Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 2: Biobehavioral Influences (1994)
Chapter: SUGAR AND BEHAVIOR
is that it is not feasible to test more than one dose of the dietary variable. There is also evidence that the order of diet presentation can influence the results of replacement studies. Finally, replacement studies are expensive with respect to both time and money.
Dietary challenge studies are used to evaluate the acute effects of dietary components. In these studies, behavior is usually rated for several hours after an individual has consumed the food component of interest or a placebo. Double-blind procedures are relatively easy to institute. The food component and the placebo can be packaged so that neither the subjects nor the experimenters can detect which is being presented. A crossover procedure in which the subjects are given the food component on one day and the placebo on another, with the order of presentation varied among the subjects, can also be employed. In addition, although not often done, more than one dose of the dietary variable can easily be tested in challenge studies.
The obvious disadvantage of challenge studies is that they do not provide information on the possible cumulative effects of a food component.
SUGAR AND BEHAVIOR
Of the many components in our diets, none has been condemned as frequently and as vehemently as sugar. Studies reviewed by the federal government indicate that sugar is the food people most consistently want to avoid and the one they look for most often on a food label's list of ingredients (Lecos, 1980). The use of sugar in our food has become a controversial issue involving scientists, dietitians, physicians, government officials, and private citizens.
The public strongly believes that sugar has negative effects on behavior. This belief has been fostered by popular reports blaming sugar for a variety of adverse behavioral outcomes including hyperactivity, depression, mental confusion, irritability, drug and alcohol addiction, and antisocial behavior (e.g. Dufty, 1975; Ketcham and Mueller, 1983; Schoenthaler, 1985). One of the most celebrated examples of our negative views of sugar is the case of San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White who shot and killed the city's mayor and another city supervisor. White's lawyers argued that their client acted irrationally and suffered from "diminished mental capacity" as a result of his overconsumption of sugar-containing "junk" foods. On the basis of this argument, which
