Schuyler

Jeez, sorry about that. I kept trying to paste text into my e-mail and it
wasn't showing up on my end. Clearly it was there. The message should read
like this:


> There is no link between sugar and behavioural issues in children. None,
> zero, zip. There was a great study, that I went looking for, but didn't
> find
> (I probably didn't look long enough, really) that found that parents who
> were told their children had sugar found that they had hyperactive
> children
> even if the children hadn't had sugar, and vice versa. In looking for
> studies I found this (
> http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=6&url=http%3A%2F%2Frepositories.cdlib.org%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1008%26context%3Duclabiolchem%2Fnutritionbytes&ei=N4WFRdCIGJ2WnQOI5ul_&usg=__nTZOn7yQXgvAiX8bHYLVkgNoBok=&sig2=XECgP_84etJnDlVUK6QEsA )
> article that concludes by saying:
> Sugar continues to be condemned as a source of hyperactivity in children.
> When I casually asked 10 of myfellow medical school classmates to tell me
> their opinions on the sugar-hyperactivity issue, seven of themdescribed at
> length the detrimental powers of sugar on childhood behavior. Clearly,
> these
> attitudes need tobe corrected so that they are not communicated to future
> patients. Again, there is no available evidence thatsugar precipitates or
> even contributes to elevated activity in children who are normal or those
> who suffer from ADHD. Accordingly, it would be inappropriate and
> unnecessarily burdensome to pursue a sugar-free diet in the hope of
> ameliorating a child's disordered behavior. In fact, in light of the
> foregoing discussion, itis probably safe to conclude that withholding
> sweet
> food from youngsters is probably more likey toprovoke disruptive behavior
> than serving it to them.
> The one study that I found to show a link between sugar and behavior was
> done in 1980 and has not been replicated since.
>
> There is a link between behavior and food coloring. But it is slight and
> barely replicated. That is, the effect seems to be very slight, and only
> occurs in very tight studies of behavior and ADHD children and not within
> the population as a whole, and it is only occasionally found by
> researchers.
> And even among ADHD participants the results seem to not be particularly
> tight. And while there are allergies to foods, things like celiacs, or the
> milk allergy I had as a child, it doesn't always remain, I can drink milk
> tell the cows come home, and then drink what they bring. Nor is it
> something
> that all children have.
>
> That is all to say that Deb is absolutely right, it is easy to blame
> external factors (I blame PMS at least once a month) when it is something
> that a parent could address more readily, more directly, with care and
> attention. It seems that if someone's child isn't reacting to anything
> severely than maybe it isn't a culprit anymore. And making the world
> smaller, shrinking the food available to them, deciding that video games
> are
> inherently violent, unschooling everything but math and reading, it isn't
> unschooling anymore.
>
> Schuyler
> www.waynforth.blogspot.com
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Deb Lewis" <d.lewis@...>
> To: "unschoolingbasics" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 7:33 PM
> Subject: [unschoolingbasics] Re: Questions from an absolute newcomer to
> this
> idea...
>
>
>> ***she doesn't have reactions that are severe or necessarily immediate so
>> pinpointing the culprits can be difficult.***
>>
>> I asked because I have seen parents blame perfectly normal kid behaviors
>> on
>> foods or chemical additives when the kid is FINE and the parent happens
>> to
>> be extremely sensitive. So a parent who is sensitive to noise or motion
>> or
>> who can't stand repeated sounds, cant stop the kid from doing those
>> things
>> and goes about trying to fix the kid.
>>
>> I've seen it enough to question it. Lots of people seem to have a very
>> small view of what normal kid behavior is and anything that falls outside
>> that window is wrong, abnormal, obsessive - whatever.
>>
>> It's worth thinking about and reconsidering. Especially for people who
>> are
>> interested in the unschooling philosophy. Because when adults affix a
>> label to a kid it alters that kid's psychology. That's no small thing.
>> When we convince little people who trust and believe us that they have
>> some
>> type of problem we change how they think of themselves.
>>
>>
>> Deb Lewis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
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