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around our bodies - like electrical transmission wires. Both of these
cell groups start growing in the womb, and continue during the first few years of life.
If the baby is poorly fed in those vital early years,
it will not produce all the nourishing glial cells it needs. And if some foods are
missing from the expectant mother's diet, the nerve pathways around the brain and body
will not be efficiently insulated.
As American researchers Brian and Roberta Morgan put it
in their highly-recommended book Brain Food: "The human brain begins growing
in the womb, and the majority of this development does not slow down until the age of six.
Growth in the brain of the fetus, infant and young child is time-dependent. This means
that the brain grows in specific stages at specific times. If it does not have all the
nutrients essential for its growth at those times, damage or malformation can result which
cannot be corrected at a later date. A developing infant who is fed poorly during its
period of brain growth may be left with learning disabilities which will remain for the
rest of its life, no matter what is done at a later date to correct the nutritional
deficiency."
Scottish Professor Michael Crawford sums up ten years
of research into the impact of nutrition on infant and fetal brain growth: "Wherever
we've found low birth-weight babies, small head circumference and intellectual deficits in
infants, we've found that right across the board the mothers concerned had diets before
and during pregnancy that were deficient in a large number of nutrients."2
Even in developed societies such as Britain, the United
States and New Zealand, at least ten percent of babies continue to arrive with low
birth-weights. Generally that results from the mother's poor diet, smoking, taking drugs
or being affected by toxic substances such as lead.
Crawford is amazed at the lack of education on diet and
nutrition. And he says poor diet before birth affects more than the brain. Seven separate
studies indicate that later heart problems, high blood pressure and many strokes have
their roots in poor diet before birth.
One of the major deficiencies is fat. But a special
kind of fat. "Unfortunately," says Crawford, "we've come to think of fat as
lard and dripping. But what the fetus really needs is a highly specialized fat - the
essential fats we call them. They're the fats you need to build cells, especially brain
cells, and not the sort of fats that animals and humans dump on their waistlines.
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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