Eat Wrong to Live Rowdy, Doctors Say

Teen-agers’ consumption of junk food and soft drinks are to blame for the rise in soccer hooliganism, delinquency and weekend rural rowdiness, two leading nutritionists said in a report published today.

“You cannot hope for good behavior on a junk-food diet, whatever social improvements are made. If only the government, (soccer) authorities and schools realized this, we could start to make progress,” said Dr. Damian Downing and Ian Stokes of the British Society for Nutritional Medicine.

“Unruly schoolchildren almost always turn into delinquent teen-agers, and analysis of the diet of (soccer) hooligans would show a huge amount of nutritional deficiencies,” Downing and Stokes wrote in Healthy Living.

They want school shops to ban soft drinks, potato chips, ice cream and chocolate and instead serve fresh and dried fruits, sandwiches and pure fruit juice.

School cafeterias should quit selling french fries, sausages and baked beans and offer salads, fresh green vegetables, meat and fish, they said.