What Happened When an Entire School Received Nutritional Support? Click Play to begin.
Imagine you’re asked one simple question. What is the biggest problem facing education today? Some people would say it’s funding. Others would say class size. Others would point to curriculum, technology, or discipline. For decades, billions of dollars have been invested trying to answer those questions. But what if we’ve overlooked something much more fundamental? What if part of the answer begins inside the student rather than inside the classroom? That’s exactly the question a group of researchers decided to investigate. Instead of asking, “How can we teach children better?” they asked,”Could better nutrition help children learn better?
Today we’re going to examine one of the more unusual pilot studies ever published…
The Chicago Results Project: Dietary Supplements Containing Micronutrients Improve Student Attitudes and Performances.
Background
The study took place at Israel Academy in Chicago.
This was not an affluent suburban school.
Many of the students came from difficult circumstances.
Some had struggled academically.
Some had behavioral challenges.
Several were already taking prescription medications.
Many of these students had already experienced repeated failure in public schools. Some had been labeled as children who were unlikely to succeed academically. Without meaningful intervention, many faced a future with fewer educational opportunities and a substantially greater risk of negative life outcomes.
The researchers wanted to know whether improved nutrition could make a measurable difference in a school facing real-world challenges.
There are two other studies published at this website on this subject. The links to access these studies are below.
In light of those studies: Would the same thing happen if every student in an entire school received nutritional support?
How the Study Was Conducted
Every student participated.
Each child received the same chewable nutritional supplement three times each school day throughout one semester. They received the supplement in the morning, at noon, and at the end of the school day. No supplementation was provided on the weekend.
The supplement contained 13 freeze dried fruits and vegetables with natural sourced monosaccharides essential for optimal cellular synthesis. Also included in this chewable gelatin were plant polysaccharides from Aloe vera inner leaf extract that we all know as Acemannan, but which was under the registered trademark of Manipol.
Nothing else was intentionally changed.
Students stayed on their normal diets.
They continued any prescribed medications.
Teachers continued teaching exactly as before. Life went on as usual for each student at school and at home.
In other words…
the nutritional supplement became the only planned difference.
To measure results, teachers evaluated every student before the study began and again after the semester ended.
Students’ grade point averages were also compared.
An independent inspector even visited the school during the study to verify that everything was being conducted properly.
Plate 1
“So who actually participated?”
A total of fifty-eight students took part in the project.
Forty-one received traditional grades and could be included in the Grade Point Average analysis.
The remaining preschool students were evaluated through teacher observations.
The students were divided into five classroom groups.
While the amount of improvement differed from group to group…
the overall pattern was remarkably consistent.
Nearly every group showed improvements in teacher evaluations, academic performance, or both.
That set the stage for everything that followed.
Plate 2
Now the researchers asked a different question.
Instead of looking at individual students…
Did the classroom itself change?
According to the teachers…
yes.
They reported improvements in attentiveness.
Participation.
Cooperation.
Behavior.
And the overall learning atmosphere.
Notice what this graph is showing.
It isn’t measuring one child’s success.
It’s measuring whether the classroom became a better place for learning.
According to the teachers who spent every day with these students…
it did.
The graph focuses on the learning environment and reflects (after an entire semester of nutritional supplementation) a reduction in conflicts from 70% to 34%. A reduction in School and Classroom noise from 88% to 56%. And a reduction in classroom disruptions (of all causes) from 75% to 36%.
Plate 3
The next graph asks another important question.
How many students actually improved?
Instead of looking at averages…
this figure looks at percentages.
The graph reflects significant improvements across multiple categories including
Ability to grasp facts.
Class participation
Student /teacher cooperation
Student/ student cooperation
Home work done
Attention in class.
Most students showed measurable improvement.
That’s important because isolated improvements can happen by chance.
But when positive changes appear across numerous categories and among many students…
researchers pay attention.
Plate 4
Now we come to one of the study’s most objective measurements.
Grades.
Among the forty-one students who received report cards…
the average GPA increased from 2.98
to
3.63 during the semester
GRAPHIC
Plate 5
Grades tell only part of a student’s story.
Teachers also evaluated seventeen different aspects of classroom behavior.
Those evaluations improved from an average score of about 2.7
to approximately 3.6.
In other words…
teachers weren’t simply seeing better report cards.
They believed they were seeing better students.
Students who participated more.
Focused longer.
Worked better together.
And became increasingly engaged in learning.
Perhaps even more important…
the written comments from teachers supported the numbers.
The statistics and the classroom observations were telling the same story.
Beyond the Graphs
Numbers do tell us one story.
But teachers and parents told another.
Parents noticed the changes as well.
Attendance at the first parent-teacher conference after the study began was the highest the school had ever experienced because parents wanted to understand what was happening.
Perhaps this one observation says more than any statistic. Of course, statistics speak for themselves.
But, in addition to the numerical data collected throughout the study, the Director of Israel Academy provided a written summary based on various observations from faculty members. According to the report, teachers and parents noticed substantial positive changes among the students during the course of the study.
The faculty assessment noted the improved academic performance but beyond grades, teachers described improvements in classroom behavior, attention, participation, and the overall learning environment.
Among the observations reported were the following:
- Academic grades increased significantly.
- Twelve students were able to discontinue pharmaceutical medications, with improvements in activity levels reportedly observed both at school and at home.
- Completion of classroom assignments increased noticeably.
- Teachers estimated that approximately 95% of students showed improved ability to focus on classroom instruction and assignments.
- Attention spans were estimated to improve by 50% to 75% across the student population.
- Disciplinary problems decreased by approximately 90%, based on the school’s disciplinary records.
- Conflicts between students, as well as between teachers and students, declined dramatically.
- Teachers reported a reduction in their own use of prescription medications for tension and headaches, while coffee consumption also decreased significantly.
- Property damage within the school was estimated to decline by about 50%.
- Student attendance improved by approximately 45%.
- Tardy arrivals decreased by an estimated 45% to 50%.
- Reports of minor illnesses declined by approximately 75%.
Many teachers commented that students simply seemed to feel better. They appeared to have more energy, but that energy was directed toward productive classroom activities rather than disruptive behavior. Teachers believed students were able to concentrate on their studies more effectively than before.
Some students also volunteered their own observations. Several remarked that other students “got on their nerves less often,” suggesting that improvements were being experienced not only academically but also socially within the classroom.
When the study ended…
eighty-five percent of the students asked to continue receiving the nutritional supplement voluntarily.
What Should We Conclude?
Understand that this was a pilot study.
One school.
One semester.
A relatively small number of students.
Those limitations matter.
But so does consistency.
Teachers observed improvements.
Grades improved.
Classroom behavior improved.
The learning environment improved.
Parents noticed changes.
Each of those observations pointed in the same direction.
That was enough for the researchers to reach a simple conclusion.
Nutrition deserves to be studied much more seriously as one factor that may influence learning and educational success.
Closing
Government programs such as Head Start were built on the well-established understanding that hungry children struggle to pay attention, learn effectively, and perform well in school. In this study, however, the nutritional supplements were not intended to replace meals. They were given in very small amounts and were designed to complement a child’s normal diet rather than substitute for it.
The nutritional company explained that these supplements contained more than the familiar vitamins and minerals found in most nutritional products. They also included naturally occurring plant compounds that support normal cellular function and healthy biochemistry.
Among these ingredients were:
- Glyconutrients—naturally occurring plant sugars (monosaccharides and polysaccharides) that the researchers suggested may be present in lower or no amounts in modern diets because of food processing and harvesting practices. This Glyconutrient category is where Acemannan is included.
- Phytochemicals—plant-derived compounds, including antioxidants and other bioactive substances, that help protect cells and support normal biological processes.
- Other complex plant micronutrients that contribute to overall nutritional support.
The purpose of the supplementation was to provide a broader range of naturally occurring plant nutrients that the researchers believed might positively influence learning, behavior, and overall academic performance.
One final observation is worth making. The nutritional platform used in this study included Acemannan as part of its formulation provided by the company that took Acemannan to market initially in 1994 under the leadership of Sam Caster. This study was not designed to isolate Acemannan’s individual contribution, in the way it was done so in the other two related studies, so we cannot assign these outcomes to any single ingredient. But when viewed alongside the growing body of research we’ve explored throughout this series, and the many research-based videos at this website, its inclusion is certainly noteworthy—and yet another reason to continue asking thoughtful questions about the role Acemannan may play in human health.
And in respect to this particular study the question posed was what role might the right nutrition play in education more broadly?
Studies like this don’t end the conversation.
They begin it.
I hope you will always be careful to meet urgent needs and become heroes to your generation.
From the study …
One teacher described a student who had previously attended school only when brought by police officers. Before supplementation, the student reportedly showed little interest in learning, rarely participated in classroom activities, and remained socially withdrawn.
As the semester progressed, however, the teacher observed that the student began attending school voluntarily, interacting with classmates, participating in classroom discussions, and making measurable academic progress despite beginning well behind grade level.
Another teacher recounted the experience of a student who began wearing eyeglasses that had previously remained unused. When asked why he suddenly wanted to wear them, the student reportedly explained that he had not worn them before because he could not read. Now, he wanted to learn to read, and the glasses had become important to him. Teachers believed the accounts illustrated meaningful changes in student motivation and engagement that accompanied the improvements measured throughout the study.