Is Your Diet Harming Your Character?

Although diet has an obvious association with body weight and health, you may be surprised by the possibility that it can also have a significant influence on your character.

While it might initially be difficult to believe that your diet can have such a strong influence on your behavior, it’s well established that adequate nutrition is critical to proper brain development and function. Based on this, it should be reasonable to expect that altered brain function can influence your thoughts and emotions, and in turn, influence the actions that define your character.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Modern life is filled with drama. We have prison systems full of people who’ve committed horrendous acts, mental institutions filled with people who aren’t rational enough to be trusted in public, and our most popular television shows are based on the dysfunction and petty confrontations that consume other people’s lives. Even in our own lives, many of us are under an excessive amount of stress that causes us to act out of character in response to trivial issues and snap at the people we care about most, even if they don’t deserve it.

Although there are many factors that contribute to poor character and undesirable behavior, there’s plenty of evidence implicating poor nutrition as a major contributor. When Dr. Weston A. Price traveled the world during the early 1900s to study the health and eating habits of primitive cultures, he noticed much more than just the exceptional health that resulted from traditional diets based on natural whole foods. Throughout his research, Dr. Price was consistently impressed by the exceptional character and honor of each culture that he visited and the lack of need for any type of prison system.

In his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Price states the following. “I have referred to the Loetschental Valley in Switzerland, which, until recently, has been physically isolated from the process of modernization. For the two thousand inhabitants in that valley, there is no prison. In Uganda, Africa, the Ruanda tribes estimated to number two and a half millions, had no prisons.” Although this isn’t proof that the highly refined modern diet is a cause of the crime and poor character that are such a major part of modern life, it certainly suggests that something has gone awry.

Evidence of Mental Degeneration

Dr. Weston A. Price’s work clearly shows that poor nutrition causes physical degeneration. For every primitive culture that he studied, people who maintained their traditional diet of whole foods generally enjoyed exceptional health while those who adopted a diet including modern and refined foods were much more prone to disease and produced offspring with the same susceptibility. In many cases, these children were also born with physical deformities that were rarely found in previous generations. Unfortunately, these circumstances of compromised health were and still are the norm for the more “civilized” cultures that have perhaps been overzealous in embracing the advancement of technology.

Around the same time that Dr. Price was observing a rapid decline in health in primitive cultures who were beginning to eat modern refined foods, author Donald Laird was observing a general decline in the mental capacity of Americans. In his book, The Tail That Wags the Nation, Laird says:

The country’s average level of general ability sinks lower with each generation. … Although we might cite any one of nearly two dozen states, we will first mention Vermont by name because that is the place studied by the late Dr. Pearce Bailey. “It would be,” he wrote, “safe to assume that there are at least 30 defectives per 1000 in Vermont of the eight-year-old mentality type, and 300 per 1000 of backward or retarded persons, persons of distinctly inferior intelligence. In other words, nearly one-third of the whole population of that state is of a type to require some supervision.”

Although it’s obvious that there currently isn’t this many cases of such extreme mental deficiency, I suspect it’s because we know much more about nutrition now than we did then. However, mental disorders are still a significant concern, and despite our advanced understanding of science, we’re still trying to outsmart nature and are still neglecting some critically important principles that were a routine part of every day life for our ancestors as well as the exceptionally healthy cultures that Dr. Price studied. This means that we still have a tremendous amount of room for improvement, and I believe that the many remaining shortcomings of the modern diet are at least a partial cause of the poor character and mental deficiency that are still prevalent among today’s population.

The Link Between Physical Deformity, Mental Deficiency, and Poor Character

As a dentist, one of Dr. Price’s primary interests was to study the teeth, dental arches, and facial structures of the cultures that he visited. His observations clearly showed that those who ate refined foods suffered from rampant cavities, and that their proceeding generations of offspring consistently had underdeveloped dental arches and facial structures. In fact, the large percentage of children that need braces today shows that we’re still being affected which shouldn’t be much of a surprise since the typical modern diet is mostly based on refined foods.

In 1908, prior to Dr. Price’s research, Dr. Alfred Tredgold noted in his book, Mental Deficiency, that several researchers had found a much higher incidence of deformed dental structures in criminals and the mentally deficient than the rest of the population. Dr. Price confirmed these findings by studying the dental and facial structures of prison inmates, juvenile delinquents, and students with mental disabilities. Based on his research, he believed that the same factors contributing to underdeveloped facial structures and dental arches also contributed to the underdevelopment of the brain, particularly the pituitary gland, and in turn, the lack of intelligence and the presence of dysfunctional behavior.

With this evidence of poor nutrition causing deformity of the dental arch, and the observations that such a deformity is much more common among criminals and those with mental disorders, it’s only a matter of logic to infer that nutrition can have a significant influence on character and behavior.

A More Modern Link Between Nutrition and Behavior

A more modern understanding of human physiology explains another way in which nutrition can alter behavior. As Julia Ross points out in her book The Mood Cure, protein rich whole foods provide the amino acid precursors to the neurotransmitters that allow us to remain happy, motivated, and mentally balanced while most modern processed foods deplete these neurotransmitters and cause depression, fatigue, and hostility. We’ve all experienced these undesirable emotions at one time or another, and as such, should be well aware of their potential to influence our thoughts and actions. If this happens frequently enough, I believe that it can also influence our character. One of the primary reasons I believe this is because I’ve experienced it first hand.

How Nutrition has Changed My Character

Throughout my struggle with chronic fatigue, it would be a major understatement to say that exhaustion influenced my mood and behavior, and I firmly believe that diet was a significant part of this. Not only did a poor diet contribute to my fatigue, but it also impaired my mental ability to cope with it. Everything I did seemed like a major effort, even the things I typically enjoyed. Simply getting myself to work felt like a full day of work by itself. I was often depressed and irritable and barely had enough energy to worry about myself let alone other people. Although chronic fatigue and the unhealthy eating habits that I believe to have been a major cause of it didn’t turn me into a criminal, it clearly had a strong influence on my personality and character.

Of the many things I’ve done to improve my health, implementing a truly healthy diet has had the most impact. My moods are now much more balanced and I’m much more positive and sociable. I also have much more energy to devote to things such as my personal development and my relationships with others. In my opinion, these are all aspects that I consider to be improvements in my character. I’m certainly not perfect, and although diet hasn’t been the only influence, I believe that it’s made a significant contribution to the improved conscientiousness and awareness that I enjoy today. If nothing else, the changes I’ve made to my diet have at least established the foundation for these improvements and made them possible.

Other Examples of Good Nutrition Improving Character

In my opinion, character is derived from our many daily thoughts and the actions that they provoke. Based on this idea, anything that influences our thoughts can also influence our character. I’m not suggesting that nutrition is the cause of all instances of poor character and mental dysfunction, but rather that it plays more of a role than most people are likely to realize or are willing to believe. The following are a couple examples of this potential.

During the industrial depression, Dr. Price worked with a number of children that were from poor families and had rampant cavities. The typical diets of these children included highly refined foods such as white flour and vegetable fats. To help stop the tooth decay occurring in these children, Dr. Price ensured that they were each fed a lunch that consisted of natural whole foods including meat, vegetables, fruit, and freshly milled whole grain. They were also given cod liver oil and butter, both of which contain the fat soluble vitamins that Dr. Price considered to be so important to human health and development. In addition to the tooth decay in these children ceasing and many of the cavities healing without the need for fillings, two of the children’s teachers were amazed at how some of them transformed from being the worst performers in class to the best.

A similar, but more recent and impressive example is the change that’s taken place at the Central Alternative High School in Appleton Wisconsin. In 1997, the students of this school were described as rude, obnoxious, and ill mannered. Their behavior included fighting, interrupting teachers, storming out of classrooms, and using profanities in class. In fact, the school had enough problems with weapons violations that a police officer was appointed to its staff. Clearly, these students were acting in poor character. After implementing a school lunch program based on natural whole foods, the bad behavior stopped, and drop outs, expulsions, and drug and weapons incidents all dropped to zero. In addition, the teachers were surprised and happy to see that grades improved as well. How’s that for a change in character?

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