Can We Cut Crime by Changing Cafeteria Menus?

Vending machines were replaced with water cool­ers; ham­burg­ers and French fries were taken off the menu and replaced with fresh veg­eta­bles and fruit, whole grain breads and a salad bar. With the depar­ture of junk food, she also saw the depar­ture of van­dal­ism, lit­ter and the need for police patrolling her hall­ways. The stu­dents were calm, socially engaged and focused on their school­work. Problems were min­i­mal. And all Ms. Coenen did was change the menu.

You can dis­miss this as a fluke, a ‘results not typ­i­cal’ sce­nario (like with diet plans); or the rav­ings of healthy eat­ing fanat­ics. True; no sci­en­tists have ever seri­ously inves­ti­gated the changes at this Wisconsin high school (even after seven years of this). And healthy eat­ing surely divides us nearly as deeply as pol­i­tics. There are the zealots who believe that food cures all ills and the equally zeal­ous skep­tics who say it’s all nonsense.

And yet, is this really such a rad­i­cal, left-of-center idea? There is lit­tle debate that food can affect the way the brain works, thus our behav­ior. While it accounts for only 2% of our body weight, our brain uses about 20% of our energy. To gen­er­ate such energy, we need nutrients…lots of them…vitamins, min­er­als, unsat­u­rated fatty acids…all obtained from nutri­tious foods.

So the ques­tion to be asked is this: what are the effects of con­stantly eat­ing processed foods that lack the suf­fi­cient nutri­ents we need to oper­ate our brains in a clear, sane way?

Read the com­plete arti­cle on ChristinaCooks.com.