I was recently scrolling through instagram and found an interesting video from Shawn Stevensen known as @ShawnModel on Instagram. He’s a health podcaster and an author of a few books, namely Sleep Smarter and Eat Smarter.
Shawn shares that people with nutritional deficiencies are much less likely to resolve things with their partner. He shares:
“So often, we get into conflicts when we are hungry or nutrient deprived. When we’re tired, when we’re stressed. We tend to translate that over to our partner. These are biological issues.”
He goes on to share that Oxford University did a study on prison inmates.
They tracked everything and got some great data from the experiment.
The research was simple. They took one group of inmates and gave them added vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids in the form of supplements. The other group of inmates had placebos.
This was a 3-month study. What they found was that the inmates with improved nutritional support had a 40% reduction in behavioral offenses. Simply by increasing their nutrition.
Even more shockingly, this group had a 37% reduction in violent offenses.
You can watch the clip from the podcast right here:
I’m grateful to Shawn Stevenson for sharing this data. This is important information to understand. When the brain, nervous system and body are deprived from the essential nutrients needed the brain’s ability to make wise decisions drops dramatically.
The quality of our food and nutrition really matters. Yet food in prisons is nutrient deprived and deficient in so many ways. How can we expect inmates to operate in a rational and grounded way mentally and emotionally when they are fed like dogs? They are fed genetically engineered foods that were opened from cans. Nothing fresh, nothing nutrient dense.
We could also take into account that many incarcerated inmates come from the inner city and were raised in food deserts. A food desert is defined as a low-income area that does not have fresh healthy food within a close radius.
Add poverty into the mix, no easy transportation to get outside of the city to visit just a regular grocery store that has fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of us take this for granted everyday.
If a 3-month study proved an increase in positive behavioral changes overall added with a drastic 37% drop in violence, what would 6-months of nutrients do? What would sunshine and fresh air with time around plants and nature do? What would a therapist or pastor do?
What can be added to the prison system that can really create change? As the late Tupac said…
It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat.
Let’s change the way we live.
And let’s change the way we treat each other.
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