Last week we had a look at the way in which our understanding of food shifted from a ‘resource acquired through hard work’ to an ‘easily acquired commodity’. I noted that it is very difficult to respond to this trend as cheap and easily available food is so ubiquitous. One, rather extreme, way of responding [...]
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Understanding the Shifts in Human Nutrition – From Difficult to Super Easy (Part 1)
Over the past few weeks we looked at some of the subtle, and not so subtle, changes that occurred in human nutrition over the past few decades. The purpose of this series is not to suggest that previous generations consisted of ‘food saints’ who always ate perfectly balanced meals. It is rather to show how we fundamentally changed our relationship with food, often with disastrous results. It is my belief that these shifts had a disproportionate impact on those struggling with the effects of ADD/ADHD. The reason for this belief is the extraordinary sensitivity of the ‘ADD/ADHD Brain’ to factors that hinder, even in minor ways, optimum brain function.
The shifts that we looked at over the past few weeks were:
* Natural to Artificial
* Scarce to Superabundant
With this week’s article we will begin to discuss a shift that is perhaps a bit more difficult to pin down than the two mentioned above but that are no less significant. I am referring to the historical perception that food almost always equalled hard work.
Most people, especially those responsible for getting meals to the table, would perhaps unreservedly welcome the fact that this is not always the case anymore. The fact that we do not have to spend days and months cultivating our own food, followed with hours behind the stove to prepare it, has undeniable benefits. Time previously spent in food preparation can now be used for leisure or work in other areas. I am, of course, not advocating a return to the time when the main meal of the day took, on average, four hours to prepare. I am merely asking you to consider what we as a society lost due to the fact that it is now possible to put the words ‘easy’ and ‘fast’ before so much of what we eat. Consider the following:
The cost of ease of access: Modern methods of cultivation and distribution means that we have left the link between cultivation (or hunting!) and consumption far behind. While there was nothing romantic about tilling the fields, previous generations were in no doubt about where their food came from. These days our food can just as easily come from the other side of the world as from a farm in your county (with the former perhaps more likely). Most of us do not spend any time thinking about this fact, aside perhaps from the occasional amused glance at a food label spelling out the name of some obscure third world country. Our forebears couldn’t help thinking about the origins of their food – especially since they had to gather, hunt or cultivate it themselves. Our foods often have much more ‘interesting’ stories but we can afford not to worry too much about where it came from. Or can we? Foods shipped from the other side of the world are a) often grown with the help of pesticides that are banned in North America and b) Preserved with chemicals that could have a marked negative effect on optimum brain function.
ADD/ADHD Misdiagnosis: Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder often mistaken for ADHD
I have often written about the huge problem of ADD/ADHD misdiagnosis. This problem makes me think of the old proverb that says: “If you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail!” Modern medicine have become so preoccupied with sticking the ADD label on kids that it is very often the first diagnosis that [...]
ADD/ADHD Drugs and the Placebo Effect: Shocking New Research
We are all familiar with the so-called ‘placebo effect’. This is where someone begins to feel significantly better after receiving ‘fake’ medication (usually a sugar pill or a tablet with no active pharmacological ingredients). The existence of the placebo effect amply demonstrates that the belief that a condition is being treated can sometimes be as [...]
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