 First Printing - August 1989 Second Printing - January 1990 © 1989 C. Keith Conners Originally published by Plenum US in 1989. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1989 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical. photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher 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, apart 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 littk 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 Iitera 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 Iead to a mystify ing impasse. But we argue that the debates show us what to Iook 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 ÜNE 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 Aspartame 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 lts Effects on Behavior and Mood 75 What Is Sugar? 77 Sugar, Hyperactivity, and Attention Deficits in Children 79 Dietary lntake 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 lt 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 lx 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 Megavitaminsand Schizophrenia 192 Megavitaminsand 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 Horne 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
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