Nutrition and Behavior

In the 1960's Barbara Reed Stitt discovered how she could change her own life through diet. At the time, the then Ms. Reed had a miserable life: she was overweight with newly developed epilepsy and black outs. Multiple visits to different physicians were of no help. She then came across material by Gayelord Hauser suggesting that a whole food plant based diet might help her.  She tried it and all her physical and psychological issues disappeared. (She eventually advocated a diet very similar to what Pritikin was using around this time.) Ms. Reed devoted the rest of her life to spreading the message of what effect diet can have on all aspects of day to day activities, health and behavior.

At the time Ms. Reed was an Ohio parole officer. When she suggested dietary change to her clients most of them did remarkably well. A local judge heard about her success and started directing his convicted criminals to her supervision with the strong suggestion that they should to follow her dietary guidelines. The results were convincing- over 88% of her over 5000 parolees from 1970 to 1982 did not re-enter the courts for parole violations or new crimes. The next best parole officer in the state had a 35% success rate. Ms. Reed tells many satisfying stories of criminals thanking her, commenting that they could now hold a job and manage their behavior while in the past they could not control what they did. With a whole food plant based diet they could function as productive members of the community, enjoy relationships and have good health.  Food & Behavior: A Natural Connection,  Natural Press,  Third Edition 2004.

When Ms. Reed became Mrs. Stitt she moved to Wisconsin where her new husband had a successful business making healthy whole grain breads. There she approached the local public schools and convinced them to try food change in the high school with the most problem students. Quick, large improvement in behavior, attendance and performance led the local superintendent to make similar changes in the menus of all the district's schools. https://youtu.be/1KdPbntzX10 Again, there were remarkable results in all the schools, just from dietary change in the meals and snacks during school hours. Imagine what can happen if it's all meals and snacks. http://www.doctoryourself.com/stitt.html

Several years later Mrs. Stitt worked with drug addicts in California supervising change in diet. Again, this group saw the highest success rates of drug avoidance and ability to lead a normal life. She had now demonstrated the parolees, problem students and drug addicts can usually change behavior if they eat correctly. Emotions and brain function are controlled by the fuel we take in.

Mrs. Stitt has written about her experiences, appeared on many TV and radio shows and has started a foundation to spread this information. https://www.foodandbehavior.com/barbara-s-bio In spite of these well documented successes I have yet to met anyone in education, addiction treatment, prisons or parole work who know of her programs until I tell them. Big food businesses have control of government policy and information. Change to Mrs. Stitt's diet would cost these businesses a lot of money and they will do whatever they can to block it. Schools are given very unhealthy foods by the federal government with the mandate to use them or else loose support for free school lunches and other meals. Sadly, when I checked the food served in the Wisconsin schools Mrs. Stitt worked with in the 1990's they have reverted to the same cheese pizzas, junk meats and other unhealthy choices offered throughout our public school systems nationwide.