School Diet Change Brings Improved Behavior, Healthier, More

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School Diet Change Brings Improved Behavior, Healthier, More Focused Studentshttp://www.wanttoknow.info/050520schooldietchangeSchool Diet Change Brings Improved Behavior, Healthier, More FocusedStudents"Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria'sprocessed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described asout-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and acop on duty full-time. After the change in school meals, the students werecalm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and nosuicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet andimproved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools arechanging their meal programs with similar results." -- Jeffrey M. Smith,

Author of Seeds of DeceptionMay 20, 2005 Dear friends,The informative article below clearly demonstrates the importance of ahealthy school diet for our children. Diet is being shown to clearlyinfluence both behavior and mood. A healthy diet fosters calmer, healthier,more focused behavior. Studies like the one below demonstrate that excessiveamounts of fast food can lead to severe behavior changes, and suggest thatavoiding genetically modified foods may be a very healthy option. Links atthe bottom of the article provide lots more information on this topic forthose interested.Two excellent, humorous videos also reveal important health-relatedinformation. First, "Store Wars" is hilarious! This incredibly well done,five-minute spoof on the movie Star Wars is available at www.storewarsorg/tater_tot.html. Have fun watching Cuke Skywalker battle Darth Tater andlots more. A second fun one is a spoof

on the Matrix called "The Meatrix,"available at www.themeatrix.com. A little humor goes a long way indelivering a great message. Spread the humor and spread the news byforwarding this great information to your friends and family. Have a greatday, and may the force be with you!With best wishes,Fred Burkshttp://www.organicconsumers.org/school/appleton090304.cfm - OrganicConsumers AssociationWhy Schools Should Remove GE-Tainted Foods from Their CafeteriasInstitute for Responsible TechnologyNewsletter on GM Foods, Spilling the BeansBy Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of DeceptionBefore the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria'sprocessed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described asout-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and acop on duty

full-time. After the change in school meals, the students werecalm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and nosuicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet andimproved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools arechanging their meal programs with similar results.Years ago, a science class at Appleton found support for their new diet byconducting a cruel and unusual experiment with three mice. They fed them thejunk food that kids in other high schools eat everyday. The mice freaked out Their behavior was totally different than the three mice in the neighboringcage. The neighboring mice had good karma; they were fed nutritious wholefoods and behaved like mice. They slept during the day inside theircardboard tube, played with each other, and acted very mouse-like. The junk food mice, on the other hand, destroyed their cardboard tube, wereno

longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and twomice eventually killed the third and ate it. After the three monthexperiment, the students rehabilitated the two surviving junk food mice witha diet of whole foods. After about three weeks, the mice came around.Sister Luigi Frigo repeats this experiment every year in her second gradeclass in Cudahy, Wisconsin, but mercifully, for only four days. Even on thefirst day of junk food, the mice's behavior "changes drastically." Theybecome lazy, antisocial, and nervous. And it still takes the mice about twoto three weeks on unprocessed foods to return to normal. One year, thesecond graders tried to do the experiment again a few months later with thesame mice, but this time the animals refused to eat the junk food.Across the ocean in Holland, a student fed one group of mice geneticallymodified (GM) corn and soy, and another group the non-GM

variety. The GMmice stopped playing with each other and withdrew into their own parts ofthe cage. When the student tried to pick them up, unlike their well-behavedneighbors, the GM mice scampered around in apparent fear and tried to climbthe walls. One mouse in the GM group was found dead at the end of theexperiment.It's interesting to note that the junk food fed to the mice in the Wisconsinexperiments also contained genetically modified ingredients. And althoughthe Appleton school lunch program did not specifically attempt to remove GMfoods, it happened anyway. That's because GM foods such as soy and corn andtheir derivatives are largely found in processed foods. So when the schoolswitched to unprocessed alternatives, almost all ingredients derived from GMcrops were taken out automatically.Does this mean that GM foods negatively affect the behavior of humans oranimals? It would

certainly be irresponsible to say so on the basis of asingle student mice experiment and the results at Appleton. On the otherhand, it is equally irresponsible to say that it doesn't.We are just beginning to understand the influence of food on behavior. Astudy in Science in December 2002 concluded that "food molecules act likehormones, regulating body functioning and triggering cell division. Themolecules can cause mental imbalances ranging from attention-deficit andhyperactivity disorder to serious mental illness." The problem is we do notknow which food molecules have what effect. The bigger problem is that the composition of GM foods can change radicallywithout our knowledge. Genetically modified foods have genes inserted intotheir DNA. But genes are not Legos; they don't just snap into place. Geneinsertion creates unpredicted, irreversible changes. In one study, forexample, a gene chip

monitored the DNA before and after a single foreigngene was inserted. As much as 5 percent of the DNA's genes changed theamount of protein they were producing. Not only is that huge in itself, butthese changes can multiply through complex interactions down the line.In spite of the potential for dramatic changes in the composition of GMfoods, they are typically measured for only a small number of known nutrientlevels. But even if we could identify all the changed compounds, at thispoint we wouldn¹t know which might be responsible for the antisocial natureof mice or humans. Likewise, we are only beginning to identify the medicinalcompounds in food. We now know, for example, that the pigment in blueberriesmay revive the brain¹s neural communication system, and the antioxidantfound in grape skins may fight cancer and reduce heart disease. But whatabout other valuable compounds we don¹t know about that might

change ordisappear in GM varieties?Consider GM soy. In July 1999, years after it was on the market, independentresearchers published a study showing that it contains 12-14 percent lesscancer-fighting phytoestrogens. What else has changed that we don¹t knowabout? [Monsanto responded with its own study, which concluded that soy¹sphytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis.They failed to disclose, however, that the laboratory that conductedMonsanto¹s experiment had been instructed to use an obsolete method todetect phytoestrogens results.]In 1996, Monsanto published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition thatconcluded in the title, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybeanseeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans." The study onlycompared a small number of nutrients and a close look at their chartsrevealed significant differences in the fat, ash, and carbohydrate

content.In addition, GM soy meal contained 27 percent more trypsin inhibitor, awell-known soy allergen. The study also used questionable methods. Nutrientcomparisons are routinely conducted on plants grown in identical conditionsso that variables such as weather and soil can be ruled out. Otherwise,differences in plant composition could be easily missed. In Monsanto's study soybeans were planted in widely varying climates and geography.Although one of their trials was a side-by-side comparison between GM andnon-GM soy, for some reason the results were left out of the paperaltogether. Years later, a medical writer found the missing data in thearchives of the Journal of Nutrition and made them public. No wonder thescientists left them out. The GM soy showed significantly lower levels ofprotein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid. Also,toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the

amount of a lectin that mayblock the body¹s ability to assimilate other nutrients. Furthermore, thetoasted GM soy contained as much as seven times the amount of trypsininhibitor, indicating that the allergen may survive cooking more in the GMvariety. (This might explain the 50 percent jump in soy allergies in the UK,just after GM soy was introduced.)We don't know all the changes that occur with genetic engineering, butcertainly GM crops are not the same. Ask the animals. Eyewitness reportsfrom all over North America describe how several types of animals, whengiven a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included cows, pigs, elk, deer raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice. In fact, the Dutch student mentionedabove first determined that his mice had a two-to-one preference for non-GMbefore forcing half of them to eat only the engineered variety. Differences in GM food will likely have a much larger

impact on children.They are three to four times more susceptible to allergies. Also, theyconvert more of the food into body-building material. Altered nutrients oradded toxins can result in developmental problems. For this reason, animalnutrition studies are typically conducted on young, developing animals.After the feeding trial, organs are weighed and often studied undermagnification. If scientists used mature animals instead of young ones, evensevere nutritional problems might not be detected. The Monsanto study usedmature animals instead of young ones.They also diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein 10- or 12­fold beforefeeding the animals. And they never weighed the organs or examined themunder a microscope. The study, which is the only major animal feeding studyon GM soy ever published, is dismissed by critics as rigged to avoid findingproblems.Unfortunately, there is a much bigger

experiment going on one which we areall a part of. We're being fed GM foods daily, without knowing the impact ofthese foods on our health, our behavior, or our children. Thousands ofschools around the world, particularly in Europe, have decided not to lettheir kids be used as guinea pigs. They have banned GM foods.The impact of changes in the composition of GM foods is only one of severalreasons why these foods may be dangerous. Other reasons may be far worse(see http://www.seedsofdeception.com).With the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and with the results in Appleton,parents and schools are waking up to the critical role that diet plays. Whenmaking changes in what kids eat, removing GM foods should be a priority.The above article may be used as a stand-alone opinion piece, or as part of a monthly series about genetically modified foods

by Jeffrey Smith. Publishers and webmasters may offer the series to your readers at no charge, by emailing a request to column. Individuals may read the column each month, by subscribing to a free newsletter at http://www.seedsofdeception.com. The website also describes how to avoid eating GM foods. For a powerful, engaging, ten-page summary of Jeffrey's book on GM foods, Seeds of Deception, For lots more, see our Health Information Center.