Читать книгу E for Additives - Maurice Hanssen - Страница 29

New York City State schools have some of the highest paid and best qualified teachers in the USA yet in the late 1970s they had some of the worst records of academic success and criticism of both pupils and teachers was reaching a desperately high level. What could be done?

Dr Elizabeth Cagan, a distinguished and charismatic educationalist, was routed out from her academic environment and given the challenge of reforming the school catering service, because it was felt instinctively that this could be part of the problem.

Liz Cagan looked at the food served to the children and said to herself that this was far removed from the plain, sensible, nourishing food which she had served to her own family. Aircraft-type meals were warmed up and most of them finished up in the rubbish bin. She called the cooks together and told them that, if they were to stay in work, they had to become real cooks and not just re-heaters.

Not long after, through one of her assistants, she heard of the pioneering experiments of Alexander G. Schauss, a brilliant penologist, who had turned to biosocial research and nutrition. He had experimented with prison populations by giving them food low in additives and sugar. There had been substantial improvements in work records and less aggression. In Alabama, for example, after a control period of 18 months without diet modifications, a revised diet was introduced. Within 4¹/₂ months of changing the diet policy behaviour problems fell and then levelled off for the next 14 months of the trial at a figure 61 per cent lower than before.

These results were validated by a number of other controlled trials where the data confirmed that diet and behavioural problems have many cause-and-effect links, and these included problems with sugar, food colours and, indeed, flavours.

The Feingold Diet, which was on the same basic lines with also the removal of the antioxidants BHA and BHT (E320 and E321), had produced successful results with both hyperactivity and juvenile delinquency.

So, Dr Cagan’s colleague went to see Alexander Schauss and between them they decided to set up a food system for the New York City schools which, incidentally, have the second biggest buying power for food products after the US Army, in a first-phase Feingold Diet. This involved a gradual elimination of artificial colours, artificial flavours and the preservatives BHA and BHT while, simultaneously, foods high in sugar were either eliminated or the sugar reduced to a maximum figure of around 11 per cent.

It was ensured that, when each revision was implemented, changes took place simultaneously in all the schools, but the revisions were carried out over three academic years: 1979–80, 1980–81 and 1982–83, with no changes being made in the 1981–82 academic year so that there was a basis for evaluating the effects of change.

All the selected schools gave their children the California Achievement Test (CAT), which is given to many schools across the United States and from which the percentage ranking of the school was calculated.

They had already checked back for the four years preceding the changes so that they knew the average figures involved: these did not fluctuate by more than a mere percentage point. The mean academic CAT score for each school was calculated and then it was converted to a national ranking by comparing this mean with that of the other schools who used the same test in the same year. Then the previous year’s ranking was subtracted from the current year’s to show the gain or loss in national terms. The figures for all 803 schools averaged together show a mean gain or decline in the years between 1977 and 1983.

This exceptionally complex trial on almost a million children who ate both breakfast and lunch at school was undertaken by three doctors, Stephen J. Schoenthaler, Walter E. Doraz and James A. Wakefield Jr. It was published in the International Journal of Biosocial Research, Volume 8, Number 2, 1986, pp.138–148.

The results were astounding. There was a 15.7 per cent increase in mean academic ranking over and above the rest of the nation’s schools who used the same standardized tests. (Before the changes the variations had been less than 1 per cent.) Prior to dietary changes, the school children who ate the most school meals had the worst results. After the changes, the children who ate the most school meals had the best results. Never before had there been a trial of such a size and with such scientific support on so many children to determine the effect of diet upon ability.

The schools formed committees including pupils to set up their own menus, along Dr Cagan’s guidelines, with their cooks and dieticians. There were supportive posters everywhere such as ‘Have you hugged your dietician today?’ (which in some areas was altered by changing the h to m!). When Dr Cagan went to a school in the roughest part of New York City and was introduced at meal time by the head teacher as being the lady who had changed the food, she received a standing ovation from the pupils. Only a few years before, visitors would have required a police escort.

So, do certain additives damage the brain? We do not know. What does look certain from this gigantic and extraordinary trial is that there has to be a reconsideration of those additives which deny children the nutrients normally present in real food.

What is the purpose of excessive quantities of sugar, colours, flavours and preservatives? They are there to disguise nutritionally unimportant food substances, including highly calorific fats, as real, wholesome, satisfying food. Just go round your supermarket and look at the foods still being sold that appeal to the senses of the young. Without checking the labels carefully you can easily buy non-nutritive rubbish. But it tastes and looks just like real food. So additives can dilute nutrition. The test of ‘need’ is applied without a true understanding of the consequences to our children, upon whom all our future hopes must be founded.

Remember, many additives help to provide us with good and safe food, but beware—additives that in themselves might be harmless deceive us and, worse still, our children, into consuming empty calories.

A centre for severely disturbed children—the state-run Aycliffe School in Co. Durham—is undertaking a trial to find whether the Schauss/Schoenthaler Diet, which they will be adapting, can help these children.

The diet being used observes the following guidelines:

(a) sweetened breakfast cereals to be replaced with non-sweetened varieties;

(b) canned fruits, if packed in syrup, to be rinsed with cold water before serving;

(c) soft drinks to be replaced with a wide selection of fruit and vegetable juices;

(d) table sugar to be replaced with honey;

(e) wholemeal bread to be substituted for white bread;

(f) brown rice to replace white rice;

(g) processed foods to be replaced with fresh, when available at similar prices;

(h) snack foods high in sugar, fat or refined carbohydrates to be replaced by fresh fruit and vegetables, plus a variety of nuts, cheeses and wholegrain biscuits;

(i) preservatives, especially BHA (E320) and BHT (E321), and artificially coloured or flavoured foods to be avoided where possible.

In this special group of children the results may not necessarily be generally applicable but they will be of great importance. Further studies need to be done.