Vitamin Pills Help Violent Prisoners Behave Better
By Celia Hall - Medical Editor

Vitamin pills dramatically improved the conduct of violent prisoners within a fortnight and could work on disruptive school children and other anti-social elements in society, researchers said yesterday.

The study, carried out in Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution, a maximum security establishment in Buckinghamshire, is the first evidence that good nutrition has a direct effect on behaviour. It involved 231 men aged 18 to 21, all volunteers. Some were given tablets containing vitamins and minerals, as well as fatty acids found in fruit. Others were given dummy tablets.

Within two weeks, among the prisoners taking the supplements there was a 37 per cent fall in serious reports to the governor and 33 per cent reduction in minor reports. This compared with 10 per cent and 6.5 per cent in those taking the dummy tablets. Overall, over a period of about five months, the number of incidents fell by 26 per cent.

The lead researcher, Bernard Gesch, a physiologist from Oxford University, said his team reasoned that, if a good diet helped to promote good physical health, why should nutrients not also work on the brain? Although a prison diet was balanced, he said, prisoners did not always choose the most nutritious food. The supplements gave the recommended daily doses of micro-nutrients.

While there was no formal follow-up, prison officers reported a 40 per cent increase in attacks on staff after the trial ended.

The £108,000 study was paid for by Natural Justice, a charity that studies the causes of criminal behaviour. The Rt Rev Hugh Montefiore, its chairman, said: "This is a revolutionary finding. We are eating more and more fast food; school meals are a matter of choice; we eat less fish; fruit and vegetables are beyond the means of some; and there is less home cooking with wholesome ingredients."

Gen Sir David Ramsbotham, a trustee of the charity and formerly the Chief Inspector of Prisons, said: "It seems to me that if these benefits do something to prevent anti-social behaviour, the earlier we start the process the better."

The Home Office welcomed the report as encouraging, but thought that the study was too small to draw firm conclusions.
Daily Telegraph, June 2002

PHILLIP DAY'S COMMENT: No doubt, and with little surprise, we will gaze on as politicians fail to act on this momentous news. Yet many behavioural studies have been carried out around the world which demonstrate that social violence and a poor, highly processed, low-nutrient diet form a firm connection. Once again, while responding to highly unpopular affairs with uncharacteristic haste, governments will nevertheless fail to prioritise this most simple of remedies for much of what ails us. Can we stifle any more the contempt we feel when we watch our leaders at election time lamenting the breakdown of social order and blaming one another for the country's woes? No doubt it is down to the public to make its anger felt at the inability and unwillingness of its leaders to implement firm measures to society's benefit. But the public can also make the necessary changes to its own diet to reap enormous benefits in both mental and physical health for the future.