Your editorial on the aggressive behavior of children in schools is timely. I caution you that by defining this aggression as a "disease" you are priming the pump for a tremendous marketing opportunity. In this nation that will no doubt translate into a program where the latest drug will cure the aggression and depression at the expense of the population.
Witness the Teen Screen Program, a mental health screening program that is actually a Trojan horse that pharmaceutical multinationals will utilize first to identify those "at risk" children, neo-natal included. Once identified, before the bad behavior manifests, begins the medical intervention on behalf of the poor and mentally disturbed. A lucrative market established via state Medicaid/ Medicare channels, an algorithm for profits not for health. Think blood sugar, obesity, poor academic performance, aggression and criminal behaviors and those profits cry out to be reaped.
You would do this community a great favor by publishing information such as the article in the September issue of Ode Magazine titled, "You Do What You Eat," highlighting examples of behavioral changes in children accomplished by using nutritional food and banning the junk. Let's consider a tax on junk food instead or a grant to provide nutritional meals and snacks for all students or even a multivitamin.
Sue Slaon, in the United Kingdom, says, "We don't sell candy and snacks anymore. Our teachers noticed that snacks, which were high in artificial flavoring and additives, were affecting the students' mood. After any break teachers had to spend a lot of energy in getting the children settled. Now, since we decided not to sell sweets and fizzy drinks in our tuck (snack) shop — since five years — they notice that it's much easier to keep the children concentrated. Teachers say it's less noisy, there's less aggression and learning performances appear to have gone up. In the shop it's much more quiet now.
Dr. Gesch, a physiologist at the University of Oxford, using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on a prison inmate population of men 18 to 21 in age, emerges with convincing scientific proof that poor nutrition plays a role in triggering aggressive behavior.
Perhaps school administrators, teachers, physicians and we the parents need to modify our own behavior and rethink our choices in order to allow our children a chance to behave themselves. Raspberries or Ritalin?
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