ADHD or a poor diet

[Top totty]

I was watching the Jamie Oliver food programme last night and could have cried. It was so very depressing to see what food is served to our children at school and in the home. It proved many things to me and the main one being that 'I THINK' a lot of children who have behaviour problems and are labelled with ADHD or whatever really need their diet changing and then their behaviour will follow (as completly proved on the programme)

I know there will be people on here ready to scream at me that I don't know what I am talking about etc etc and their child has ADHD and a Doctor says so. BUT surely not every single child really does have this problem and maybe a change in diet for the better and to drop all the rubbish might just help, at home and in school.

I have 3 children and have never had a behaviour problem with any of them and I make sure they get a good diet with the best food I can buy and lots of fruit and NO junk (turkey twizzlers spring to mind) I was buying some fruit last week which came to about �8.00 and my friend was amazed that I was prepared to spend that much on fruit. What amazed me more was that she was not willing to pay for decent food yet would happily hand over �10 for cigerattes every day. And yes she has a son with cronic behaviour problems and would love to have him labelled with ADHD.

[FP]

Just to say I agreed with you 100% and hope a lot of people see your posting.  I have always made food the main priority when feeding our family and good food needn't cost the earth.  My son is now at University and cooks fresh food for himself.  He reckons he spends less than his housemates do on junk food.

Fruit and Veg are the quickest convenient foods about.

What also amazes me is the amount of coke and fizzy drinks that people spend on.  What is wrong with good old water!

[Miss Zippy]

I agree with you.  I also think that if children are fed a regular diet of convenience food at home it points towards an upbringing where there is general lack of any discipline and education, not because of �poor� parenting necessarily but because the  parents simply don�t have time if both work full time and so go for the route of least resistance, i.e. letting the children dictate the menu at home. If children are allowed to get away with what they want at home then they are going to be badly behaved generally but this doesn�t mean they�re suffering with ADHD. The cost of convenience food is generally higher than fresh, raw ingredients so I don�t think money is a factor. Looking around at shopping trolleys, I bet most families spend much more than �8.00 a week on crisps and chocolate but only a few pounds on fresh fruit.

[Jules001]

I didn't see the programme, but I agree with you 100%. I used to work in a school where school dinners were not provided and children had to bring a packed lunch. Some lunch boxes were like party food, (cakes, biscuits, crisps, not a sandwich or piece of fruit in sight) and so you can imagine the behaviour in the classroom in the afternoon, children were either very hyper or extremely sluggish.

My own children (17 & 13) only have fizzy drinks as a treat , that is their choice and will choose water or milk over coke etc. I refuse to buy faddy food, ie Cheese strings, Sunny D . I always have a large bowl of fresh fruit in the house and they snack on things like grapes rather than sweets. We are not OTT they do have crisps and biscuits etc, but they know that these are snack items and not a meal replacement, oh and we all still sit down for a family meal every day.

[jake-the-peg]

I have two children, one with ADHD and one without. Both can react quite badly to excessive sugar or caffein especially when tired.

The main difference is that ADHD, Aspergers sydrome and the rest of the Autism spectrum disorders show themselves continually over a long period of time irrespective of diet.

You may not have had any problems with any of your children, but did your parents have any trouble with you? These disorders often have a hereditary component.

There is also a bit of a falisy that ADHD is characterised by "bad behaviour". My son's behaviour has always been pretty good - but keeping his mind on any single thing for more than a few minutes would try a saint.

Bottom line: Take cooking tips from Jamie, take health tips from doctors. 

[Loosehead]

I agree 100% TT, A load of do gooding liberals have invented "disorders" and "syndromes" to excuse any sort of behaviour. There was an article in the express about it this week with some startling stats, including the state benefits available for families with these kids. They then get prescribed retalin to cancell out the effect of all the junk food, e numbers etc. My son turns into a psychopath on cola or cheap sweets so he doesn't get them now we know. Some of the kids you are talking about existsonly on this cheap junk. They are given drugs to cancel it out instead of proper food. I'm sorry for the genuine cases getting lumped in with the 95% of cases just making excuses for bad diet, bad parenting. I too despair at people who'll spend a fortune on fags and booze and then moan if they have to buy some decent food for their children.

[Robinia]

Have written two very long answers & lost them!!

I'll keep this one short & just say that I too was saddened Top totty, especially when the children didn't recognise the fresh fruit & veg.  I didn't ask my boys what they wanted to eat when they were little as I see some parents in supermarkets doing.  Dinners were smaller versions of ours, (they even loved sprouts & swede) & eaten at the table. As Jules says sweets & chocolate etc weren't part of a meal.

Apart from a very brief spell at about 2 years of age when they get picky I had no problems at meal times!

[jake-the-peg]

Loosehead - my experience comes directly from day to day involvement.

Where does yours come from?

Wasn't that long ago that dyslexia was an "invented disease" before that kids were being beaten for being left-handed.

Sounds to me like some people have been reading the Daily Mule too much!

[Loosehead]

Yep Dyslexia that's another one. My kid can't spell must be dyslexia! There may be genuine cases but 95% are just excuses. I'm not great at spelling so I try harder, words look wrongly spelled to me when they are'nt but I'm not claiming to have dyslexia. Interestingly Dyslexia is one of the words that dyslexics spell ok!

Were not talking about left/right handed, ie physical things where talking about contrived mental "sydromes" designed so that lazy parents can con the gullible state out of benefits and excuse there own failings and an army of otherwise useless  "counsellors" and "coordinators" can charge a fee for "therapy". This coupled with huge fiscal interests of the drugs companies who want to sell their child altering drugs. I can't beleive how many people are taken in!

[jake-the-peg]

I notice you've avoided telling us all where you get your insight from.

Richard and Judy perhaps?

[Top totty]

Loosehead.

I have to agree with you. 

jake-the-peg

I think  if anyone saw the programme and more to the point the family featured who fed all their children complete junk then surely you would find it almost impossible to say that ADHD in 80/90 % of children is due to a poor diet and all the colourings and persetatives (Sp) found in the food they are fed.

Even the parents could not believe the change in the childrens behaviour once proper food was given and they themselves tried a little experiment and gave them back their old diet for 1 day and the result was badly behaved children that lasted over 24 hours.

Surely no one could disagree with hard evidence right in front of your eyes.

[Loosehead]

Insight Jake?, ok. Well partly it's from the sort of documentary that Top Totty is reffering to , partly it's from direct experience with my own kid's, I touched on this in my first reply. There is also the sheer numbers suddenly being declared with this disorder or that. From statistics, admitedly published in the express, but wouldn't their competitors scream foul if they where wrong?. Anyway for ADHD in 1995 there where roughtly 2000 cases, now their are 450,000. That cannot happen unless the diagnosis parameters have changed. Also There are the vested interests of which I speak. Note I did say in my other responses that there are genuine cases, if you are one of these then I'm not talking about you, but most are heaping there problems on the state. The Psuedo science mob love it because they have a "syndrome" or a "Disorder" to use as an excuse to charge huge fees and dish out the drugs like smarties in between taking their free jollies from the drug companies.

[jake-the-peg]

Diet certainly affects behaviour - even in adults - never had a chocolate craving?

However you need to be very very carefull about drawing conclusions from what seems to be hard evidence on a TV program that has been selectively chosen and edited down into a few scenes - science is littered with carelessly drawn conclusions from horses that could add up, to cold fusion.

I have no evidence for this but I personally suspect sugar rather than additives as the main culprit.

All that not withstanding I am utterly sick of hearing ill informed opinon about ADHD spouted by people who only know what the've read in tabloid rags.

I can only speak from my own experience in Oxfordshire but diagnosis took nearly a year and you can count the number of children on Ritalin or Equasym at my son's school on the fingers of one hand and yet we appear to be in the grip of overdiagnosis due to neurotic parents.

We have another word for all of this it's called prejudice and it aint pretty!

[Top totty]

I will tell you something else that is not pretty....

Children who can't behave in a classroom and continually distrupt the class with their out of control behaviour, parents who refuse to do anything about it and harp on about them having ADHD etc etc and 'its not my fault' always added on the end of it. Thats what I am sick and tired of hearing and seeing.

I have a 13 year old son who has the bloody bad luck to share a classroom with one such boy. The whole day is constantly spent trying to get this boy to behave and do as he is told, parents are a complete waste of time and space and constantly say he has ADHA when in fact the boy has no discipline in the home and is constantly fed a diet of complete crap.

So thats what I am utterly sick and tired of hearing and seeing every day, not forgetting the countless number of children I see being taken into places such as a certain fast food hamburger chain as a treat. What a laugh. I don't blame it on sugar, I blame it on the complete crap parents shove in front of the children and the food industry who keep on producing the rubbish that they do.  

[FP]

A bit irrelevant to this debate, but I have to say it.  My son does suffer from dyslexia.  In fact he can't even see black against white which changes a whole page of script into a complete jigsaw of words and shapes.  He now wears dark blue tinted glasses to read and it has proved almost 100% successful.   I had so much trouble in getting him diagnosed because the school thought parents who had children who couldn't read were were using 'dyslexia' as an excuse.  Whilst I agree that a lot of parents do use dyslexia, dispraxia ADHD as an excluse, please do remember that these are very real conditions. 

Incidentally my son has now achieved good results in A Levels and is now studying for a degree!

[jake-the-peg]

Congrats to FP's son that's a great achievement especially with so many perfect parents out there who's childen are only being held back by our less than perfect kids.

Hope they remember this first time the police bring them home in a squad car :c)

Enjoy the rest of the debate and don't forget to stock up on your booze and fags on the way home. 

[Loosehead]

Must be totally frustrating TT, I do sympathise, I'm luck with my kids school but I can see you have probelems. How many other kids' education needs to be affected before the school authorities act?

If you lived round here I'd buy you drink!

[FP]

Jake, I am not sure what you mean?

[dirtyharriet]

I had a lot of flak from the moral majority before my son was diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome. I was a single parent on benefits so was obviously scum. My son didn't talk until he was 4 and screamed everytime I took him to public places where there were a lot of people around, which was great fun when I picked my eldest son up from school every day. Obviously I was a bad parent and people even said to me "if I let them take over for a week they'd sort him out for me"

I've met people who think that there is no such thing as ADHD or Asperger's syndrome etc and the kids are just thick or badly parented. I think people need to be a lot more tolerant and should think before they tar everyone with the same brush. Oh and for the record my kids are only allowed sweets once a week and are given fresh fruit and veg every day.Their diets are very healthy, I don't smoke or drink and my son who has Asperger's syndrome has never misbehaved at school. The very nature of his condition means that he likes rules and routines and I have NEVER had to remind him once to do his homework. He may have odd ways of interacting with society and forming relationships, but he is less likely than most people to be brought home in a police car for burglary or drunkenness.

[Jules001]

I would just like to add that when I worked in the school as I mentioned before, I was actually supporting children with Dyslexia, ADHD and Aspergers so I know that these are real problems. However I still stand by my comments about unhealthy lunches given to children - your body is an engine and will only be as good as the fuel you put into it.

[FP]

I agree with you Jules001.