Meet Jack

It’s 8am and Jack has just walked into college. On the way he has already downed two cans of a popular energy drink – that is 27 teaspoons of sugar! He goes to his first lesson, and after half an hour the sugar crash hits. This causes him to feel extremely fatigued, affecting his brain’s ability to concentrate or process any information.

At breaktime he has a chocolate bar and a pizza slice, leading to another insulin spike. Due to the sugar and the white carbohydrate in the bread, it begins to drop again half an hour later, leaving him feeling exhausted once again.

With his concentration weaning it makes it difficult to retain any information from his last few lessons.
 
The pizza slice and chocolate bar are ultra-processed foods, meaning they have likely been packed with manufactured ingredients rather than actual foods. These ingredients are combined in a way to make them edible, but the food loses nearly all its nutritional content and lots of harsh chemicals are added, thereby likely throwing Jack’s body and brain a nutritional curveball.

 

 

 

 

 
Jack, as all teenagers do, is going through a huge mental change, his brain is forming new pathways, it’s figuring out which ones to keep and which ones to get rid of ready for adulthood. This is a natural process and one that is often difficult for teenagers.  Meanwhile, because of his food choices, he unfortunately is currently forming an addiction to dopamine, which is the hormone released when we eat these types of processed, high sugar foods. It is our reward system, which tells Jack that he feels good, so he keeps eating these foods. 

However, the impact of dopamine can make us completely forget our basic needs in order to gain this high. On top of this, constant insulin spikes and drops begin to make Jack feel anxious as he struggles to cope: he can’t sleep, his anxiety leads to depression, and this begins to affect Jacks attendance, which in turn affects Jack’s grades.

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Jack leaves college failing his A levels. He also leaves college addicted to sugar and ultra-processed food, and this addiction stays with him through adulthood, as does the depression. Jack is unaware of the huge impact the foods he is consuming are having on his brain.
 
Why would he? He was not taught about it. So, he continues to eat like this, Jack is overweight, and his body and brain are suffering, he develops diabetes and a few years later he develops heart disease and eventually dies prematurely, from heart disease, cancer, dementia, stroke, or a cardiovascular disease, take your pick. These all develop from chronic inflammation which is directly linked to diet.
 
Do you think that is quite a dramatic story?

 

 

 
Unfortunately, it is not. This is very real. Around 50 percent of deaths worldwide, are attributed to chronic inflammation.

Jack is just one of hundreds of thousands of pupils who go about their days like this.

We are not educating on this, and we are wilfully choosing to ignore this huge problem within our society and within our education system.
 

At school and college, we learn the square root of 68 and how many wives Henry VIII had, but we do not learn about something that is so fundamentally important that it affects our whole existence and wellbeing every single day.

As a Safeguarding and Wellbeing officer I spend my days talking to young people with anxiety and depression.

The number one thing all these young people have in common is their diet:  high in sugar and ultra-processed foods. Students seem shocked when I explain to them how the food and drinks they are putting into their bodies could be causing serious negative impacts on their brain.
 
No other activity that we take part in everyday has more power to change your biology than what you eat.
 
Of course, they are shocked, because this is something that has never been taught to them, or to us.

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