Diet and Child Temperment
In the generation of fast food and instant gratification, too many parents zap their kids (and themselves) with a quick fix of manufacturer’s...
Recently, one of our hosts on our North American speaking tour served us a “continental breakfast”. On the table were six types of Danish pastries, four types of sugared cereals, coffee, tea, and processed orange juice. He truly thought he was honoring us and doing us a favor. I simply asked for a tomato, a cucumber, and a hard-boiled egg. “Tomato and cucumber? For breakfast?” He was amazed.
In the generation of fast food and instant gratification, too many parents zap their kids (and themselves) with a quick fix of manufacturer’s refined carbohydrates that cause burn-out within two hours. The teacher then sends notes home to the parents that their child suffers from ADD – attention-deficiency disorder. Ritalin becomes the next order of the day…
For the past five years, I’ve been using virtually every forum at my disposal to point out the relationship between Healthy Eating and emotional well-being. In many instances, when distraught parents took my advice and changed the diets of their ADD and ADHD-diagnosed children to a natural diet, salvation was quick to arrive.
Many researchers have established the relationship between diet and emotional health. Scientists fed three groups of white rats different diets and came up with amazing results, as seen in the following table (courtesy of the Natural Health Foundation):
| Diet fed to each group of rats | Observations after 37 days on this diet | |
| Group 1 | No artificial preservatives, colorings, additives, or refined carbohydrates. Primary nutrients were derived from whole grains, seeds, nuts, fresh fruit, vegetables, raw milk and water. | Ate all their food, seemed happy and calm, eyes bright, had smooth coats and tails, showed growth and when held, remained calm. |
| Group 2 | Fast food hamburgers on white bread, French fries, old coleslaw, milk shakes, cola drinks, cherry pie, and water. | Grew fat, lazy and were not alert. Their coats were ragged and tails scaly, with dull eyes and rough and dry skin. When held, they were jumpy. These were smaller in size than those in Group One. |
| Group 3 | Fed a diet of sugared cereal, white bread products, jelly, Twinkies, soft drinks, milk shakes, canned fruit and water. | They were nervous, skinny, had frenzied actions, discolorations on tails, chewed up their water bottle. Could not be held due to biting behavior. Their eyes were squinted. They were the smallest in size of the three groups. |
| From International Journal For Biosocial Research, Vol. 2,, No. 1-9. |
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Sure, the Cornflakes and Burger King are the easy way out, but to paraphrase the Mishna, there’s a short way that’s long and a long way that’s short. Cherished parents, the time you spend slicing veggies, peeling fruit and boiling eggs will save you twenty-fold the time that you’ll waste with parent-teacher consultations and visits to educational psychologists.
Just last week, I received an amazing letter from the Fink family in Ephrat, Israel:
Rabbi Brody:
I didn’t realize how right you were about sugar and children until today. My wife and I weaned our son off of sugar about four months ago. Since then he has grown by leaps and bounds. He is two years and nine months and he listens to instructions, says please and thank you, cleans up after himself, and is such a pleasure to be around. His “terrible twos” stopped the moment we cut off his sugar.
He likes it. We feed him fruit, veggies, rice cakes, figs, dates, raisins, and all sorts of tasty and fun foods. On Shabbat we will give him a little chocolate, but we make sure that he goes out to the park and runs it off. We were shocked when we took him to a kiddush. He was playing right by the food table and we just watched what he was doing. He took a cookie at first, and then started eating the vegetables that were there. It was impressive.
Tonight, we decided that he was such a good boy, we were going to reward him with some ice cream. We went to those frozen yogurt places in Israel where they jam all the toppings into the yogurt. We got him lots of chocolate! Within half an hour he became a totally different person. He started ignoring us, yelled at the top of his lungs when he didn’t get his way, and threw at least one temper tantrum right in the mall. The transformation was sudden and intense.
We were shocked.
He hadn’t eaten that much sugar in months. We got a firsthand experience of the black and white difference between a child on healthy foods, and what happens to him the moment he has a spoonful of the white substance. I wish every child psychologist saw it. About an hour later, when the initial affect wore off, he calmed down and started to behave again. It was unbelievable.
When I was a kid, I was on Ritalin for hyperactivity. The doctors saw this as the only option to keep me under control. When I saw my son calm down after the sugar passed through his system, it was as dramatic as the change in my behavior once the medicine kicked in.
I hear that you can now buy sweet-white milk. It has gotten to the point where sugar laced milk is sold to interest children in drinking it. It is so hard to keep kids away from sugar — it is everywhere. It is also very challenging to be a parent. It is one of the things we do in life where Hashem tests us to the very limit of our abilities. I am writing this to you to backup everything you have said about keeping kids under control without medicine or special treatment. Parenting is hard on everyone and this solution is like the cure-all for at least half of most challenges when kids are toddlers.
I would have not bothered you with this but the change in my sons behavior with and without sugar is extreme. It was like the difference in behavior of an adult when he is drunk, and when he is sober. A low sugar diet makes growing up a lot more pleasant for my children, and it makes the parenting experience more manageable and sweet for us.
Thanks so much!
David Fink, Ephrat
David’s experience with his son is the real deal. You too will see dramatic results if you break the junk-food and sugar cycle with your children.
Pouring processed sugar products into our children isn’t much different that pouring sugar into our car’s gas tank. Everyone knows that only a hooligan or a terrorist would do the latter, so why do the former?
Caring for our bodies – and especially our children’s bodies – is a clear commandment of Torah, venishmartem. A good diet is ever so conducive to a good temperament. Let’s start with a healthy parental example, happily practicing what we preach to our children. With Hashem’s loving grace, may good diet and eating habits help render Ritalin superfluous, amen.
12/07/2010
Ritalin Helps, Concerta Helps More This article is completely true. We eliminated sugar from our kids diets and they calmed down. However, while ADD and ADHD is often misdiagnosed and is really just a sugar addiction, there are kids, like our older son who need ritalin. Changing the diets worked for 3 out of our 4 kids, but the fourth needed ritalin. Actually ritalin didn't work because when it would wear off he would crash. Concerta is a much better drug as it enters and leaves the system gently. It's more expensive but worth it. One last note, is that for us it was the combo of diet (no sugar) plus concerta, plus therapy and learning how to deal with impulse control that changed our son into a happy student. Just the drugs without therapy will not help.
12/07/2010
This article is completely true. We eliminated sugar from our kids diets and they calmed down. However, while ADD and ADHD is often misdiagnosed and is really just a sugar addiction, there are kids, like our older son who need ritalin. Changing the diets worked for 3 out of our 4 kids, but the fourth needed ritalin. Actually ritalin didn't work because when it would wear off he would crash. Concerta is a much better drug as it enters and leaves the system gently. It's more expensive but worth it. One last note, is that for us it was the combo of diet (no sugar) plus concerta, plus therapy and learning how to deal with impulse control that changed our son into a happy student. Just the drugs without therapy will not help.
12/07/2010
Mostly Agree However….. …Ritalin is very necessary for SOME children. There are children who can not function in the class even if they are on perfectly healthy diets and Ritalin keeps them in school and off the streets. I have seen Ritalin do WONDERS and have worked in a school catering to ADD and ADHD students that promoted healthy diets. Ritalin was essential to teaching these kids life's basics such as reading and writing. No parent WANTS to drug their child, but this is a BRACHA from Hashem that allows these kids to learn when it is actually needed. And, it always pays off to eat a healthy diet that cuts out the three whites: white flour, white sugar, and hormone laced dairy products.