The Dr. Hyman Show - How Is The Food Our Kids Are Eating Affecting Their Behavior?

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Our children’s future is threatened by an achievement gap caused in large part by their inability to learn on a diet of processed foods and sugar served in schools.⁣⁣ ⁣ We are feeding our kids a diet that is making them anti-social in their behavior, promoting trouble focusing/ADD, and resulting not only in significant weight gain and health issues, but also in depression and mental health issues. ⁣ ⁣ Most schools now only have deep fryers and microwaves and serve up industrial food-like-substances prepared by corporations, not by humans. Food companies also target children and minorities with billions in marketing of the worst “foods”. We must put a stop to this. ⁣⁣ ⁣⁣ Dr. Hyman talks about this issue and how how we can change the health of our children, ourselves, and our planet in his new book, Food Fix, out February 25. FoodFixBook.com

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. How can kids go to school on a breakfast of flaming hot chips and soda and be expected to learn? Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. I'm back with another little short mini-sode episode on my new book, Food Fix, coming out February 25th. Check it out, foodfixbook.com. And today I want to talk to you about something that you may not realize is related to the food we're eating and part of some of the conflict we're having in our world. The divisiveness, the violence, the challenges with kids having poor academic performance, behavior issues, health issues. I mean, we are not really understanding the real root causes. Now, there's many causes, obviously, of violence and behavior issues and so forth. But one of the big causes is food. And when you think about the food that we

are feeding our kids, and I'm starting with kids and I'll move on to other more forms of different behaviors in adults, but kids are struggling this day and age in America. We see in America, we're 31st in reading and math in the world. That's terrible. You know, we should be number one. Vietnam is 21st. I mean, they're a developing country. What's going on with that? We are feeding our kids a diet that is making them antisocial in their behavior, have trouble focusing on ADD, and have significant, obviously, weight and health issues, but also, you know, depression and mental health issues. So we see suicide being the number one cause of death

between 10-year-olds and 19-year-olds. The rates have gone up dramatically in the last few years. And why? Well, there's many factors for that, but a lot of it is the food we're feeding our kids. In fact, in one study in juvenile centers, antisocial behavior, assaults, aggression, violent behavior, and suicides decreased dramatically. And suicides decreased 100% in that cohort that was given

healthy food. We know that kids are struggling so much with ADD. I mean, one out of 10 kids is on ADD medications. Why is that? Well, you know, I had a kid come to my practice years ago, sort of shocking to me. And I talk about this in the book. His name was Clayton, and he had severe ADD. He had behavioral issues. He was on Ritalin since kindergarten, got kicked out of kindergarten, if you can imagine, and he really struggled to focus, to pay attention, and to do good in school. And he came to see me, and he had all these other issues that were seemingly, quote, unrelated to his diet. He had digestive issues, an irritable bowel, he had anxiety, he had eczema, he had asthma, he had headaches, he couldn't sleep well. I mean, just he was a mess. He had a lot of inflammatory issues. And when I took his dietary history, he only ate processed food, only ate deli meats, sugar, candy, trans fats. I

mean, he never ate any fish. He didn't eat vegetables. And when he did his nutritional testing, it was frightening. He had severe omega-3 fat deficiencies, which is really important for mood, for depression, anxiety, brain function. He had very low zinc. He had very low magnesium. He had very low B6. All these play a critical role in brain function and mood and energy and behavior. And so we cleaned up his gut. We got rid of processed food. We gave him a whole foods diet. He was a little sensitive to gluten and dairy. We got rid of that. And we basically gave him some basic supplements that covers omega 3s, a multivitamin, B6, vitamin D, fish oil, things he was really low in. And he came back two months later and his ADD was

completely gone. He was fully engaged in school. He had none of his behavior issues and he felt amazing. But what was really striking to me was his mother showed his handwriting before and after, and his handwriting before was illegible. It was really like scrawl at 12 years old, and two months later, it was perfect penmanship, and I saw this homework, and I'm like, what is going on here? How does this happen where the brain is so influenced by the diet, and that's why I wrote my book, Ultra Mind Solution, which is how the body affects the brain is so influenced by the diet. And that's why I wrote my book, Ultra Mind Solution, which is how the body affects the brain. And in that book, I talk about exactly how to fix your brain,

your broken brain, by fixing your body first. And we created a whole Broken Brain docuseries on this. But I talk a lot about this in my book, Food Fix, because these issues are affecting so many kids. One in six kids has some neurodevelopment disorder. One in 10 kids have ADD and is on medication. We're seeing increasing rates of depression and suicide in kids. We're seeing, obviously, the consequences of bad food and obesity. But kids just struggle. I'm just going to read a few things. It was an interesting study that was

done about how food affects kids. And we know that these kids just really struggle when they're eating poor food. The study looked at what was the impact of poor nutrition on kids' cognitive and behavioral function. And it was called a review by the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, and it was entitled Health and Academic Achievement. And it documents a clear link between poor nutrition

and academic performance. And what was true about the poor nutrition was that it caused lower test scores in kids, lower grades, poor cognitive function, less alertness, poor attention, worse memory, bad processing of visual information, and problem solving and increased absenteeism it's it's frightening when you see how simple it is how can kids go to school on a breakfast of flaming hot chips and soda and be expected to learn they can't and how how can it they be sitting still in a class focus and paying attention when their bodies and brains are not being fueled by good food and we see this you know kids are more likely to go to jail and go to college who are eating this way, but we can change that. And there's

great examples of this. There was an inner city school in Washington DC, mostly immigrants, African-American kids, you know, who were just struggling, rarely graduating high school, going to jail, not college. And this philanthropist started a charter school. They gave them three meals a day because a lot of these kids don't even eat at home. Gave him whole foods, fresh food, plus a good curriculum. And these kids started performing so well in academic performance and going to the best colleges

that neighboring communities, white communities, affluent communities were sending their kids to this school. They wanted to send them there because the kids were doing so well. And we just don't make the connections and we don't connect the dots on how we need to take care of our kids in this world. It's pretty scary what they're eating. School lunches, pizza is a vegetable, french fries is a vegetable. Under the Trump administration just recently, they rolled back the nutrition guidelines that were developed under the Obama administration

to improve school lunches. And it allows more junk food, more processed food. I mean, 80% of schools have contracts with soda companies. 50% have brand name fast food in their schools, like McDonald's Monday and Taco Bell Tuesday and Wendy's Wednesday. You know what I mean? This is not okay. And these kids really get focused on these foods early and they know what they're

doing. These companies, they hook them early and they target them with marketing and ads. And I mean, over 50 countries restrict food marketing to kids and we don't. We're right there with Syria, you know, which is the other great democracy that is allowing unrestricted targeting of children in their culture. Why are we doing this? Doesn't make any sense. Now, you know, I want to talk a little bit about also behavior and, you know, depression and so forth. We know that depression is so linked to our diet and mental health. There's a great trial called the SMILES trial, which I talk about in the book, where they

did a randomized trial giving people a healthy whole foods diet. And when they gave them that diet, their depression got better, their mood got better. And it's so true. Mood and food are so connected. And we wonder why we're seeing epidemics of depression, epidemics of suicide, epidemics of opioid use. It's not a coincidence that over the last 40 years, our diet has changed so much that now we've gone from like in 1960, it was 5% obesity rates. Now it's 40% in many states and many states are approaching 40%. So it's pretty frightening. There's also incredible effects on the conflict. And we see all the conflict in our society.

We see the violence. We see aggression. We see groups opposing each other, Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians. I mean, there's white supremacists, African-Americans. I mean, it's a mess out there. And why is that? I mean, I don't remember ever growing up in such a divisive world. And yet here we are, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

And it's not only the misinformation that we have on our media and all the fake kinds of propaganda that's out there, but it's actually the food we're eating that's creating this. I recently was talking to my friend David Perlmutter, who created a book called Brainwash, talking about how when we eat an inflammatory diet, our frontal lobes, which is our adult in the room, the prefrontal cortex that's in charge of executive function, decision-making, understanding the consequences of our behavior, gets disconnected from the primitive part of our brain, the reptile lizard brain called the amygdala,

which is responsible for the fight or flight response. And when that response is unchecked, it leads to more aggression, more violence, more opposition, more fear, right? And that is not a good recipe for society. And so we need to change our diets. And when you want to look at it really in depth, you can look at some of the studies I talk about in my book about prisons and violence and violent prisoners. And I remember walking to my office one day and there was a guy who wrote a letter from prison, a handwritten letter on my desk. I read it, just shocked me. He said he read one of my books. He was a violent criminal his whole life. And he read one of my books in prison. So I don't know how he changed his diet in prison,

but he managed to eat healthier in prison, which I don't know how you do. And he said he noticed his whole behavior changed, his mood changed. And his whole life of violent crime was a consequence of the food he was eating. And now he felt like a different person. And when you look at studies, it backs it up. There's studies, for example, in prisoners who are fed a healthy whole foods diet compared to a processed diet. And in those prisons, they reduced violent crime by 56 percent and they reduced it by 80 percent when they added a multivitamin. So that's the power of eating food. And I just want to share some of the things that happen with the juvenile delinquents, which is crazy when you think about the amount of kids who are getting in trouble, going to jail, the criminal justice system is just overwhelmed by this. But the truth is that when you change diets and the studies have been done are really amazing studies because when you actually do a study in a prison,

it's a controlled environment. You actually control what they're eating, so you know what's happening. It's kind of like a lab rat, not a great idea, but they get consent from these people, and they get them to do it. And what they found was one study in violent juveniles that people are given a multivitamin and mineral supplement, just a vitamin supplement, nothing else, okay? Because they're so nutrient deficient. Reduce violent acts by 91% compared to the control group. These kids were deficient in magnesium, iron, B12, and folate. And these are all critical for

brain function. And what they did was they didn't just sort of check their behavior, they checked their brain. They did an EEG, like a brainwave study. And they hooked these kids up before and after the brainwave study. And they found that there was a major decrease in abnormal brain activity when they gave them a multivitamin, which then led to just in 13 weeks, and it led to incredible reductions in violent behavior in these kids. I mean, it's crazy. The kid who improved their diets reduced violent behavior by 80%. Another study was dramatic. When they looked at kids who were having violent behavior,

the violent behavior dropped 47% just with supplements. When they looked at different types of violent behavior, different infractions, antisocial behavior, they were all dramatically reduced, including threats and fighting, vandalism, being disrespectful, disorderly conduct, defiance, obscenities, refusal to work or serve, endangering others, and other non-specified interventions. And these poor communities who consume this food, all these things are so affected by mental health issues, by violence, by higher rates of incarceration. It's not a surprise that this is going on. And you just

see the changes so powerfully when you change the diet in these kids and in adults. And I've seen it over and over. And it's really why I wrote my book, The Ultramind Solution, which is why we understand that the brain affects, the body affects the brain, and by fixing our diet and adding the right nutrients can make a huge difference. So whether it's fixing schools' lunches, whether it's getting your kids eating healthier, whether it's getting all the junk out and the chemicals out, we can make a huge dent in our kids' academic performance. We can make a huge dent in our oppositional violent society by getting our diet cleaned up. It's so important. And of course, not only does it affect academic performance,

not only does it perpetuate poverty and social injustice, not only does it cause more violence and crime and hate in society, but it also threatens our national security. Why? Because when you have recruits for the military who apply, 70% of them are rejected because they're unfit to fight. There was a report called Unhealthy and Unprepared by 700 admirals and generals that said our kids are rejected. 70% are rejected because they're not-related injury, which is crazy when you think about it, that more soldiers have trouble from not war, but from obesity and have to get sent home. That's pretty frightening. And the good news is we can fix all these things. I just talked to a senator's office who was actually very interested in dealing with these issues around the military, changing the Department of Defense diet.

And it's pretty exciting. So in the book, Food Fix, in my book, which is coming out February 25th, there's so much information about all this and what to do about it. How do we change school lunches? How do we get kids healthy? How do we get better food in prisons? And how do we get a better national security, among other things? There's lots of great resources in there.

Check it out, foodfixbook.com. You can get access to my five steps to a healthier plant, a healthier you. You can actually get access to my action guide, which is available to teach people how to take action in all these areas for themselves, on policy issues and more. And there's lots more resources in there. And I just hope you join me in this movement to change the food system. We need everybody on board.

You can get the book, Food Fix, How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet, one bite at a time. And just thank you so much for your support and being part of this food revolution.