Can Eating Candy Lead To Crime?

By MAD21

Ok. So my hubby sent me this story last week and when I saw the title, I was like, "Oh, common! Seriously?" I've had a few of those reactions this week, like here.

Yahoo News posted the story, "Eating Candy in Childhood Linked to Adult Crime." I almost didn't read it because it seems like just another one of those articles full of quotes from people/researchers who have gone off the deep end. But I was intrigued.

There seems to actually be some legitimate research to back up their claims. Even the researchers were skeptical at their results so they tried to eliminate and switch around their control factors. No matter what factors they changed, the results were the same.

"The research was led by Simon Moore, a senior lecturer in Violence and Society Research at Cardiff University in the U.K., who specializes in the study of vulnerable youngsters. Moore had been investigating the factors that lead children to commit serious crimes, when, during the course of his work, he discovered that "kids with the worst problems tend to be impulsive risk takers, and that these kids had terrible diets - breakfast was a Coke and a bag of chips," he says.

Intrigued by this association, Moore turned to the British Cohort Study, a long-term survey of 17,000 people born during a one-week period in April 1970. That study included periodic evaluations of many different aspects of the growing children's lives, such as what they ate, certain health measures and socioeconomic status. Moore plumbed the data for information on kids' diet and their later behavior: at age 10, the children were asked how much candy they consumed, and at age 34, they were questioned about whether they had been convicted of a crime. Moore's analysis suggests a correlation: 69% of people who had been convicted of a violent act by age 34 reported eating candy almost every day as youngsters; 42% of people who had not been arrested for violent behavior reported the same. "Initially we thought this [effect] was probably due to something else," says Moore. "So we tried to control for parental permissiveness, economic status, whether the kids were urban or rural. But the result remained. We couldn't get rid of it."

Well, I am a confessed sugar-aholic myself. I grew up eating as much candy as I could get my hands on. I haven't committed any crimes and I'll be 40 in the coming year. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones who escaped a life of crime. But in all seriousness, as I grew older, I realized how bad it was for us to eat so much sugar.

Candy is a "sometimes treat" in our house. Holidays and birthdays can be hard because it seems people always want to give our kids tons of candy. On those occasions we let our girls choose a few items to eat, and then we give the rest away. I know there are friends who think we make a big deal out of it. But my family's health is very important to me. And I'm going to do what I can to teach our girls a healthy way of living. Having spent a large part of my life over-weight, I know first hand what bad eating habits can do to you. I've been at a healthy weight for three years now and I'm trying my hardest to keep it that way. And hopefully, my girls will never know what it feels like to be over-weight.

Comments

[Kim]

This article on the correlation between candy and violent behavior caught my eye as well. It is an interesting finding, though we should not confuse correlation and causation; that is, just because two things are correlated does not necessarily mean there is a cause-and-effect relationship. It has been well established that an excess of sweets has a detrimental effect on our health, but I think more research is needed before we start worrying about candy causing violence!