Social environments influence the biological expression of genes throughout the body and in specific regions of the brain.22 Compassion and acceptance create positive social energy that has favorable biological effects. Favorable human interaction alters chemicals at the cellular level, resulting in beneficial effects on behavior, food choices, and health outcomes. Humans increase their likelihood of survival by cooperating and collaborating with other humans. Our adaptable DNA “software” also enables our cells to adjust to environmental changes, but this can be positive or negative depending on both social environment and nutritional exposure.
The discovery that core traits are determined by socially regulated genes challenges some of our most basic assumptions about people. Food choices, food quality, food diversity, and food availability all interact with social forces and human-to-human interactions to affect our behavior and health. These discoveries should have fundamentally altered how we think about problems of crime, poverty, and chronic disease, but because of our ignorance, we search for solutions in all the wrong places. Author Thomas Kuhn explains why important discoveries such as this often go unnoticed. He notes that scientific advances occur in a “series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions”; in each revolution, “one conceptual world view is replaced by another.”23 Breakthrough discoveries in science are rare because even the brightest minds are often reticent to embrace new ideas that violate accepted worldviews. Max Planck, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, once said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”24 Though it’s not easy, we must be willing to change our beliefs in light of new information.
Our DNA responds to changes in the environment and to the food we consume; however, it doesn’t do so randomly. Chronic disease and poverty do not generally result from inferior genes or DNA malfunction. Rather, these are predictable responses to negative social and dietary influences that can spread like an infectious epidemic throughout a community. When humans individually or collectively experience increased psychological stresses, their genes are affected and their stress-eating behaviors and addictive tendencies are enhanced.
As discussed, species’ genetic makeup can react to stabilize the survival of interrelated species when food is plentiful and when it is scarce. However, DNA was not designed to operate in the presence of fast food or junk food in the midst of a toxic social environment. Obesity does not occur in the wild. Like any device, our DNA will not operate as intended when its environment is abused.
Hundreds of years ago, the leading causes of death were infectious diseases and malnutrition. Today, in developed countries, most people die from conditions that arise because of overeating a low-nutrient diet. The ubiquitous presence of unhealthy foods transforms entire populations, creating negative physical and social symptoms with global consequences.
Teaching and practicing empathy, compassion, and goodwill toward all, especially those who are different from our social “gang,” is an important goal of health education and is also important for a shrinking earth with a growing population that is straining our limited resources. Compassion benefits us personally and collectively. We know from a growing number of studies that people who are more hostile and uncompassionate often have a reduced ability to control food intake.25 They are also more likely to indulge in snacks, fast food, and alcohol consumption.
In clinical studies, people with eating disorders are routinely shown to be anxiety-prone, pessimistic, immature, irresponsible, hostile, and vengeful.26 The connection between diet and personality is not a random convergence. Specific eating patterns and social situations have very specific effects on behavior and perceptions. These effects from eating nutritionally compromised fast food are linked to specific compounds and structures in the brain that make people more apathetic, lonely, compulsive, and aggressive. Fast food exposure can unravel the very social fabric that holds us all together.
It doesn’t matter which comes first—social oppression, social isolation, or dangerous eating. This human-created vicious cycle of fast food and social stress creates a downward spiral of increasingly injured individuals and populations.
We must strive to understand the interaction between the social environment, our genes, and fast food. Fast food is not just altering our future health, but weakening us genetically and magnifying this damage in a frightening way in future generations. This means more unintended consequences for our children and grandchildren. This issue demands serious attention by our nation’s population, including the media, health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and politicians.
CONUNDRUMS OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT
Diet and social status have been intertwined in ways that are not immediately obvious. As we saw in Chapter 4, in the years following the Civil War, nutritional deficiencies from a corn-based diet made Southerners more violent. However, this by itself did not explain the systematic violence directed at the upwardly mobile, black middle class that followed—a tragedy that historians have struggled to explain. According to scholars, deliberate acts of mass violence always involve conducive environments, destructive leaders, and susceptible followers.27 Unmet needs and a negative social environment make people susceptible to committing such acts.
At the close of the Civil War, poor white people in the South did not have good food, educational opportunities, or hope for a better future. Southern leaders responded by doubling down on the idea of white supremacy. This in turn gave the illusion of status to otherwise low-status people. In the animal kingdom, socially disconnected individuals stay to themselves. In sharp contrast, in human social circles socially disconnected people can sometimes rise to authoritative positions while displaying and utilizing contempt, bullying, and arrogance.
Antisocial behavior starts in childhood; school-aged bullies oppress nearly six million school children every year.28 Bullies seek status and empower themselves at the expense of others, whereas the most popular kids acquire status by engaging in more favorable cross-gender interactions.29 Research indicates that children who engage in friendships with a mixture of males and females in their peer groups lack the desire to bully others. Research confirms that these bully-resistant kids are more empathetic and more socially perceptive.30 They can effectively interact with children outside of their immediate social circles; this is the essence of social energy. But what is more fascinating is that this enhanced social energy leads to healthier eating habits, while bullying is strongly associated with unhealthy diets.31 It works both ways: Good nutrition leads to a healthy brain, which results in proper social functioning; but poor social functioning can make people susceptible to the attraction of addictive eating and poor nutrition.
Without positive social energy, effective dietary change becomes very difficult. Most Americans have a choice about what they eat, but in many impoverished communities around the country people simply don’t have a choice because healthy food options are not available.
Regional opportunity and outcomes vary not just in the United States, but worldwide. The Global School-Based Student Health Survey (GSHS) carried out among middle school students in nineteen low-or middle-income countries showed that the prevalence of bullying ranged from 7.8 percent in Tajikistan to 60.9 percent in Zambia.32 These rates mirrored the broader levels of violence in each of these cultures, which suggests one or more common causes. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the intentional homicide rate in Tajikistan in 2011 was 1.6 per 100,000; in Zambia in 2012 it was 10.7, or nearly seven times higher.33 The diets of people in Zambia and Tajikistan are very different. The Tajikistan diet consists of a variety of foods, including carrots, turnips, apricots, melons, and dried fruit.34 According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Zambians subsist predominantly on maize, a kind of corn.35
Unhealthy diets adverse
ly affect all of our social relationships, including those between parents and children, and poor social relationships affect the quality of our diets. Parents are supposed to lead their children gently into adulthood by teaching them how to relate to, appreciate, and care for other people. However, social divisiveness and poor nutrition have weakened the potential of human culture for peace and happiness.
Researchers compared the interactions of middle-class parents and their children with those of lower-class families.36 Their interaction styles differed dramatically. In comparison to lower-class mothers, middle-class mothers were less controlling, less disapproving, and more informative. Middle-class mothers told their children what they were doing right, while lower-class mothers told their children what they were doing wrong. Researchers found that the better the diet and the more the family ate healthfully, the better the children were raised. Studies also reveal that low-income families are less likely to eat together,37 which is relevant when you consider that researchers have found that eating together as a family makes children more resilient.38 Once again, we see how the cycle of social energy and diet can work to either improve quality of life or lead to increased suffering. Unfortunately, if nothing is done to change things, poverty will continue to perpetuate poverty.
We have seen how World War II altered how people around the globe ate. Besides leading to the rise of fast food restaurants, the war also contributed to an increase in the number of women working outside of the home and this trend continued in the 1960s and 1970s. The family meal became another casualty that researchers say led to a number of problems, including the deterioration of diet quality, especially among the young, an increase in eating disorders, and a decline in family relationships.39 The family meal is an opportunity for positive social contact. Fewer family meals translates into increased antisocial behavior outside the home. For example, problematic school behaviors, early sexual activity, risk of suicide, and increased alcohol and drug consumption have been associated with kids eating alone.40 Other research reveals that families of gang members are less likely to eat together and are less likely to express positive feelings toward one another.41
A twenty-year study using data collected from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) found that social isolation radically affected food choices and health outcomes of adults too.42 People who ate alone ate fewer fruits and vegetables and were more likely to be lonely. Loneliness shortens life span, promotes obesity and diabetes, and impairs neurogenesis, the ability of the brain to grow and repair itself.43 It reduces a person’s desire to eat healthy foods or to connect socially. Such people then become drawn to unhealthy foods and negative influences, which further alters brain structures, making people compulsive, insensitive, and aggressive.
Americans are more alone than ever.44 One-third have no contact with those living near them. Today, poor people of all races are increasingly concentrated in high poverty areas with less access to social resources, which is creating an environment for catastrophe.
THE POWER TO CHANGE
Fast food genocide is happening now and creating many of our nation’s problems, and the potential is there for further deterioration of subsequent generations. Only multifaceted solutions can stop it:
•Increasing positive social interactions
•Expanding educational and motivational efforts in communities
•Encouraging all ages to say “No” to fast food
•Demanding availability of and access to not just produce, but quick and easy healthy food options for everyone
All of these are necessary parts of an effective overall solution. A healthy diet will not only prevent and reverse serious chronic disease, but also enable millions to rise above adverse circumstances. There is evidence that tremendous benefits can come to those in most need.
Such evidence comes from prisons. Few places demean and debilitate people more than prisons. But multiple studies on prison populations show benefits when inmates’ nutrition, self-worth, and social interactions are constructively addressed. For example, there are efforts across the nation today to have prisoners raise organic fruits and vegetables. In California, Washington state, and the city of Philadelphia, some prisons have state-of-the-art composting systems, farms, and organic agriculture vocational programs. On both coasts, rehabilitation is literally taking root as prison yards are transforming into thriving patches of strawberries, squash, cabbage, lettuce, eggplant, and peppers. Some of the produce feeds the inmates, and the rest goes to feed the poor. Early studies of gardening programs in California prisons found that fewer than 10 percent of participants returned to prison—a dramatic improvement from the U.S. rate of more than 60 percent.45 The curriculum includes not just gardening and farming instruction, but classroom lessons on ecology, emotional intelligence, and leadership.
Even nutritional supplements have been shown to make a difference. A randomized, placebo-controlled trial in a British prison tested the association between antisocial behavior and nutritional status. Compared with the test group, prisoners given micronutrient supplements had 26 percent fewer violent incidents.46 The supplements included vitamins, minerals, and the critical omega-3 fatty acid DHA. A research team in the Netherlands replicated the study with similar results.47 These short-term studies reveal that missing micronutrients are a significant factor affecting behavior. In the long term, nutrients are best obtained from a healthy diet. But we know that without positive social interaction, people will likely have trouble adhering to a healthy lifestyle.
Another prison program produced even more dramatic results. In 1997, Terry Mooreland, the CEO of Maranatha Private Corrections, took over a five-hundred-inmate private prison in California’s San Bernardino County, where prisons had become a revolving door for career criminals.48 Inmates were given the option to enter a program called New Start where they agreed to adopt a healthy vegan diet, study religion, receive occupational training, and learn how to manage their anger. The San Bernardino recidivism rate had languished at 95 percent before Mooreland took over. During the seven years the New Start program was active, the recidivism rate fell below 2 percent. Inmates who opted for the traditional California Department of Corrections (CDC) routine continued to be fed the standard prison rations, did not participate in rehabilitative programs, and were housed in a separate unit in the prison. An astounding 85 percent of inmates agreed to room on the “vegan” side of the complex. The impact was amazing; fighting and racial strife ceased on the New Start side. On the CDC side, racial tension and gang violence, like the food, remained unchanged. The difference on the New Start side didn’t end with the food; prisoners were also taught social skills while their counterparts in the other wing were left to their own devices. Social energy in the new wing increased as inmates became more friendly. More importantly, the odds of inmates from the New Start side returning to prison were significantly reduced.
Inmates experience a lack of positive social interaction long before they enter prison. According to the Justice Policy Institute, most inmates get caught up in what’s called the school-to-prison pipeline.49 In some schools, kids are treated more punitively and suspended and expelled at rates that far exceed the national average. This type of treatment leads to further isolation and decreased social health. Many of these kids come from homes where families don’t eat together. Many end up on the streets and one step closer to prison.
One school decided it would no longer be a part of the pipeline. Appleton Central Alternative Charter High School (ACA) opened its doors in 1996 as a refuge for students who were severely at risk. Despite the fact that students who were struggling in conventional school settings got individualized attention, misbehavior, truancy, and failing grades were common. A local business began supplying ACA with free lunches in 1997. It brought in round tables, set up a lunchroom, and teachers ate with students. The following year, the business expanded the program to include breakfast. This wellness program provided healthy fo
od to the school for five years.50
Before the implementation of this nutrition and wellness program, ACA had no kitchen or lunchroom with tables and chairs where students could sit and eat together. The only food and beverages available in the student lounge came from vending machines that sold sodas, candy bars, and chips. Students purchased this junk food from the vending machines throughout the day while sitting on couches or the floor, or they ate at computer stations.
ACA staff reported that students’ disruptive behavior and health complaints diminished substantially after the wellness program was established. Students also seemed better able to concentrate. One social worker noted that the “reduced amount of sugar and processed food in the students’ diets allowed them to be more stable and that this makes mental health and anger issues easier to manage.” One teacher said she saw a decrease in impulsive behaviors, fidgeting, and foul language. Fewer students were referred to the office for discipline, and fewer students complained about headaches, stomachaches, and fatigue. In the classroom, teachers were able to cover a greater amount of material at a more challenging level. The principal recorded that negative behaviors, including vandalism, drug use, dropping out, expulsions, and suicide attempts, ceased. State reports filed on student behavior pointed to improved rates of attendance and lower rates of suspension and truancy.51
ACA stumbled upon a basic principle. The presence of unhealthy foods makes socially impaired students difficult to teach. Similar to merely making healthy foods more available to urban inner cities, the problem with fast food diets is not solved by simply making healthy foods more available. In most cases, obesity levels and other social problems remain unaffected.52 ACA was different because it changed more than the menu: It simultaneously increased the school’s positive social energy. Round tables where students and teachers could interact and eat together replaced vending machines. Though the ACA diet was less than ideal, it was a vast improvement over the way students had been eating before. They consumed more vegetables and fewer high omega-6 oils. The improved diet and increased social energy led to a change of behavior inside and outside of school. Many ACA graduates went on to college, including some who might have otherwise ended up in prison.
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