Thursday, October 15, 2009

This just in: Chocolate leads to violence!

I'm sitting unmolested at my table at parent-teacher conferences (8 total hours, 12 total visitors), reading the news (I visit several news aggregators to find stories that interest me), and here's the one that grabbed my attention.

To sum up the article: a new UK study hypothesizes "that excessive confectionery consumption increases the likelihood of violence in adulthood." The author of the article goes on to ridicule the hypothesis, but I think it brings up some reasonable ideas. Is there a correlation between the laxity of discipline at home that leads to "daily sweets consumption" and the transfer of that same instant-gratification mentality to other areas?

I'm not convinced that commentary here is necessary. Just give me my Thin Mints!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mike,
This is me using your blog to test out my OpenID login for comments. You're the type of friend who I can count on not to be offended.

Well, while I'm here I should at least say something about the post itself....

I like your hypothesis. A general breakdown of a civil society probably does owe at least a little to an overall lack of self-control (even dietary) and delayed gratification.

Amanda said...

I can tell by your parent/teacher breakdown that you no longer teach freshman English. I used to beat everyone but math teachers at conference time. Sigh--now I kinda miss it. I think you should add to your hypothesis that chocolate not be given out at P/T time.