DVD!
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Adding Insult to Injury, Bad Food in Prison Perpetuates Bad Behavior in the Criminal Class
In our efforts to secure a more wholesome and nutritious diets for Illinois prisoners, I am coming across all kinds of interesting facts that bolster our case.
Last night, I was reading Dr. Kaayla Daniel’s book, The Whole Soy Story–the Darkside of America’s Favorite Health Food. I am in the chapter on soy formula, called Formula for Disaster. I was apalled to learn that soy formula contains 6 times the manganese of cow’s milk formula, and 66 times that of mother’s breast milk.
Dr. Daniel says, “Newborns exposed to such high levels of manganese are vulnerable to brain damage associated with learning disabilities, attention deficit and other behavioral disorders, and violent tendencies.”
It occurs to me that many of America’s incarcerated, could actually be there, because of brain injury when they were fed soy baby formula.
In my estimation, one of the most revealing investigations of Weston A. Price, was his research on nutrition and juvenile deliquency. In his classic work, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, he tests his findings on nutrition and primitives, by examining criminals and juvenile delinquents for signs of physical, mental and moral deterioration.
He found that inadequate nutrition, either pre-natal or in the formative period of childhood, was evident in those institutionalized for anti-social behavior. He looked for physical signs of nutritional deficiency, and in his book he details a number of studies he did which found a large percentage of facial deformities among the incarcerated and those in juvenile detention. These deformities, he believed to be evidence of nutritional injury. He was particularly concerned with injury to the soft tissues, particularly the brain, which lack of good nutrition could produce.
Dr. Price states, “The available data also indicate that a large percentage of those who are seriously injured in facial form have some disturbance in their mental or moral character.”
And, recently, I came across this British study, which found prisoners on a deficient diet trended toward bad behavior.
If only those who ran prisons realized that proper nutrition would make the prison environment safer for all concerned. Guards, especially.
I saw a prison riot on the news recently, and I wondered, I wonder what they ate today? It has hard to be grumpy and agitated after a good meal! We need grandma’s home cooking in the prison kitchen!
Proper nutrition would go a long way toward rehabilitation and the improvement of the lives of inmates, behind the cell bars and beyond.
All we are saying is, “give meat a chance!”
Love your blog, by the way. What a great, centralized resource for all real food and local farm info.
One Comment
I think this is REALLY important to recognize. Diet contributes to mental disturbance and mental disturbance contributes to antisocial behavioral patterns. They’ve also done studies on school children who were pegged as being antisocial and sent to an alternative school. When the alternative school switched over to a whole foods diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, antisocial behavior declined and test scores went up.
.-= Jenny @ Nourished Kitchen´s last blog ..Wise Traditions 2009 =-.
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[...] article was prompted by a recent blog post on Hartkeisonline.com about a British study linking poor diet to violent, anti-social behavior in prisons. When “Ray” read the [...]