But what relation obesity and diabetes have to the mental functioning of the developing brains of children and adolescents has been uncharted territory -- exactly where a scientist like Dr. Convit and his research team would want to go.

They began their work studying obese adolescents with type 2 diabetes. They wondered if serious weight gain and diabetes reduced intellectual performance in youth. To answer this critical question, they would test the brain's functioning by measuring intelligence, reading, spelling, vocabulary, reasoning, memory, attention, concentration and mental efficiency. They would also do imaging of the brain by MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a scanning technique where the brain can be safely studied) to see if there were reductions in its size or capacity to function, of course factoring in age, that might be related to lower levels of mental performance.

Their results show that the adolescents with type 2 diabetes did more poorly across the board on mental performance tests. In addition, these same youth showed smaller brain volume for the entire brain and the frontal lobes, where much of our reasoning occurs. The frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to mature, making it is highly sensitive to change during adolescence. The abnormal findings Dr. Convit found occur more in obese diabetic youth than in (matched) youth who also were obese but did not have diabetes (or pre-diabetes -- in which the body has developed insulin resistance).

Obesity in youth has tripled in the past 30 years, with one in three three high school students now overweight or obese in the United States. Minority groups show even more disturbing trends with one in two Hispanic and four in 10 black youths affected. Obesity is the road to insulin resistance and diabetes, with their well known adverse effects on blood vessels and the heart -- which shorten life and erode its quality along the way. What is new, however, is that obese, diabetic youth also have their brains impacted and appear to have difficulty learning and succeeding in school.

Education is not only about school. Health is not only about medicine. Our minds our bodies and our perspectives are all set by the experiences that we have when we are young.

It makes perfect sense to me to make healthy eating part of school. This is not juts a pipe dream. My daughter works for a very successful organization called Real Food for Real Kids in Toronto that does just that. It offers real food to kids in Daycare and Kindergarten.

In so doing it creates new habits for the kids and for their families. In so doing it is becoming a critically important driver for a new better local food system in Toronto.

There is no better investment in our future than in making the link between local food and schools.

This goes beyond providing better food and stimulating local food production. Giving kids the chance to grow food themselves is part of this. Re-introducing them to the reality and the miracle of food.

Even this has a model - the Edible School Yard.

What could be better?