Paul A. Stitt, MS, CNC and Barbara Reed Stitt, Ph. D, MGA have devoted most of their adult lives to helping others gain and retain good health through proper nutrition using fresh whole foods, exercise and drinking enough water for their body mass.
Paul earned his Masters Degree in Biochemistry. He founded Natural Ovens Bakery in 1976 with the goal of producing whole grain breads, bagels and cereals with NO bad fats, artificial additives or appetite stimulants so people cannot overeat. For many years Natural Ovens Bakery Breads were delivered to over 1200 supermarkets in the Midwest and shipped to homes and stores in all 50 states. He also extensively studied the wide spread deficiency and vitally needed Vitamin D. His book on Vitamin D is highly researched and very informative. Paul authored five books and has been a featured guest on numerous national and international TV and radio programs. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals and is an International speaker and consultant.
Barbara worked as a Chief Probation Officer in Ohio until she met and married Paul in1982 and joined him in WI. Her book Food & Behavior describes her 20 years of correcting behavior by correcting the body chemistry; that became part of an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, June 2, 1977. She testified before the Select Senate Committee on Human Health in June, 1977. She has been interviewed on numerous national and international TV and radio shows and featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles.
She is the author of five books and publisher of a 14- minute DVD/Video on the relationship of food, behavior, health and academic ability. This simple, inexpensive, basic concept addresses the huge problems presently facing our youth–obesity, diabetes, behavior and learning problems.
For 18 years, Paul and Barbara worked to provide fresh nutritional foods in hundreds of classrooms in WI, IL and MN resulting in positive results reported each school year. For 14 years in August, they sponsored a two-day training seminar to guide teachers, parents and other professionals on how to teach and provide good nutrition and good health to students.
In 1997 they were invited to come into the Appleton, WI Alternative School. They installed a kitchen with two cooks trained in how to purchase, prepare and serve fresh whole foods. They underwrote the program for 5 years. With nothing else being changed, results were so positive that, within a year, the superintendent and school board required their food service to provide healthier foods for the entire school district of 15,000 students.
You may review the exciting changes over 5 years in the 14-minute DVD/video offered on this website. The Appleton Alternative School program is featured in the award winning film, Super Size Me! The Feingold Association has also publicized the results of the study in their National Newsletter, Pure Facts and on their website: http://www.feingold.org/PF/wisconsin1.html
The 14-minute DVD has traveled to thousands of schools across the nation and other countries. In April, 2007 it was put into the hands of 1600 integrative medical students attending a national training conference. Our children deserve a better chance for better health! After 30 years, Natural Ovens Bakery was sold in 2007 and Paul and Barbara retired to VA. This site was created to make it easy for you to order their life-altering books and DVD.
CARA's second Abram Hoffer Lifetime Achievement Award goes to........Barbara Reed Stitt, PhD!
An article about Dr. Barbara Reed Stitt's amazing results with probationers when she served as Chief Probation Officer in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, first introduced CARA's Executive Director to the usefulness of food in the treatment of addiction. Like Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD the namesake of this award who bucked conventional wisdom to focus on the biochemical basis of addictive and mental health disorders, Dr. Stitt was willing to stand out among her peers doing what worked even if it wasn't the standard of care in her day. She fine tuned her program for seven years until courageously revising the modus operandi of the Cuyahoga Falls Probation Department, beginning in 1970 and only ending in 1982 when she married biochemist Paul Stitt and moved to Wisconsin. Thus Dr. Stitt has been proving the relationship between food and behavior for the betterment of clients for over 39 years.
An astute medical detective, Dr. Stitt looked for hypoglycemia, food allergies, adrenal gland fatigue, heavy metal accumulation, and B vitamin and other nutritional deficiencies. She knew these five problems led to distortions of thinking and decision-making. When these were addressed the results were astounding: Even though it is common for over half of arrestees to be drug dependent and for recidivism rates to be as high as 77%, over 80% of her probationers stayed out of the criminal justice system during the last twelve years of her work in Ohio. The Wall Street Journal featured her success in a story in June, 1977 and numerous scientific studies have also found such numbers, including CARA's own program in the Sacramento County Drug Court.
Eventually Dr. Stitt turned her focus to prevention, reaching out to schools in the hope of changing the future for students and for the society that suffered from the consequences of their biochemical imbalances. For 5 years, beginning in 1983, Dr. Stitt and her husband underwrote a school healthy eating program. They provided whole grain bagels and a flax drink high in omega 3 that was given to students in upto 70 different schools in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota morning and afternoon. They taught the teachers how to teach nutrition. After 6-8 weeks of this, they required the teachers to hold a junk food day. Within 2 hours the teacher lost control of the class and the children themselves could feel the difference. In 1997 they were invited to Wisconsin's Appleton Central Alternative High School, where a full time policeman patrolled the halls. Guns, fights, and poor performance were rife. The Stitts replaced soda machines and sugar-artificial color-corn syrup laden cafeteria food with water and wholesome fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and proteins. Within three months the police officer had nothing to do. The children's behavior changed dramatically and was so consistently good the superintendent of the entire school district of 15,000 students took note and made all his schools change to wholesome food.
Dr. Stitt is the author of Food and Behavior; Guidelines for Correcting Behavior and Food, Teens & Behavior; coauthor of Roadmap for Healthy Foods in Schools; and Keeping It Off; Co-producer of the DVD titled Impact of Fresh Healthy Foods on Learning and Behavior.
We thank Barbara Reed Stitt, PhD and are happy to bestow upon her the second Abram Hoffer Lifetime Achievement Award for her pioneering work in the use of food to improve behavior.
