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Quotable....
“Food has profound effects on higher mental functions, even in well-nourished children eating ordinary foods in ordinary amounts. Foods can enhance problem-solving ability, optimize alertness, and improve mood and behavior in normal children. Contrarily, foods can also impair children whose behavior and learning are already in trouble from other causes, hampering their efforts to concentrate and maintain self-control. Over an extended period, food affects basic intelligence through effects on brain growth and by altering the way the environment changes the developing brain.”
— C. Keith Conners, in Feeding the Brain: How Foods Affect Children,
Perseus Publishing, 1989
“The jump from the well-known benefits of nutrition on cardiovascular health . . . to mental health is not really a leap at all; it is a small and simple step. Consider that all of the nutrients that are heart healthy, omega-3 fatty acids from fish and seafood, fiber-rich whole grains, dark green and other colorful vegetables, nuts, various vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants are not just for the heart. Research is showing that these same dietary items are equally important in the promotion of brain health.”
—Alan C. Logan in
The Brain Diet,
Cumberland House, 2007
“Recent genetic studies have contributed to a better understanding of the dynamic adaptive changes that occur in the developing brain as a consequence of genetic and environmental processes. Many industrial and environmental chemicals such as lead, methyl-mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene are recognized causes of neurodevelopmental disorders that lead to clinical or subclinical brain dysfunction. A number of these developmental disabilities arise from interactions between environmental factors and individual gene susceptibility.”
— Madhu Kalia, in
“Brain development:
anatomy, connectivity,
adaptive plasticity, and toxicity,”
Metabolism, 2008
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