Bad nutrition promotes illness, heart disease, and lots of problems. But did you know that education, and even criminal behavior is affected by nutritional issues. Apparently when people suffer from nutritional imbalance, they can suffer from psychological imbalances as well.
A study that took place in a prison in Virginia, had the purpose of investigating whether the prisoners behavior would change if the men were made more nutritious. At the time large amounts of sugar and fast foods were being served. Their diet consisted of hamburgers, fried potatoes, white bred, cookies sweet snacks, soft drinks and milk shakes.
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Their diet was changed to whole wheat bread, potatoes, meat, vegetables, fruit, and fish. Amazingly the prisoners' violent behavior diminished, and when junk food was reintroduced to their diet their violent behavior returned.
The researcher Schoenthaler who performed the study on prisoners, then questioned the effects of this diet on school kids. He wondered, if positive effects were seen in prisoners, could the same positive effects be seen on children.
He performed a study in an Arizona school. For four months their diets changed to a more nutritional one and half the children in the study got a vitamin and the other half were given a placebo.
The results showed that those students who took the vitamin showed tremendous improvement. Mischief making was lowered by about 50% in these children. They were less aggressive, destructive and behaved better.
What these studies show is that bad nutrition not only affects us physically, but it also affects us emotionally, and mentally. We must remember that our brain is a part of our body, and needs nutrients just as other parts of our bodies do. So when we don't give it the right nutrition, it wont function correctly.
Doctors believe that it is impossible to take too few vitamins, so they usually recommend that patients take some sort of supplement. But they usually don't make recommendations as far as fruit and vegetables go. Without important nutritional changes the incidences of depression, ADHD, and aggressive behavior will increase.