The influence of food on behaviour

Yesterday I saw a documentary about the influence of food on behaviour, in both people and animals.

This research is done on animals, because aggressive animals is a serious loss to the industry. Fast carbohydrates are the biggest problem. If these have released their energy, and the animal has to wait until the next meal, it becomes aggressive, because the lack of energy makes the brain function 'abnormally'. Therefore they should give them slow carbohydrates. A lack of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) is also a problem.

The same applies to people. Giving prisoners better food - fruit and vegetables instead of junk food and candy - made them less aggressive, an effect that lasts about 10 days. A double blind study showed that children who daily got a pill with micronutrients, were 50% less aggressive, and studied 100% faster (which I find almost unbelievable, but that's what they said). If this becomes a standard practice, this might make children a lot smarter and nicer - see also my previous post! I'm afraid some parents will object to this, saying that pills "aren't necessary", that they should eat fruit instead, but these pills are cheaper, more effective and safe.

I wonder how hard it would be for fastfood chains to add micronutrients to their food, they have a lot of customers. I don't think the cost is big, considering the price of the pills in stores, and the price to add them en masse is probably even less. But small margins probably matter to these companies, and the somewhat addictive effect of junkfood even more, so the sugar probably won't be taken out.

Education is evolving

Yesterday I had an introductory course in MindMapping, a technique to put a lot of information on a single A4 page. If you don't know it, type the word in a search engine, you'll find a lot about it.

The instructor told us that this rechnique is also being introduced in schools. She showed us a coursebook about economics, which had a mindmap page for every chapter at the end of the book.

A few months ago someone else told me that in kindergarten, children now learn to tell other children what animal they are like. A shy person would be called a rabbit, aggressive children would be called a tiger. In this way they learn to distinguish personalities, and when other children tell them what animal they're like, they start to think about it, and may adjust their behaviour.

Those two examples prove that education is evolving in an amazing way. Children growing up today will likely learn better, and have nicer personalities. The future looks bright :-)

Speed limit in the US

Today I read an interview with John Cleese, who now lives in the US. One of the things he told, is that one day he was driving on a crowded road, carefully keeping the speed of his car somewhat under the speedlimit that was indicated clearly.

But then a policecar stopped him, because he was driving too slow, slowing down the traffic. He was very surprised, and explained that he carefully staid somewhat under the speed limit. The cop replied that the signs with the speed limit are only advisory!

Funny, but somehow it makes sense. If you move along with the traffic, you're less likely to have an accident than when you're driving a lot faster or a lot slower.