ADHD - Diet or Drugs for the Classroom?

I have two friends that are teachers.  One teaches fifth grade.  She told me half of her classroom is on drugs.  Even with the drugs the kids have been getting more "unruly" than in years past, she says.  The other friend teaches PRE-school, four-year olds, where she says probably 20% of her class is taking some sort of drug.  At four?  What the hell is going on?  I'm sorry but I do not recall one kid on drugs when I was in grade school in the 50's.  I know.  That makes me old and out of touch right?  Well let me tell you, I think it is scary to remember how things USED to be compared to what is going on today.  I want to know WHY!  WHY?

I've read all about the "theories" .  Some say it's the increase in vaccines that kids get today.  Admittedly it is four times what we had back in the day.  Some say it is the genetic expression coming out from the moms who not only were vaccinated more than my generation, but also have been raised with toxins that were not around back in the day - the cleaning products, environmental toxins, the FOOD toxins.  In that case, yes, it's genetic.  And if that is the case, then these kids on drugs - what of THEIR kids someday? 

How do we clean this up?  How do we get to the heart of the matter if everyone is blaming everyone else and "experts" do not even agree on the cause of all this insane drugging of children?  Then there is the creepy smiling BigPharma industry, making huge profits selling parents drugs, standing in the wings and totally taking advantage of the confusion going on about behavior problems.

It is almost as if we've taken spaghetti noodles out of the box, all nice and straight, cooked them into a mess and now we want to put them back in the box nice and straight but they are all mixed up and dried to the pan in weird shapes.  How in the world do we fix this????

A recent article in Experience Life caught my eye.  It said "Food could be powerful medicine for the 10 percent (really?  only 10%?) of American school children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study in the journal The Lancet.

"Children in the Netherlands and Belgium between the ages of 4 and 8 who had been diagnosed with ADHD were divided into two groups.  One group was assigned a specific diet of hypoallergenic foods that included rice, turkey, lamb, lettuce, carrots and pears, and the other group was counseled about healthful eating but allowed to eat whatever they wanted.

After five weeks, 64 percent of the participants on the restricted, low-allergen diet showed a significant improvement in symptoms, with the severity of their symptoms dropping from moderate to severe at the beginning of the study to mild or nonclinical by the end.

Lead researcher Lidy Pelsser, of the ADHD Research Center in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, posits that the children helped by the diet may not actually have ADHD but rather a hypersensitivity to specific foods that result in ADHD symptoms."

Given that fast foods and (nutritionally devoid) pre-packaged convenience stuff adorns so many dinner tables in the US these days, might diet adjustments be a far better choice than drugs?  Just asking.  It is a place to start.  The food additives, color agents and chemical bastardization of our foods could have a substantial impact on the health and well being of children.

This study was not done in the US.  I saw a video on a similar trial done in New Zealand with remarkable results.  What, if anything, is being done HERE?  (Besides rampant distribution of drugs, that is).   Maybe diet changes won't "cure" everyone, but if more than half of US kids could get off drugs with an improved diet, wouldn't it be worth it to try?  Just asking.