Excerpts from Please Don't Eat The Wallpaper!

"I am saddened when I read the writings of experts who say that getting high school students to make any dietary changes is "virtually a waste of time." I disagree. It is my opinion that we must change our approach to teaching nutrition."

"As long as they are getting the same generic and conflicting advice (reduce saturated fat and eat more vegetables, but don't put butter or salt on them, but drink more milk) they will continue to make detrimental choices. They study how to decipher the information listed in the nutrition facts box, but don't see why the choice for lower fat often means higher sugar. They don't understand that it really doesn't matter if the product has a few less grams of carbohydrates or fats. They are still eating glue and plastic."

"One of my students showed me a diet diary of her previous day: gum, morning vitamins, health food bar, gum Tic-Tacs, healthy bar, Sprite, chocolate brownie, rice and mystery contents (school food), gum and more gum, mom's meat stew stuff, health food bar, sherbet, gum. She told me one of her teachers looked at it and told her she would be better off without the stew."

"In studies done by Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. M.D., animals fed a nutritionally deficient diet for several generations reveal some shocking discoveries. By the third and fourth generations many of the offspring were sterile. Many had severe spinal and extremity malformations. They were unable to stand on four legs. Cancer, tumors, a multitude of diseases and birth defects appeared in the majority of the offspring of the third and fourth generations, which suffered from deficient nutrition."

©2008 Dr. Nancy Irven. All rights reserved.