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2009-05-30 Barbara Reed Stitt PhD Behavior And Food

May 30, By Kirkham R. Hamilton, PA-C
© copyright 2009, Prescription 2000, Inc.
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KIRK HAMILTON: Welcome to Staying Healthy Today, a health oriented radio show committed to bringing you key experts in the fields of nutrition, prevention and integrative medicine. Hi. My name is Kirk Hamilton, your host of Staying Healthy Today. Our mission is simple: To provide you credible and usable health information from interviews and our educational resources to help you Stay and Be Well in the busy modern world. Please take a few moments before or after listening to this interview to browse through the Prescription2000.com website, the home of Staying Healthy Today Radio for our free educational services.

Today's show topic is "Improving Behavior Problems and Criminality by Eating Whole Natural Foods - Here's How."

Our guest today is Dr. Barbara Reed Stitt, PhD in Nutrition, and author of five books, Food and Behavior; Nutritional Guidelines for Correcting Behavior; Food, Teens and Behavior; Keeping It Off; Road Map for Healthy Foods in Schools, all available at www.naturalpress.info.

Dr. Stitt is a former chief probation officer in Ohio from 1963 to 1982, where she made the connection between diet and criminal behavior by court-appointed clients. In 1982, she married biochemist and founder of Natural Ovens Bakery, Paul Stitt. She became president and co-owner of Natural Ovens Bakery in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, retired in 2007, and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. The first publicity of her work involving diet and behavior was contained in a front page article in the Wall Street Journal in June 1977. This results in appearances on CBS Weekend News, Good Morning America, McNeil-Lehr, the Phil Donahue Show twice, That's Incredible, and she became the first guest on the Richard Simmons Show in 1981. In addition, she testified before the Select Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Health in 1977 and the Los Angeles and California Board of Supervisors in 1981. Oxford University in London, England has done two extensive studies using her work as a model with the same positive results.

A 12-year follow-up of probationers referred to Barbara showed a success rate of over 80%, with less than 20% of the people having gotten back into trouble, compared to 70 to 85% of those referred to typical probation and parole. Barbara has given at least 1500 presentations throughout the U.S. and Canada on radio and TV. In 1984, the executive director of the Community Additive Recovery Association in Sacramento, California, was the first to introduce the usefulness of food in the treatment of addition, and their studies over the last 10 years have shown an 85% success rate, saving Sacramento County over 20 million in recidivism costs.

Barbara has been working to improve the foods in schools for almost 20 years. Her passion is to get fresh nutritional foods in every school in the U.S. by 2012.

KIRK HAMILTON: Well, Dr. Stitt, I'd like to really thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

DR. BARBARA STITT: I'm delighted to be here.

KIRK HAMILTON: You know, your background is just so well rounded and so full, it's almost undeniable that you'll obviously have things to say that are very, very credible. So, I've looked forward to sharing this with our listenership on how food affects behavior and what we can do about it in our children and those who have criminal tendencies. So, I think what I'd like to start off with is, when did you first become aware there was a connection between, you know, what people eat and their behavior?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Actually, it began with my own illnesses and at age 32 and 33, I developed severe degenerative arthritis in my hands and in my spine. I was diagnosed borderline diabetic, diagnosed epileptic, severe mood swings, extremely irritable, heavy headaches. I was really aging fast and I was on my way out, and it would have been painful. And I was told that I was early stages of menopause at age 33, and of course I broke down. I was so depressed. I was actually suicidal during that time, but I had a little boy and that kept me from doing it. So, I finally, I ran into a book and it was written by Gaylord Hauser, and the name was "Look Younger and Live Longer," and I think it attracted me because it, because I felt so old. I read the book. It made sense. Now, I was having blackouts at that time, sometimes between 10 minutes and two or three hours. I mean, not fall down, but just not remembering anything that I had done or said. And, so the book made sense. I started following it to the letter, and in three months all the symptoms that I've just described were gone. It made a believer out of me and so I had just begun in a brand new probation department in Akron, Ohio, so I started getting the people I work with to read the book and to follow the suggestions, and lo and behold, they had the same results I did. They felt better, they looked better, and they kept telling the judge, "I don't think I'm gonna be back in trouble."

KIRK HAMILTON: What were some of the suggestions in the book?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Of course, to get off the refined processed foods, which is the majority of what's out there, but also sugar products, and they usually are combined, and the enriched flour is a joke. It's really impoverished and all of the nutrients are gone when you add sugar, which again takes, strips nutrients out of your body, particularly the B vitamins and chromium, the things that keep you feeling calm and liking yourself and other people. And they are, they are dissipated from the system and as a result the deficiencies can cause all kinds of responses. Get off those, get off the sugar, refined processed products. Get on fresh whole foods, like fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, sprouts, water, exercise, really basic stuff that has just been overlooked.

KIRK HAMILTON: Tell me, when you were in the probation system, when did you, or how did you apply this to your clients that were assigned to you?

DR. BARBARA STITT: What happened is I discovered a list of symptoms of low blood sugar and why were put together by Dr. Hoffer, Dr. Osmond, and Dr. Baron in Cleveland, Ohio, and Dr. Hoffer and Osmond are in Canada. And because when they were doing five and six hour glucose tolerance tests they really listened to the people and the symptoms that they described. So there were about 93 of them. I went back over them and discovered that I had headaches about 44 of them. And so as a result it got the attention. I would have them complete this quiz, letting them know that there was nothing right or wrong. I just really - and nothing psychological because most people by the time they've gotten in, convicted of crimes, literally have been psychoanalyzed and they feel like they're crazy already. So I assured them that there was nothing psychological. I just really wanted to know how they felt. So from that, I began asking them what they consumed, and you get a pretty good idea, and discovered that people were consuming 50 to 150 teaspoons of sugar a day.

KIRK HAMILTON: If I can just stop for a second here. One of the keys is blood sugar control. You talked about low blood sugar, and you talked about massive consumption of sugar. So it's blood sugar control as one of the main things in the biochemistry of a behavior-disordered mind.

DR. BARBARA STITT: I think it's underlying a huge percentage. There was a doctor that did studies in Oklahoma City in a prison, and found that 88% of them were suffering from hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, which is the forerunner of the diabetes, which you know that now they're finding diabetes with the advent of the addition of corn syrup. Diabetes is - type 2 diabetes is being found in children as young as age 2 and 3. And this is disastrous. The whole life is going to be loaded with illnesses and behavior problems and all kinds of things that they have no idea that they're doing to themselves.

KIRK HAMILTON: How long did it take for an individual, someone who was in trouble, that went on this very simple whole food diet, how low before their behavior might start to change and they would feel better?

DR. BARBARA STITT: You know, it varied from two days to three months. Each individual was different and of course their ability to really make the changes differed, but we were on Phil Donahue with a beautiful young woman that I had gotten for shoplifting, and she said on the air, "I wish you could be inside my head. In two days, I could think. It really was fuzzy." She couldn't focus, of course eyesight is affected very severely by over consumption of sweets, and she could not focus her mind. And in two days, she was able to think. Another young man who did nothing by cry the first hour and half interview that I had with him, and he was just pathetic. He lived -- he had grown up and lived on beans and potatoes or a variety of potatoes and beans. And these were canned stuff, or not even the real kind. And I introduced a new fruit or new vegetable to him. I saw him twice a week. Each time he came in, I would get him to try another fruit or vegetable. Five months later, he bounced in the office just sparkling, and said, "For the first time in my life, I know what it's like to say I feel good."

KIRK HAMILTON: You started this in the 70's, correct?

DR. BARBARA STITT: When I started it in the 60s, but in 1970 I was made head of -- department chief probation officer, and had discovered at that time the list of blood sugar symptoms, low blood sugar symptoms and had been using it long enough and my expertise got good enough that I really began keeping good records. So, I really usually say that I started it in 1971.

KIRK HAMILTON: Most of this improvement came from just basic whole food. It wasn't from specific nutritional supplementation, correct?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, the only supplements that I was aware of at that time was B complex 50 mg of each of the B vitamins, and vitamin C. And it was with the two, and they really did make a difference because they really helped people. As a matter of fact, one guy that came in, he was so drunk he couldn't walk, and he came in to get his driver's license released to him, which was kind of interesting, and I gave him 100 mg the B vitamins plus 2000 units of vitamin C, and in 15 minutes that man was as sober as you or I. And my assistant came back and said, "What did you do to him?" So the supplements did really, really help.

KIRK HAMILTON: 100 range, and your vitamin C doses were in several 1000 milligram range?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Sometimes, yes. It only had 2000 units of vitamin C. But, yes, we actually worked up with some people, it would work up to like 5000 mg. So, up to the point that they began to have a little bit of loose stools and then we'd back off. And it really helped to detox people. It really, really helped in that matter.

KIRK HAMILTON: So, can you tell me, did you do this program of diet intervention on a kind of a mass scale in the Ohio probation department system? And can you tell us a little bit about the program and its success?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Actually, I was working with -- in a year's time there would be between 100 and probably 150 people, and I did this for 12 years. And I followed them for 12 years also, through checking our courts or surrounding courts, the FBI, and 89% of them did not get back in trouble in that period of time. And of course the average on typical probation or parole is 70 to 85% get back in trouble, most of them in the first year. So, it was given a lot of study, a lot of observation and follow-up.

KIRK HAMILTON: So why hasn't this been implemented on a mass scale, let's say in the correctional system where we see our prisons just overwhelmingly growing and burdened?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, you know, you had Miranasa prison there in California, not too far from you. I am not too sure if you are aware of them, and they put the - it was 500 male inmate prison and people were on a waiting list trying to get in there. And they put them on absolute vegetarian, vegan vegetarian diet and of course used supplements, and it was amazing what the reduction in the recidivism rate. And there is an additive treatment center there in Sacramento called CARA, and they've done the same thing. She was first -- the director was first introduced to my work back in the late 70s, early 80s, actually wrote an article on my work in ‘84, and they're using basically the same program I did and working with the addict, addictive personalities. And their study over 10 years was like 85% success and they figure that they've saved Sacramento County over 20 million dollars. That's something to pay attention to. Why has the correctional system not adapted it? I think that it's too political. I think that most people don't care what people that have been convicted of crimes and most people think they should have white bread and water. I mean, it's so sad. These are human beings and we have more people locked up in prisons per capita than any country, really about 12 times as many as any country in the world. Something's drastically wrong, and now we've got to prevent this. I mean, we really do have to prevent it. We have to look at what's being done to our children.

KIRK HAMILTON: You have done work in schools trying to bring in good nutrition to schools, and you are also involved with some type of alternative school that was featured in Supersize Me. You want to talk about that a little bit?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, yes. We started working -- In 1982, I left the field of corrections when I married biochemist Paul Stitt, who was interested in world hunger from age 10. He had a whole grain bakery in Wisconsin, so we were married in ‘82 and I moved to Wisconsin and we worked side by side for 25 years. And, I wanted -- I was traveling so much at that time because my work was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in June of 1977, and I really went in orbit. I was criss-crossing the United States and Canada like 40-50 times a year. But in the early ‘80s, we talked about it and I said I really want to help prevent the kids from getting in trouble in the first place. It's much, you know, the prevention is much easier than the cure. So, I starting working with classrooms and then in 1999, we were invited to come into an out-of-control high school alternative school in Appleton, Wisconsin. And we went in there and the only thing that we did was change the foods. The staff was wonderful, the programs were wonderful, but it was so out of control they had a full-time police officer on staff. Within the first year, there was so much positive improvement that the superintendent then and the school board took it to the entire school district of 15,000 students. The behaviors corrected itself. They didn't have any behavior problems any more. Their dropouts dropped from - well, in the alternative school it dropped to 0, and there were no drugs on campus, no weapons on campus, their academic ability increased measurably, and the behavior problems just disappeared. So, the police officer then really didn't have anything to do and became a counselor and coach and that sort of thing until he just went back to the force.

KIRK HAMILTON: What were the diet changes that you made in the school?

DR. BARBARA STITT: We went in with just fresh whole foods, ground flax seed that was added to pineapple juice or orange juice, but usually pineapple juice that they had in the morning, and they had breakfast of whole grain bagels and fresh fruits and that sort of thing, and then at lunch they had all the fresh vegetables and again fresh fruits available, and legumes and chicken, turkey, fish, those kinds of foods, and the thing that disappeared was all of the refined processed foods that had artificial coloring, flavoring, sweeteners, any of that. The soda machines were changed from the high sugared, high colored sodas and the cokes and the -- all of those drinks, and they put water and real 100% juice in the machines. And the foods not only looked beautiful, they smelled good, they tasted good, and the youngsters just thrived. And isn't that what we want?

KIRK HAMILTON: Well, absolutely. One question would be that I think parents would ask and I think outside people would look and go, how did the kids respond to that food? Did they balk? Did they get upset that they had to eat whole food? How did that transition work?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, we had a very funny thing that happened. When we first started the program, there was a vice president that was there at the school and so that became the first day of actually introducing the new foods. But we had tried to train a cook with the food service there and so they said that on their menu they had turkey and they had lasagne and we said, okay, but we didn't see the kind of turkey and the kind of lasagne that they really had. And the kids said, "I thought we were going to get more nutritional food. This is the same stuff that I ate over at East High," or whatever the other school was. So we had to come up with two cooks very quickly and we didn't have them yet, so for two days the police officer and the social studies teacher, both male, shopped, prepared and served the food to the students. So the students themselves were welcoming the fresh foods and we really didn't have any balking. I know that's always talked about, but that's just -- it's a cop-out because it just didn't happen, and the food service ended up -- I mean, what the superintendent said is, you either serve better foods, these nutritional foods or I'm not going to resign your contract. And, so they changed. I mean, they did some real fast changes and it really, really paid off because actually the attendance went up, and in these 15,000 students, there were 4500 high school students out of the 15,000. 4500 high school students. And the dropout rate went from 10% to 0.003%. 16 students out of 4500 dropped out of high school, and they came back, which is pretty phenomenal. In Madison, Wisconsin, we just read information about the fact that the students there are boycotting and we're talking about fourth graders, boycotting the awful, awful food that's being served to them.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let me ask you this. Okay, so we had the whole foods, the edible foods. Now, when you took out the vending machines, there weren't any riots because there were no soft drinks or no fake juices? You just put in juices and water and the kids had no problem with that?

DR. BARBARA STITT: That's right. But in every class, in the alternative school, and see word spread real fast through the rest of the school system that the good nutrition was incorporated in every class. It was taught in math, it was taught in history, it was taught in every class and they increased their exercise programs to the students, and in good weather they actually had been out running outside, and as a result they got more oxygen to their brain and they were able to function better and be more relaxed when they were in school.

KIRK HAMILTON: How was this again -- I missed the connection to the Supersize Me film.

DR. BARBARA STITT: When he was beginning to do his Supersize Me, which was -- it was an award-winning film, and he was living on McDonald's products, everything he ate or drink for 30 days came from McDonald's. Okay. And when they asked him if he wanted to supersize, he said sure, and he did. And he supersized. He gained 24 pounds in the 30 days, and it took him three months to get back to normal afterward. But he was looking for a school that was serving good food to their students and he read an article that was put in a newsletter called the Miracle in Wisconsin, and it was written in their newsletter by the Feingold Association and they are champions of eliminating all artificial colorings and flavorings from foods served to students, and found a remarkable change in behavior. The newsletter article, a friend of his gave it to him, and it was talking about our Appleton school.

KIRK HAMILTON: That's excellent.

DR. BARBARA STITT: That's how he came to film and feature the alternative school.

KIRK HAMILTON: I'd like to transition to your wonderful bakery called Natural Ovens that you used to run with Paul. And you'd fed your employees, did you not, every day?

DR. BARBARA STITT: We did. There were no machines, there was no junk food allowed on the premises and we had the happiest employees. There was no backbiting, they worked together. We had about 20,000 people a year tour Natural Ovens Bakery, and comments, comments constantly on how happy everybody felt. In hot summer days, you know, when you've got 200 foot ovens that are pretty warm, and if it's already hot -- but we had unlimited watermelon. They could come out on their break and have the watermelon which had natural coolants and other good things in it. They would go back feeling good. If they had come out on their break and had soda and a candy bar, they would have felt hotter and more irritable. It's amazing. We had, okay, two people that injured themselves at their homes. Anyway, it had nothing to do with their work, but out of all of the employees, the insurance company did a study. It averaged of people being off one and a half days a year, and that included the injuries and surgeries that took place that had nothing to do with the employment.

KIRK HAMILTON: I'd like to hold on this, because this is really important, because we have, you know, an economic crisis and we have health insurance crisis in small businesses. How many employees did you have and how much did it cost for you to feed each employee a day?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, at the bakery itself, this didn't include most of the delivery people, but we had about 120 or 130 people and $3.50 a day.

KIRK HAMILTON: That's a great investment. The workplace is really fascinating to me and I think so important. Now, did your -- you said that some people -- you only had a day or two off per illness.

DR. BARBARA STITT: One and a half days a year. The insurance company said that they had never seen that low number before in a company.

KIRK HAMILTON: That's outstanding. And I'm sure your employees appreciated that quite a bit.

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, it makes all the logic in the world, and we really, really -- you know, the production, the mistakes, when people are not eating properly, and their brain isn't functioning right, they make all kinds of mistakes. So, it paid dividends for us actually.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let me stay with the whole grain concept. So, just for the listeners, if you could briefly say what's in a whole grain that makes it better, and then I want to transition into grain intolerance and see if you've found it was an issue. But, can you first say, you know, why is a whole grain better than a refined grain?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, of course. The whole grain has the incredible nutrients. It has the fiber. It has all of these things that are milled out and most of that is milled out is put into pet food. And, when you have enriched white flour, they strip out all of the nutrients out and then they add back in I think it's four or five of the B vitamins and it's just crazy. The fiber, the shell of the wheat, the outer layer of the wheat, the bran, is what really has most of the nutrients, and of course that's what they mill out. And, so it's logical that if you don't eat the whole grain, where are you getting the nutrients? They're gone, they're milled out.

KIRK HAMILTON: Okay.

DR. BARBARA STITT: So, if you've given them the whole grains, then they are getting the B vitamins, they're getting the minerals, they're getting the good food. And constipation is a huge problem in the United States, and primarily this is because people are eating refined processed foods. They're not chewing properly, and they don't get the fiber that they need.

KIRK HAMILTON: So, let me ask you this then. If all your people were eating at your bakery the whole foods, did your staff lean out, were they -- did they tend to bring these habits home with them, as well?

DR. BARBARA STITT: A lot of them, -- oh, yes. A lot of them did. Many, many, many families changed. We had a core of I think seven or eight people who would eat, you know -- after work they would eat their sweets and what-have-you, and they would try to lose weight and then they would put it back on. But by and large, we had a really good-looking group of employees. Looked young, their skin was shiny, their hair was shiny, and they didn't seem to age.

KIRK HAMILTON: I want to talk about wheat intolerance for a second because it's something that I've seen in my practice. Now, do you think it's overblown? Or do you, because you‘re making whole grain breads, so -- and most of it has a wheat component to it.

DR. BARBARA STITT: After 30 years, we sold the bakery in 2007, so we don't have the bakery any more. But the gluten intolerance or the wheat intolerance -- we did make foods that were wheat-free and we tried to make gluten-free breads. We couldn't make good ones, and so we would refer people to -- there were companies out there that were able somehow, I don't know how, to make to fairly good tasting bread that was gluten-free. The gluten is what helps it to rise and most people like the breads that, you know, rise and are not so totally heavy. But the gluten, that is a problem and I have a little theory about that. I think that babies are being put on cereal way too young, before they have cut their teeth and they don't have the digestive enzymes to actually digest the cereal. Now that's my theory, and when you think about it, it sort of makes sense. Definitely a problem with -- I don't know what the percentage is, if it's 10% or what, but there's quite a number of people. There are more people, we've found, that were sensitive to the milk and cheese, the dairy products, that really caused so much mucus in their bodies and caused a lot of digestive problems, ear problems, joint problems, those kinds of things. And, so many people, if they got away from those products they felt enormously better.

KIRK HAMILTON: Let me ask you about the concept of sprouting a grain. Do you think that makes it more digestible?

DR. BARBARA STITT: They are. Our grains were sprouted for 24 hours before they were ground, which helped, but we really were not set up that we could make fully sprouted grains, breads. Because when you have them fully sprouted, and there are at least two beautiful companies that are doing that and they're in California. And you get away from the flour and you've really -- many people that have gluten intolerance can enjoy those sprouted breads. And I think that the nutrients in the sprouted breads are actually more easily digestible. We used flax, ground flax seed high in omega-3, that really helped in the digestibility and we could tell, we could look at people and tell if they are our customers or not because of the shining skin and hair and eyes. The sprouting at the beginning before it was even ground actually made a difference, and of course having all the nutrients in there really made a difference.

KIRK HAMILTON: I'm a little confused when people say it's flourless. If you take, let's say, a wheat berry and you soak it and you sprout it and then you grind it up, is that correct and that's what you use? And do you use yeast and other?

DR. BARBARA STITT: You do. You use the yeast to get it to rise.

KIRK HAMILTON: So the definition of a flour, then, is the grain ground up before you sprout it?

DR. BARBARA STITT: I think so.

KIRK HAMILTON: All right. When I called you to do the interview, you were getting interviewed by some people from Korea. So your work just kind of takes a life of its own and you keep going. Can you tell us a little about that and then we can wrap it here about what you really want to do next.

DR. BARBARA STITT: I was told by four people from the South Koreans from Seoul, Korea -- they flew in and they are the equivalent of our public TV, PBS. And they were doing a documentary on my book, Food and Behavior. And they had been using and recommending the Reed Diet, which was my name before Paul and I were married. My last name was Reed. The Reed diet, for years. And I had no idea of this. They asked permission to reprint Food and Behavior in Korean, and of course I gave them permission to do that. So it had taken a life of it's own. The book has been translated into Polish, it's gone all over the world. I have gotten messages from Australia, from England, from all countries because the junk food industry has spread throughout the world. And what they said in Korea -- of course they have all the fast food places, the chains, restaurants that use a lot of MSG, that use a lot of artificial things that entice people to overeat, and for the first time they are having the problems of ADHD. This had never in history ever been present in Korea. So what the PBS wants to do is to try to stem the tide and change back because a lot of the (cut off) people are still staying with their natural foods because most of them are grown from the farms. And this is what should happen in our schools here. If the food goes directly -- to make connection with the farmers and let the foods go directly from the farm to the school. So it was quite exciting and it does have a life of it's own. And I'm glad because what is more important than our children?

KIRK HAMILTON: So what are your next projects with regards to children and nutrition?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, I continue on a daily basis to have contact with people in all different states in the country and my passion -- I set a goal seven years ago that in 10 years to have every school in the United States serving fresh whole foods, fresh nutritional foods to the students. So that's just three more years. And that's the passion. I love the fact that it can now make -- victory gardens are being increased. I have one, there's one in the White House, at the White House, and it's being -- particularly because the healthiest our country has even been was during World War II, when we had the victory gardens. And you referred to healthcare costs -- those are medical costs, those are not health.

KIRK HAMILTON: Tell the audience how they can get your book, Food and Behavior.

DR. BARBARA STITT: Well, we have several things. I have the DVD and I have the book, Food and Behavior, all of our books, and another one, Road Map for Correcting Foods in Schools, and those are all available on our website, which is www.naturalpress.info.

KIRK HAMILTON: Dr. Stitt, I just want to thank you for sharing a big part of your life, obviously, and your work is invaluable because it's so practical and you've applied it and you've had results and you're right, we wouldn't have healthcare crisis and probably have much greater work productivity in this country if we just ate simple whole foods. So, I want to thank you. Is there anything you'd like to close with?

DR. BARBARA STITT: Not really, Kirk. I appreciate your picking this up because the media is what is going to spread it. People need to be exposed more and more because there are so many commercials and there's so much hype for the unhealthy stuff that people really don't realize that they're -- what they‘re doing to their bodies. So I wish them good health and I wish you good health, and wish myself good health.

KIRK HAMILTON: Thank you very much, Dr. Stitt, and we'll talk to you again.

If I could just summarize what I think Dr. Stitt said, and it's quite an amazing life. This is almost 40 to 50 years of nutrition application, very practical. It's that a whole food diet which is very simple, it's what we've talked about before, shopping on the perimeter of a grocery store, whole fruits, vegetables, whole grain products, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, and lean animal protein, avoidance of dairy products, sugar, caffeine, that can make a big difference, and she's used it in the criminal justice system, in recidivism, people who eat whole food diets tend not to do much crime. Also, they applied it in the business model at Natural Ovens Bakery. They fed their employees, which to me is just remarkable, at several dollars a day and again employees were happier, more productive, and had less healthcare costs. What a message. That could be for the business structure in our country. And then she finally, you know, focused back on children and nutrition and how important it is. You know, we're setting the stage not only for behavior problems but for the chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes in our children by feeding them refined food diets in schools, and gave the great story of the alternative school in Wisconsin which had many behavior problems that switched over to simply whole foods and they had very positive results.

So I want to thank Dr. Stitt for being with us today and sharing her wealth of knowledge and just experience on how very low nutrient dense diets and processed foods can aggravate behavior and health, while giving us ample evidence in the practical world that unprocessed whole food diets can not only make our physical bodies healthier, but also improve behavior remarkably.

I want to remind the audience of the free education resources that are on Prescription2000.com and, most importantly, I want to thank you, the audience, for listening today on this edition of Staying Healthy Today Radio. Until next time, Stay and Be Well.

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