Alan C. Logan’s research while affiliated with Institute for Public Health Nova Gorica and other places

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Publications (95)


The Legalome: Nutritional Psychology and Microbiome Sciences at the Intersection of Criminal Justice, Mens Rea , and Mitigation
  • Article

December 2024

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20 Reads

Susan L. Prescott

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Alan C. Logan

Recent studies have linked ultra-processed foods with neuropsychiatric disorders, and behaviors of relevance to the criminal justice system. This nutritional epidemiology has been bolstered by mechanistic bench science, human intervention trials, addiction science, and advances in microbiome research. Here, we examine this burgeoning research through the lens of diminished capacity and criminal intent. We use recent legal decisions related to auto-brewery syndrome as a way to illustrate how intersecting diet and gut microbiome science is already finding its way to criminal courtrooms. The legalome—microbiome and omics science applied in forensic and legal psychology—is emerging as an important consideration for experts within the field of criminal justice and behavior. It is our contention that decisions related to auto-brewery syndrome are merely a prelude to the ways in which the combination of forensic microbiology and forensic psychology will challenge basic assumptions of free will and mens rea.


The Intersection of Ultra-Processed Foods, Neuropsychiatric Disorders, and Neurolaw: Implications for Criminal Justice
  • Article
  • Full-text available

September 2024

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100 Reads

NeuroSci

Susan L. Prescott

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[...]

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Alan C. Logan

Over the last decade there has been increasing interest in the links between the consumption of ultra-processed foods and various neuropsychiatric disorders, aggression, and antisocial behavior. Neurolaw is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to translate the rapid and voluminous advances in brain science into legal decisions and policy. An enhanced understanding of biophysiological mechanisms by which ultra-processed foods influence brain and behavior allows for a historical reexamination of one of forensic neuropsychiatry’s most famous cases—The People v. White and its associated ‘Twinkie Defense’. Here in this Viewpoint article, we pair original court transcripts with emergent research in neurolaw, including nutritional neuroscience, microbiome sciences (legalome), pre-clinical mechanistic research, and clinical intervention trials. Advances in neuroscience, and related fields such as the microbiome, are challenging basic assumptions in the criminal justice system, including notions of universal free will. Recent dismissals of criminal charges related to auto-brewery syndrome demonstrate that courts are open to advances at the intersection of neuromicrobiology and nutritional neuroscience, including those that relate to criminal intent and diminished capacity. As such, it is our contention that experts in the neurosciences will play an increasing role in shaping research that underpins 21st-century courtroom discourse, policy, and decision-making.

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Crime and Nourishment: A Narrative Review Examining Ultra-Processed Foods, Brain, and Behavior

August 2024

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93 Reads

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2 Citations

Dietetics

Recently, there has been increased scientific and clinical interest in the potential harms associated with ultra-processed foods, including poor mental health, aggression, and antisocial behavior. Research spanning epidemiology, mechanistic pre-clinical work, addiction science, microbiome and exposome science, and human intervention trials has underscored that nutrition is of relevance along the criminal justice continuum. As such, the emerging dietetics research is salient to the thousands of international psychologists and allied mental health professionals that are engaged in justice work, including forensics, prevention, and intervention. In addition, relationships between nutrition and behavior relate to “food crime”, an emergent area unifying criminal justice researchers with psychology, public health, and other interdisciplinary sectors. Food crime scrutinizes the vast harms, including non-communicable diseases and adverse behavioral outcomes, as influenced by the distribution of addictive ultra-processed food products. Here, we examine the emergent research, including biophysiological mechanisms, and evidence indicating that dietary patterns/components intersect with psychosocial vulnerabilities linked with risks of antisocial behavior and justice involvement. Viewed through a prevention lens, the study of nutrition and aggressive behavior should be prioritized, especially if the outcomes emerge as externalities of the global consumption of ultra-processed food. In the context of criminal justice and behavior, there is a need for forensic examination of how industry influence and power structures can undermine matters of food justice.


Beyond Auto-Brewery: Why Dysbiosis and the Legalome Matter to Forensic and Legal Psychology

July 2024

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106 Reads

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2 Citations

Laws

International studies have linked the consumption of ultra-processed foods with a variety of non-communicable diseases. Included in this growing body of research is evidence linking ultra-processed foods to mental disorders, aggression, and antisocial behavior. Although the idea that dietary patterns and various nutrients or additives can influence brain and behavior has a long history in criminology, in the absence of plausible mechanisms and convincing intervention trials, the topic was mostly excluded from mainstream discourse. The emergence of research across nutritional neuroscience and nutritional psychology/psychiatry, combined with mechanistic bench science, and human intervention trials, has provided support to epidemiological findings, and legitimacy to the concept of nutritional criminology. Among the emergent research, microbiome sciences have illuminated mechanistic pathways linking various socioeconomic and environmental factors, including the consumption of ultra-processed foods, with aggression and antisocial behavior. Here in this review, we examine this burgeoning research, including that related to ultra-processed food addiction, and explore its relevance across the criminal justice spectrum—from prevention to intervention—and in courtroom considerations of diminished capacity. We use auto-brewery syndrome as an example of intersecting diet and gut microbiome science that has been used to refute mens rea in criminal charges. The legalome—microbiome and omics science applied in forensic and legal psychology—appears set to emerge as an important consideration in matters of criminology, law, and justice.


Figure 1. Ultra-processed Future: Emerging research on the harms associated with ultra-processed foods raises questions about the future of food and the importance of lexicon (with permission of the artist, author S.L.P.).
Not Food: Time to Call Ultra-Processed Products by Their True Name

April 2024

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107 Reads

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4 Citations

Gastronomy

Over the last decade, volumes of international studies have illuminated the potential harms associated with ultra-processed products sold as foods. These potential harms include, but are not limited to, an increased risk of non-communicable diseases, poor mental health, and early mortality. Studies examining such products and health have included top-down methods (e.g., nutritional epidemiology), bottom-up approaches (e.g., animal and pre-clinical mechanistic studies), and human intervention trials. The identification of potential harms associated with high levels of food processing has been aided by the NOVA Food Classification System, developed around 2009. Here, in this perspective essay, we argue that lexicon matters, and the continued reference to such ultra-processed products as “foods” is a barrier to policy-related discourse. Using a historical framework, we contend that the term “ultra-processed food” sits in foundational misalignment with how food has been defined, perceived, deliberated on, engaged with, and experienced by humans over millennia. Moreover, we suggest that language that positions ultra-processed products as “food” is part of a mindset that privileges technology and the continued application of isolated nutrients as a means to remedy deeply rooted socioeconomic problems. In the context of global policy, the parallels between food-like ultra-processed products and tobacco are extraordinary.


United States homicide rates per 100,000 from 1990 to 2014. From Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/.
United States violent crime rates per 100,000 from 1990 to 2014. From Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/.
Red blood cell folate trends in the United States. Source: Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services Data Brief #6, May 2008.
Serum folate trends in the United States. Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services Data Brief #6, May 2008.
Homicide or Happiness: Did Folate Fortification and Public Health Campaigns Influence Homicide Rates and the Great American Crime Decline?

April 2024

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98 Reads

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1 Citation

The last several years have witnessed a remarkable growth in research directed at nutrition and behavior, with increased interest in the field of nutritional criminology. It is becoming clear that dietary patterns and specific nutrients play an important role in cognition and behavior, including those related to aggression, violence, and antisocial activity. Included in this expanding knowledge base is the recognition that folate, through multiple pathways, including enzymatic reactions and gut microbiome ecology, plays a critical role in central nervous system functioning. These mechanistic advances allow for a retrospective analysis of a topic that remains unexplained—the sudden and unpredicted drop in homicide and other violent crime rates in the United States and other nations in the 1990s. Here, we revisit this marked reduction in homicide rates through the lens of the coincident public health campaign (and subsequent mandatory fortification) to increase folic acid intake. Based on objectively measured blood folate levels through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, there is little doubt that tissue folate witnessed a dramatic rise at the national level from 1988 through 2000. Drawing from accumulated and emerging research on the neurobehavioral aspects of folate, it is our contention that this relatively sudden and massive increase in tissue folate levels may have contributed to reductions in violent crime in the United States.


Prevention Science Can’t Wait: An Interview with Dr. Diana H. Fishbein

March 2024

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46 Reads

Challenges

In an ongoing series of interviews, Challenges Advisory Board member and Nova Institute for Health Fellow Alan C. Logan meets with thought leaders, scientists, scholars, healthcare professionals, artisans, and visionaries concerned about health at the scale of persons, places, and the planet. Here, Dr. Diana H. Fishbein responds to a set of questions posed by Challenges. For over forty years, Dr. Fishbein, a neuroscientist and criminologist by training, has been at the forefront of research examining the intersections of biological, environmental, social, and physical factors as they relate to brain development, functioning, risky behavior, and life outcomes. Within this broad-ranging career, Dr. Fishbein was among the very first to conduct a dietary intervention study (eliminating refined carbohydrate foods) examining behavioral outcomes (i.e., nutritional psychiatry). This, combined with related research endeavors and experiences, led to a wider-lens view of prevention research, a desire to understand the physiological mechanisms that explain heterogeneity in positive and/or unfavorable outcomes in prevention programs, and a dynamic career devoted to the science of prevention. Here, Dr. Fishbein reflects on her career and its many twists and turns through a range of interdisciplinary work. Shediscusses prevention science through the lens of future possibilities and the need for scientists to lean toward advocacy and supporting evidence-based policy changes. Prevention science, as Dr. Fishbein explains, is at the heart of the many interconnected challenges of our time.


Figure 2. Headlines in Australia (top) and Canada (bottom) typify global media coverage of the EEG and blood sugar evidence used in the 1943 Lees-Smith case.
Neurolaw: Revisiting Huberty v. McDonald’s through the Lens of Nutritional Criminology and Food Crime

March 2024

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103 Reads

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5 Citations

Laws

Recent studies have illuminated the potential harms associated with ultra-processed foods, including poor mental health, aggression, and antisocial behavior. At the same time, the human gut microbiome has emerged as an important contributor to cognition and behavior, disrupting concepts of the biopsychosocial ‘self’ and raising questions related to free will. Since the microbiome is undeniably connected to dietary patterns and components, the topics of nutrition and microbes are of heightened interest to neuroscience and psychiatry. Research spanning epidemiology, mechanistic bench science, and human intervention trials has brought legitimacy to nutritional criminology and the idea that nutrition is of relevance to the criminal justice system. The individual and community-level relationships between nutrition and behavior are also salient to torts and the relatively new field of food crime—that which examines the vast harms, including grand-scale non-communicable diseases and behavioral outcomes, caused by the manufacturers, distributors, and marketers of ultra-processed food products. Here in this essay, we will synthesize various strands of research, reflecting this emergent science, using a notable case that straddled both neurolaw and food crime, Huberty v. McDonald’s (1987). It is our contention that the legalome—microbiome and omics science applied in neurolaw and forensics—will play an increasing role in 21st-century courtroom discourse, policy, and decision-making.


The rise in ultra-processed foods in the 20th century is a key factor implicated in the rise in the pandemic of noncommunicable physical and mental diseases through immune and metabolic effects beginning early in life. Growing evidence linking ultra-processed foods to various neuropsychiatric outcomes and antisocial and/or aggressive behavior has major implications for the criminal justice system and society at large (artwork copyright, author S.L.P.).
Nutritional Criminology: Why the Emerging Research on Ultra-Processed Food Matters to Health and Justice

January 2024

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353 Reads

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9 Citations

There is mounting concern over the potential harms associated with ultra-processed foods, including poor mental health and antisocial behavior. Cutting-edge research provides an enhanced understanding of biophysiological mechanisms, including microbiome pathways, and invites a historical reexamination of earlier work that investigated the relationship between nutrition and criminal behavior. Here, in this perspective article, we explore how this emergent research casts new light and greater significance on previous key observations. Despite expanding interest in the field dubbed ‘nutritional psychiatry’, there has been relatively little attention paid to its relevancy within criminology and the criminal justice system. Since public health practitioners, allied mental health professionals, and policymakers play key roles throughout criminal justice systems, a holistic perspective on both historical and emergent research is critical. While there are many questions to be resolved, the available evidence suggests that nutrition might be an underappreciated factor in prevention and treatment along the criminal justice spectrum. The intersection of nutrition and biopsychosocial health requires transdisciplinary discussions of power structures, industry influence, and marketing issues associated with widespread food and social inequalities. Some of these discussions are already occurring under the banner of ‘food crime’. Given the vast societal implications, it is our contention that the subject of nutrition in the multidisciplinary field of criminology—referred to here as nutritional criminology—deserves increased scrutiny. Through combining historical findings and cutting-edge research, we aim to increase awareness of this topic among the broad readership of the journal, with the hopes of generating new hypotheses and collaborations.


Citations (83)


... Supporting this, recent data from three US cohorts demonstrates that eating a variety of foods and beverages, including processed meats, sugarsweetened beverages, white bread, cookies and biscuits, and French fries and chips, is linked to weight gain in adults (Halimuzzaman et al., 2024). Strangely enough, however, the fact that the products in question are processed is nearly always either disregarded or downplayed, or even omitted(Susan L. Prescott, 2024). Moreover, food categories like Bangladesh's Food Guide do not specifically mention food processing (Sadler et al., 2021). ...

Reference:

The Impact of Chemical Composition of Processed Foods on Human Health in Bangladesh
Not Food: Time to Call Ultra-Processed Products by Their True Name

Gastronomy

... The idea that nutrients such as folic acid could influence brain and behavior was certainly ongoing when the fields of nutritional neuroscience and nutritional psychiatry emerged in the 1980s, yet were only at the periphery of criminology and the criminal justice system. It is only with advances in research related to nutritional criminology and food crime [8,9] that it is possible to retrospectively examine cases and epidemiological trends that previously escaped explanatory (biological) discourse within the realm of criminal justice [32]. We now turn our attention toward such evidence, including preclinical work, population studies, and mechanistic pathways. ...

Neurolaw: Revisiting Huberty v. McDonald’s through the Lens of Nutritional Criminology and Food Crime

Laws

... One avenue to restore the gut microbiome is through personalized nutritional interventions (Duan et al., 2024;Kolodziejczyk et al., 2019) and well-researched probiotics, prebiotics, or synbiotics (Arnold et al., 2018(Arnold et al., , 2021a(Arnold et al., , 2021bAzcarate-Peril et al., 2021;Chey et al., 2020;Hu et al., 2024;Merenstein et al., 2024;Sanborn et al., 2022). However, a comprehensive review of guidelines on UPFs, including emulsifiers, colorants, and other additives, resulting in immediate, impactful regulation, could mitigate their negative impact on the human microbiome and overall health (Brichacek et al., 2024;Whelan et al., 2024), including behaviour (Prescott et al., 2024). Unfortunately, regulators tend to use individual tools to address specific risks rather than coordinated strategies to tackle cumulative harm (Northcott et al., 2023). ...

Nutritional Criminology: Why the Emerging Research on Ultra-Processed Food Matters to Health and Justice

... In the United States (US), the term ultra-processed foods (UPFs) first emerged in the 1980s, describing popular convenience foods with emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial colors, and sweeteners [5]. However, food processing accelerated many years prior, during World War II, as the ability to package and distribute food to prevent starvation was considered a lifesaving advance. ...

“Food faddists and pseudoscientists!”: Reflections on the History of Resistance to Ultra-Processed Foods
  • Citing Article
  • December 2023

EXPLORE

... 2023). These were followed up with better-designed, but more reductionist, nutritional supplement intervention trials (vs. placebo), again demonstrating that nutrients can improve antisocial behavior, rule violations, aggression, and/or violence, in correctional or institutional settings (Gesch et al. 2002;Zaalberg et al. 2010;de Bles et al. 2022;S. Schoenthaler et al. 2023). ...

Is prison food really food?

Health & Justice

... Although Watson and others published additional studies (Watson and Currier 1960), the grip of Freudian pseudoscience on North American psychiatry held firm until the early 1970s (Lattey 1969;Rippere 1983). Beginning in the 1980s, researchers began reporting on quasi-experimental dietary intervention trials in correctional settings-removing ultra-processed foods and replacing them with less-processed foods lower in sugar and higher in polyphenols and fiber-concluding that the changes were producing positive outcomes, including decreased antisocial behavior (Schoenthaler 1984;Schoenthaler and Bier 1985;Logan and Schoenthaler 2023). These were followed up with better-designed, but more reductionist, nutritional supplement intervention trials (vs. ...

Nutrition, Behavior, and the Criminal Justice System: What Took so Long? An Interview with Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler

Challenges

... La table ne considère pas non plus les allergènes ou les phyto-oestrogènes sur lesquels il convient de rester vigilants. Par ailleurs, les viandes végétales sont des produits ultratransformés, dont l'impact est jugé négatif sur les consommateurs [22]. Enfin, deux études disponibles sur les effets santé des viandes végétales à base de légumineuses et de céréales ne montrent pas de supériorité de ces dernières sur les viandes rouges non transformées. ...

Beyond Plants: The Ultra-Processing of Global Diets Is Harming the Health of People, Places, and Planet

... One issue that permeates virtually all aspects of this discourse is food and nutritionranging from personal dietary patterns, food environments in local communities, and farreaching global food systems [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. This was the subject of discussion at our Nova Network planetary health meeting on the "Future of Food" held in March 2023 [15]. ...

The Founder: Dispositional Greed, Showbiz, and the Commercial Determinants of Health

... It does this by helping people capitalize on their strengths, heighten their gratitude and awareness, connect to others and develop the wisdom needed to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life. [49][50][51] According to Martin Seligman, exponent of positive psychology, "psychological well-being has been defined in various ways and encompasses the positive thoughts and feelings that individuals use to evaluate their lives favorably", suggesting that "individual-level interventions, such as mindfulness-based programs and positive psychological interventions, have shown promise for modifying psychological well-being". 52 In considering the protective role of positive psychological well-being in the evolution of health disorders, the most robust evidence comes from cardiovascular diseases, which is the leading cause of death worldwide and includes diagnoses such as coronary heart disease and stroke. ...

Vitality Revisited: The Evolving Concept of Flourishing and Its Relevance to Personal and Public Health

... In this context, resilience is used as a counteract-It is now widely accepted that planetary health cannot be limited to biological systems because it is ultimately, the "interdependent vitality of all natural and anthropogenic ecosystems, social, political and otherwise" (Prescott et al. 2022, p. 3501). There is also a growing understanding that individual and planetary health are interconnected (Brown et al. 2023;Zelenski et al. 2023). Simultaneously, there is increasing consensus that individual and household resilience are interrelated with community resilience (Berkes et al. 2008). ...

Nature Connection: Providing a Pathway from Personal to Planetary Health

Challenges