DIET AND DELINQUENCY

The suggestion that there is a causal relationship between diet and delinquent behaviour is not new. In 1893 Egleston, an engineer at Columbia University, attempting to sponsor research into nutrition wrote: ‘As a trustee of a large charitable organization … I have been using proper methods of cooking as a prevention of crime with great success …’ While in this country in 1900 Miles writing about prisons and the treatment of criminals suggested: ‘In these we have people who have somehow or other gone wrong. Most of us fail to reflect why; but few would deny that it might possibly be the food … If it were, then here is our chance. We have them in our hands as we have no other class in this free country: we can help them, if needs be, against their will, until with better health the better will itself may come.’