Charles Spender

How to Become Smarter
By Nikolai Shevchuk

You Think how you Eat!
This author brings a very interesting and unique view of the brain, and the correlation between what improves thinking and the foods we eat.
He has a Master’s in Molecular Biology and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Oncology. I enjoyed how he has personally tried several types of diets in an effort to find those that assist mental acuity as well as those foods that suppress our moods and thinking ability. What would you eat to improve your SAT or GRE scores? Want ways to improve your fluid intelligence—raw foods!
What foods suppress, or antagonize your mood and behavior? Want to learn a language? What is the fastest way?
He outlines critical elements for your success. The book has great appendices which outline various types of diets. For example, the anti depressant diet, and the anger management diet. He explains how they alter your body’s chemistry. There are interesting sections on ADHD, autism and ADD.

This book outlined what an IQ test consists of and how to improve scores. It explains crystallized social intelligence (measures vocabulary, general knowledge) vs. fluid socialized intelligence (the ability to understand and solve novel problems) which I found very interesting. The author explains “mental clarity”, “social intelligence,” and how they are measured. He explains ways to improve the brain and how to think better. I learned a lot and will use many of his ideas.
The book reviews control vs. placebo studies, standard deviation, significance and insignificance in a statistical study and how to interpret evidence from a study.
Breast fed vs. formula? Animal products significantly affect our thinking and our health. Eskimos for example eat raw foods without artificial ingredients. However, in industrial societies, today’s animal products have changed and have pathogens which our immune systems can’t handle.
Our brain can’t adapt to processed foods, chemicals, refined sugars, and artificial ingredients. Food additives, sweeteners, thickeners vegetable gums, table salt, MSG, and nitrates impair learning and affect alertness. This book covers an enormous amount of facts and allows you to look at being smarter in a new light. Be prepared- you will want to take notes. I learned a lot and will go through it again to digest all of this information.

I received a complimentary review copy.… (mais)

Russian-born microbiologist Charles Spender takes his years of self-tested theories about food and delivers this knowledge in an easy to read format called, "How To Become Smarter". Although I found the title misleading when considering the direction of the content, his book is crammed full of all kinds of information you won't find in other food resource books.

"How To Become Smarter" is Spender's comprehensive and in-depth study of foods, food additives, and elimination diets and their affect on mental clarity and mood. While well documented and interesting, he also responsibly notes several times in the book that these experiments are self tests and not clinically proven. His tests do have limitations, though as his results are subjective and based on opinion, there are no experimental or control groups utilizing various ages or ethnicities, nor could there be any blind or double blind set ups for validity. He does point this out several times throughout the text to avoid misleading his readers. Spender tackles such subjects as natural versus unnatural foods (ie. additives, flavor enhancers, coloring, etc), raw versus cooked foods and the chemical changes which occur as heat is added, and the effects of these foods on mood, concentration and such disorders as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivitiy Disorder (ADD/ADHD), testing, reading, and writing abilities, and a wide range of emotions and social tendencies. He offers elimination diet ideas for all types of intellectual, emotional, and social goals while pointing out that these diets are a temporary fix and not permanent solutions. The book ends rather abruptly after his chapter on social intelligence; Spender offers no wrap up or conclusion for the reader.

I did find Spender's "How To Become Smarter" title to be quite misleading; I was definitely not expecting a `food book'. Something like, "Mood Food", "Feed Your Mind", or "Anything and Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Food" would better suit the text while appealing to a wider audience (such as those interested in alternative, natural, and holistic health and wellness). With over 400 pages of details, observations, comparisons, research, suggested foods to eat or eliminate which relate to specific goals, the title "How To Become Smarter" didn't seem to do the book justice.

Charles Spender writes an intelligent, organized book on the mental and physical effects of food on the human body. Meant to serve as informational versus clinically proven fact, "How To Become Smarter" is a great resource!… (mais)