Stupidity on the Rise

    Stanford University researcher and geneticist Dr. Gerald Crabtree believes that we are seeing a decline in the intelligence of the human race. The researcher began his article, "I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues." Crabtree believes that this degeneration is associated with genetic damage. 
     Nutrition pioneer Weston Price wrote Nutrition and Physical Degeneration to make the point that modern foods, with their poor nutritional value, caused a decline in both physical and intellectual vigour.
    Since the day of Price we have exposed ourselves to not only refined foods, but also fluoride, pesticides, and high fructose corn syrup. All of these have been shown to weaken both mind and body. UCLA researcher Fernando Gomez-Pinilla found that a diet high in fructose made rats stupid. The effect could be prevented by omega-3 supplementation. See the link below for more details.
    With regard to fluoride, Harvard researchers wrote, "...children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ scores than those who lived in low fluoride areas..." Phyllis Mullenix who published one of the earliest papers on the brain-damaging effects of fluoride lost her research position 3 days after her paper was accepted for publication.
    Prenatal exposure to the common pesticide chlorpyrifos was shown to result in lower IQ in children at 7 years of age.
    Roger Williams found that the IQ difference between children on a "good" diet versus a "poor" diet amounted to over 22.6 IQ points. Sadly, we are doing a lot to ruin the brains of the human population and neglecting the sound nutrition which could improve the situation.
References:
http://bmi205.stanford.edu/_media/crabtree-2.pdf
Omega-3 Fatty Acids Prevent Stupidity from Fructose
Fluoride and IQ
Review of 36 Studies on Fluoride
Phyllis J. Mullenix, Pamela K. Denbesten, Ann Schunior, William J. Kernan, Neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride in rats, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Volume 17, Issue 2, March-April 1995, Pages 169-177, DOI: 10.1016/0892-0362(94)00070-T
Pesticides and IQ
Williams, Roger, Nutrition Against Disease, New York: Pitman Publishing, 1971, 65.