Food & Behavior

Food and Behavior is a must read for all parents, educators, psychologists, the FDA and the food industry. I have been counseling parents about children's behavior for many years, and I find that if they change their eating habits, children's aggression, learning issues, depression and disconnection often vanish. Read this book and watch the documentary film All Jacked Up to understand the incredible impact food has on your and your children's mood, intellect and behavior. The beauty of this book is the Barbara Stitt is not sharing an opinion, but her hands on experience with the worst manifestation of youth on probation. She treats them by changing their diet to real human food. Youth today suffer from what I call "emotional food poisoning." Just because it is labeled "food" and is sold in a food markets, does not guarantee that it is indeed human food. Children's behavior is obviously impacted by many factors in the family and community, but food is the one huge factor that has been overlooked. Food and Behavior makes it clear that our criminals, problem kids and adults are too often "high" on toxic processed foods. I will be recommending this book to all my subscribers, readers and clients.

A really extraordinary book, must reading for our times for families who want their children to grow up normal.

Barbara Stitt's book, Food and Behavior, is dedicated to the children and adults who have been mis-led and mis-fed. In other words, it is dedicated to America. In fact, even though Barbara became intimately involved with the relationship between food and behavior mainly through her work as a probation officer, most Americans could read this book and relate it to problems of their own or those of some friend or family member -- even though these problems didn't necessarily lead to run-ins with the law.Despite the fact that most AMA doctors mention diet as an afterthought when dealing with an illness, most people would still be able to make the connection between diet and certain illnesses. We see public service announcements on television for cancer or high blood pressure that remind us that these illnesses are diet related. If you eat cereal for breakfast, chances are your box says that it may help prevent heart disease or lower your cholesterol.But how many people would relate an emotional or mental problem to diet? In this area, people are given advice ranging from "buck up" or "get it together," to advice to seek professional counseling, to prescriptions for mood-altering drugs. It is now common practice for doctors, in the absence of an obvious physical problem, to evaluate a patient's emotional situation and prescribe antidepressants accordingly.But could there be another factor overlooked by the majority of Americans? Author Barbara Stitt says yes, and that factor is food.According to Barbara, the Standard American Diet (SAD diet), loaded with empty calories, overly processed foods -- sweetened, refined, stripped of nutrients, over-cooked, chemically treated, and devoid of any real nutrition -- is affecting people's mental health.Barbara touches on several dietary related issues that affect the brain, the most important organ of the body.The first issue covered in depth is reactive hypoglycemia, in which the body's blood sugar levels are too low to meet the brain's needs. Although there are other causes of hypoglycemia, the average 129 pounds of sugar per person eaten each year by Americans is the main cause of the reactive hypoglycemia that sends blood sugar on a wild roller coaster ride from high to low -- accompanied with a craving for sweets that starts the cycle all over again if sugary laden foods are eaten. Amazingly, due to the high amount of processed sugar we now eat, as much as 50 percent of all Americans may be hypoglycemic. The physical and mental results of the hypoglycemic state include: apprehension, trembling, irritability, confusion, amnesia, and hallucinations -- all symptoms the average psychiatrist would diagnose as neurosis, psychosis or schizoprenia. There is also a documented link between hypoglycemia and aggressive or violent behavior.The next startling topic in the book is sub-clinical pellagra -- a once wide-spread niacin-deficiency disease in the southern United States with symptoms that include dermatitis, diso

if you looking for a book dealing with criminology and natural orthomolecular approach, you are on the target. this book explaining with acuracy the causes and the solutions together with a lots of case histories that are represent at that book in a very readable and magnatise way. and that author is having real proofs for her highly, and trained-expirience.this is the book for controling, preventing, but most of all-curing the bad boys the natural way,instead of jail that sometimes not realy help.

I found this book very enlightening. I read it after having a lot of problems with depression and anxiety. Barbara R. Stitt focuses on how food allergies, sugar (low and high) problems, etc. can affect our behavior. She used to work as a probation officer where she was able to help some of the people reform by changing their diet. She was amazed how personalities changed as allergic foods were deleted from their diet. Many times cutting out the sugar helped a lot also. This is not only a book about behavior, but about how anyone can improve their nutritional intake and health.