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Basic diet helps children with behavioural disorders


Tags: Excerpts from the Windmill

EINDHOVEN – Nutrition does make a vast difference in children suffering from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), Dutch researcher Lidy Pelsser has found. She confirmed her exploratory finding from the late 1990s through tests on 100 children between the ages of 4 to 8 by giving 50 children a basic diet of rice, a range of fruit and vegetables, meat, and sandwiches with a basic choice of spreads. The diet had a calming effect on two-thirds of the 50 children during the five week-test. In successive weeks the fifty were given one additional food item a week. As long as the addition caused no change in the children's behaviour, they would continue on to the next step. Eindhoven's Pelsser studied the findings with her fellow researcher psychiatry Prof. Jan Buitelaar of Nijmegen, who concluded that affected children should be offered such a diet and rely less on medication. The study was published in the medical journal The Lancet.