ADD and ADHD Vs Childrens' Diets

Sitting in a restaurant, waiting for my take out, a small boy of six or seven years old was bouncing off the walls waiting with his mom. He would ask a question of his mother, and without waiting for a reply, he would repeat the question over and over and over again. His mother's solution was to slap him every once in a while. He seemed to be a bright child, but his energy was over the top. Definitely a child (and mother) suffering from hyperactivity, or what is so loosely termed these days as ADD or ADHD.

Children are receiving such automatic diagnosis for ADD, ADHD, and hyperactivity, and their doctors are prescribing intense medications that seem to strip these children of their childhood as they draw into a zone of emptiness. The medications numb their personality and character as they just sit staring as if a patient in a psych ward. If a child is too active for the adults around him, or finds it difficult to concentrate in school, the first recommendation is to take him to see a doctor. Then the doctor prescribes the mind deteriorating drugs. A cycle we must educate parents and schools on how to break.

An overly active child or a child who struggles to pay attention is suffering from something so much easier to solve than by pumping them full of narcotics. As I watched the little boy in the restaurant, I fought the urge to tell his mother that he is showing clear signs of a food allergy. That is all it is. It may be something as simple as eggs or oranges, or it may be a bit more complex and be an allergic reaction to an ingredient such as a food color, a preservative, or a non-sugar sweetener.

The public school system seems to think they must serve all these pre-processed, pre-packaged foods to save money. The truth is, they have not taken the time to compare the price of a healthy menu with that of the one served daily to our children. The foods we fill our most precious possessions with are causing much more harm than we know. It seems to be a very vicious cycle as we feed these overly processed foods to our young, punish them for behaviors we are uncomfortable with, send them to a doctor, then put these high toxic drugs into their systems.