The Bell Curve- Chapter 12 Civility and Citizenship

A free society demands a citizenry that willingly participates in the civil enterprise, in matters as grand as civil enterprise and as commonplace as neighborliness. Lacking this quality, in its core meaning, a society must replace freedom with coercion if it is to maintain order. This chapter examines the contribution of cognitive ability to the capacity for civility and citizenship.

The standard theory of political involvement has assumed that socioeconomic status determines political involvement. People with high-status were thought to vote more and know and care more about political matters than do people of lower social status. But the available research reveals that the key element for predicting political savvy and involvement is educational level. People who care least about political issues are not so much poor as they are uneducated. This should come as no surprise for those who have read the preceding chapters of The Bell Curve because they already know that education is a proxy for cognitive ability. Smart people stick with school, plug away in the workforce and are loyal to their spouses. Insofar as intelligence helps people behave in these ways, it is a force for maintaining a civil society. Civilized people do not need to be tightly restrained by laws or closely monitored by the organs of state. Lacking such civility they do and society, over time, must become less free. In this respect, the previous chapter on criminality may be seen as a discussion of a growing incivility in American life and the contribution that low cognitive ability makes to the social disorder in America. Political participation is one measure of civility. When we vote our ballots account for less than a millionth of the overall outcome in most statewide elections and even less in national ones. No major election has ever been decided by a single vote. Thus, some would say, we are behaving irrationally by voting. "Man is by nature a political animal," Aristotle wrote, "and he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the 'tribeless, lawless, hearthless one' whom Homer denounces." The polling place is a reflection of civic health. In the aggregate those who do not vote, or vote inconsistently, are weaker citizens than those who vote consistently. The connection between political involvement and intelligence has been more thoroughly studies in children than adults because, until recently, school routinely gave IQ tests to children. A study of 12,000 children in grades 2 through 8 in the early 1960s asked whether they ever read about politics in the newspaper or talked about it to their parents or friends, whether they felt protected by the government or whether they ever wore campaign buttons or handed out leaflets for a candidate. The biggest surprise in the study was the finding that the IQ of the children was more important than the socioeconomic status of the parents. Bright children were more likely to discuss, read about, and participate in political activities than were slower children. The researchers also found that the gap in political development across cognitive classes tended to widen with age. The biggest surprise in the study was the impact of IQ, which was even larger than that of socioeconomic status. Brighter children even from the poorest households with uneducated parents, learned rapidly about politics, how the government works and about the possibilities for change. The gap in political development across the cognitive classes tended to widen with age while the differences due to socioeconomic factors remained static as the child grew older. In a study of older children, with few exceptions, each of the political dimensions studied strongly correlated with intelligence. This, as expected, was true for scales that measured political knowledge. The bright children were also much more aware of the potentialities of government and the duties of citizenship. When it comes to voting and socioeconomic class, college graduates vote more than high school graduates; white-collar workers vote more often that blue-collar workers; and the wealthy vote more than the poor. Of the three components of socioeconomic status- income, education and occupation- education primarily influences voting. Even for the people in the top income category ($75,000 in the 1990s) a college education added 34 percentage points to a person's probability of voting. In closing this series of chapters on intellect and social behavior, the authors point out that many, if not most, academic intellectuals hold middle-class values in contempt. They have a better reputation among the public at large where they are seen as ways of behaving that produce social cohesion and order. Throughout Part 11 of The Bell Curve they have examined departures from middle-class values: adolescents' dropping out of school, babies born out of wedlock, crime, women on welfare, etc. To end this chapter on civility and citizenship they examine the people who are doing everything right which they call the Middle Class Values Index. A male scores " Yes" in this study if by 1990 he had obtained a high school degree, or more, had been employed throughout the past year, had never been interviewed in jail and was still married to his first wife. A women got a " Yes" if she had graduated from high school, had never given birth out of wedlock, had never been interviewed while in jail, and was still married to her first husband. Those who failed any one of these conditions received a "No." Overall, 51 percent scored a "Yes" in 1990 but the "Yeses" were markedly concentrated in the bright (67 percent) and the very bright (74 percent) while the "Noes" were primarily concentrated in the dull (30 percent) and the very dull (16 percent).As intuition might suggest "upbringing" in the form of socioeconomic background played a significant role in determining who received a "Yes" in the Middle Class Values Index but it was not nearly as significant as intelligence. The modest goal of the study was to point out that the old-fashioned virtues represented throughout the index are strongly associated with intellect. Finally, what is the difference between being smart and being civil? Cognitive ability is a raw material for civility, not the thing itself. Smart people are better able to understand and reason through complex political issues but, possibly of more importance, is the fact that intelligent people are more likely to take an interest in civil matters than are their duller counterparts. The authors are quick to emphasize superior intellect is not necessary for many of the most fundamental forms of civil and moral behavior. All of us can provide abundant examples of smart people who are conspicuously uncivil and amoral. Yet these observations notwithstanding, the statistical tendencies remain. A smarter population is more likely is more likely to be a civil citizenry. Comment: Most of us senior citizens know that our country is far less civil now than it was when we were children. Although the authors do not make the connection, it seems likely that the declining mean IQ of those living in the Western world, which has been falling 1.5 IQ points a generation since the Elizabethan Era, is in part responsible for the increasing incivility of our present society. Although, to this point, the authors have limited their studies to white America, it is likely that most, if not all, of the social problems (crime, out of wedlock births, illiteracy, welfare, etc.) encountered in our inner cities are in no small part a result of the fact that the poor whites, blacks and Latinos who inhabit these slums have a significantly lower mean IQ than those who live in the predominately white neighborhoods that surround them. In any case, the ride becomes far bumpier in Part 111 when Herrnstein and Murray discuss the ethnic differences in cognitive ability and the effect these IQ differences have on societal problems we face in twenty-first century America.

The Trump Phenomenon

Why, do you think, is a blow-heart like Donald Trump still leading all Republican candidates for president? I would be embarrassed to be associated with Trump in any way and I think most of you would too. Certainly, I wouldn't support his Candidacy. He is leading the pack because conservatives are feed up with politicians on both sides of the political isle, especially with go-along to get-along rhino republicans like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie. Enough is enough already!

Trump has been smart enough to tap into the seething resentment of the conservative republican base and its paying off big time for him. We conservatives hate, with a passion, almost everything the political establishment, the Washington insiders, stand for. It seems no matter what we do or how we vote nothing changes. This is particularly galling since we won the last two elections, except for the presidency, by wide margins and had high expectations that something would chance, at least we expected them to build the damned fence and stop the never ending flow of low IQ illegal's into our country from Mexico. But, alas, nothing has changed and Trump is taking advantage of our penned up frustrations. All of Trump's policies are aimed at our cumulative disappointment with the leaders of the republican party, especially the two witless wonders who lead the republicans in the house and senate. Some are no-brainers, such as his promise to eliminate the ridiculous law that makes anyone who is born in the United States an automatic citizen. Certainly, no one but an anarchist could support such a decree. You have to scratch your head in amazement that none of the other candidates have failed to pick this low hanging fruit that was dangling right before their collective noses. Trump was the first candidate to recognize the unpopularity of the anchor-baby law, but he will not be the last you can bet your last dollar on that! Similarly, Trump understands the we conservatives want secure borders, especially between the United States and Mexico. Yes, as Trump promises, the illegal's should be deported, every last one of them! But, that is a secondary issue, first we must build the damned fence to prevent any more from coming. Who pays for the fence is not the issue, we can borrow to pay for it like we barrow to pay for almost everything else the government does. Once the border is air tight we can decide what to do with the illegal's that are here, the law abiding ones that is. Illegal's that are not law abiding should be sent packing for the slightest offence, even spitting on the sidewalk. Trump says we should get tough with China and Mexico, fine once again he has pushed one of the political hot buttons. Nothing has been done along these lines because big business wants cheap labor and a market for their high tech products while the democrats want illiterate low IQ voters to bolster their political base. When all is said and done, Trump is a capitalist and will do little or nothing to change the status quo, even if he should become president. So, what are the chances that Trump can pull it off and become president. The answer is slim to none. Trump looks strong now because there are seventeen candidates running for the republican president slot. Once the candidates who are low on the totem pole start leaving the race their supporters are unlikely to join the Trump parade and his position as front runner will come to a grinding halt. Hopefully, a conservative like Carson, Fiorina or Rubio will learn a lesson from Trumps early success and adopt the parts of his platform that resonate so powerfully with the conservative base of the Republican party. By the way, no matter which of the males comes out on top, Carley Fiorina will be the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2016, you have my word on it!

The Bell Curve- Chapter 11 Crime

Among the most firmly established facts about criminals is that their IQs differ from the population at large. Criminal offenders have IQs of about 92, eight points below the mean for Caucasians. The relationship of IQ to criminality is especially pronounced in young men who constitute the chronic criminals responsible for most of the crimes committed in this country. Again, as with previous chapters, the authors deal exclusively with white males as they dissect the various elements of criminality. Crime can tear a free society apart at the seams because free societies depend so heavily on faith that the other person will behave decently. Yes, it is always possible to buy better locks, stay off the streets after dark, regard every stranger with suspicion and post security cameras on every street corner, but these are poor substitutes for living in a peaceful and save neighborhood inhabited by law abiding citizens. Most Americans think that the crime rate has gotten far too high, but the ruminations about how we have reached this state and what might be done about it, pay little to no attention to one of the best documented relationships in the study of criminality: criminals, as a group, are below average in intelligence. Although the authors ignore the issue, intelligence, or lack of same, is a particularly important factor in inner-city black on black crime. It was not always this way, most of us older folk can remember a time when it was save to walk the streets at night, even in poor neighborhoods. From 1950 to 1963 the rate of violent crime was very low and flat. The crime rate increased steadily from 1963 to 1992 and, when this book was written, was five times what it was in 1963. The population, of course, did not become significantly more stupid over this 29 year period, so social factors unrelated to intelligence must have responsible for the increase in criminality during 1960, 1970s and 1980s. Rather, changes in social policies, including, most importantly, Johnson's great society legislation were to blame for the increases in criminality in the last half of the ninetieth century (my assessment, not the authors). Are criminals psychologically distinct, or are they ordinary people responding to social and economic circumstances. The leading scholars in the 1950s, 60s and 70s saw criminals as much like the rest of us, except that society had earmarked them for a life of criminality. Some went further, seeing criminals as free of personal blame. The most radical theorists argued that the definition of crime was in itself ideological, creating "criminals" of people who were behaving in ways that the power structure chose to define as deviant. the more moderate sociological experts maintained that poverty and unemployment were the root causes of criminality. These classical sociological arguments were distinguished more by their popularity than by any analysis of criminal behavior. Recently, the emphasis has shifted more to the characteristics of the offender and away from the circumstances of his environment. In their most extreme forms, psychological theories claim that people are born criminals, destined by their biological make up to offend. The authors are at neither of these theoretical poles. The reason for calling attention to the contrasting views of the experts is that public discourse has lagged and remained more nearly stuck at the sociological pole than it is among the experts. The authors are more interested in the role that cognitive ability plays in creating criminals but do not deny that sociology, economic and public policy also play important roles in the development of the criminal mind. Let's start with an overview of the link between cognitive ability and criminal behavior. The statistical association between crime and cognitive ability has been known since intelligence testing began in the early nineteenth-century. The British physician Charles Goring found that a lack of intelligence was one of the distinguishing traits of the prison population early in the century. In 1914 H. H. Goddard reported that a large fraction of convicts were intellectually subnormal. Then in 1931 Edwin Sutherland wrote an article "Mental Deficiency and Crime" that effectively put an end to the study of IQ and crime for half a century. He observed, accurately, that that the IQ differences between criminals and the general population were decreasing as testing procedures improved. Sutherland leaped to the conclusion that the remaining differences would disappear altogether as the art of intelligence testing continued to improve. The differences, in fact, did not disappear but that did not stop criminologists from denying the importance of IQ as a predictor of criminal behavior. By 1960 the association of intelligence and crime was altogether dismissed in criminology textbooks and so it remained until recently. Hirschi and Hindelang's 1977 article, "Intelligence and Delinquency: A Revisionist View" served to right the floundering IQ/criminality ship. The authors of this study reviewed the articles that included measurements of IQ and concluded that juvenile delinquents were in fact characterized by substantially below-average levels of intelligence. Criminology textbooks now routinely report the correlation between crime and intelligence and, although some questions of interpretation are still open, the correlation between intelligence and criminality is no longer in dispute. Just what is the size of the IQ gap? Taking the literature as a whole, incarcerated offenders have an average IQ of about 92, eight points below the mean for nonoffenders. The studies show that a disproportionally large fraction of all crimes are committed by people toward the low end of the scale of intelligence. However, there are very few very low IQ offenders probably because extremely dull people have difficulty mustering the competence to commit most crimes. In addition a sufficiently low IQ usually is enough to exempt a person from prosecution and, as a result, they are not included in the statistics related to criminology. The question arises, do the unintelligent criminals commit more crimes, or do they just get caught more often? There is no evidence to support the claim that there are a large population of very bright offenders who escape detection because they are smart enough to escape detection by law enforcement officials. In fact, in the small amount of data available, the IQs of uncaught offenders are not measurably different from those who are caught. On the other side of the coin, those who do not commit crimes, it is clear that high cognitive ability protects a person from becoming a criminal even if other precursors such as poverty and social status are present. A study of high risk sons, whose fathers had prison records, in Copenhagen revealed that the high risk sons with no criminal record had IQ scores one standard deviation than the sons of criminals who themselves had become criminals. Similarly, a New Zealand study divided boys and girls at age five into groups based on whether they were at low or high risks for delinquency. High risk children, those with low IQs, were twice as likely to become delinquent by their mid teens as were the low-risk higher IQ children. Self-reports, information that was volunteered by individuals who were incarcerated when interviewed, showed that white men's socioeconomic background had little or nothing to do with their criminality; in fact, higher socioeconomic status actually was associated with higher crime rates after controlling for IQ. The crime rate also is higher in white males who come from broken homes but even here IQ is the most important determinant of criminality. For example, young men from broken homes, but with average IQs and socioeconomic backgrounds had a four percent chance of being incarcerated while those in the lower centiles of intelligence had a 22 percent chance of being in prison. Education, which also is a measure of intelligence, also plays a major role in criminality. Of all white males who were interviewed while in jail, 74 percent had never gotten a high school diploma and none had a college degree. Many people tend to think of criminals as having come from the wrong side of the tracts. Indeed they are correct, insofar as that is where people of low cognitive ability live. But the assumption that to glibly follows from these observations is that economic and social disadvantages is in itself the cause of criminal behavior. This mistaken belief has driven much of our social policy over the past half century. The attention that has been given to problems of poverty and unemployment should be shifted, the authors believe, to another question altogether: coping with the cognitive disadvantaged. Comment: I cannot think of a single social problem that is not strongly related to intelligence, criminality is no exception. The social problems we face in this country will only worsen unless those who make public policy come to the realization that we are not all born equal in anything, and most certainly not in cognitive ability.

An Analysis of the First Republican Presidential Debate.

First, all of the candidates did well in the debate, even the Donald comported himself well. But, when all is said and done, there was one clear winner in both debates and that was Carley Fiorina. She stood heads, shoulders and breasts above the crowd of republican presidential hopefuls. Well read on all the issues, well mannered, an eloquent speaker for conservative principles and, most importantly, extremely intelligent. This women is, and always will be, the sharpest nail in the keg! Can you imagine a debate between Ms Fiorina and that self-serving, money grubbing congenital liar Hillary Clinton. Carly would clean Hillary's clock big time irrespective of the liberal moderating the debate or the questions asked. Such an encounter would be the debate of the century, but would have to be called after a few rounds because Clinton would be too battered to continue and the audience would not be able to stomach the carnage. Having said this, Fiorina will most likely end up as the vice presidential candidate but, her day will come, of this I have not the slightest doubt. What about the other candidates? The Donald did well, much better than I expected but he still remains a very, very loose cannon. I think it is just a matter of time until he implodes. Most likely he will end up running as a third party candidate which will spell the end of the republicans for this election cycle. Other than Fioina, I was most impressed with Governor Jim Gilmore, this guy is a rock solid conservative who has his head screwed of right. Gilmore is bright, articulate and experienced, he would make an excellent president. My biggest disappointment of the evening was Ben Carson, not that he performed poorly, which he did not! However, Dr. Carson just doesn't seem to have the "fire in his belly" to engender much excitement in those who otherwise might be inclined to support him. Too bad, he too would make an excellent president!

The Bell Curve- Chapter 10 Parenting

Everyone agrees, in the abstract, that there is good parenting and bad parenting. The question this chapter addresses is how does the parent’s intellect affect their parenting skills? Again, most of the statistics quoted were derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY) and the data was taken exclusively from information gathered from white parents. Parenting, in one sense is among the most private of behaviors, in another it is the most public. Parents make a difference in the way children turn out- whether they become law abiding or criminal, generous or stingy, productive or dependent. Most importantly, how successful parents are in raising their children determines how well a society functions. The first issue the authors address is the role of social class to parenting styles. From earliest studies in 1936 to the most recent it has been clear that working-class parents tend to be more authoritarian than middle class patents. Working class parents tend to use physical punishment and direct commands to effect behavior while middle class parents are more likely to reason with the child to change his behavior. Generally, and keeping in mind the many exceptions, the conclusion to be drawn from the literature on parenting is that middle class people are better parents, on average, than working class people. To this point the authors have been talking about parenting within the normal range. Now they turn to child neglect and child abuse, practices labeled "malparenting" in the technical literature. Physical battering and emotional punishment get most of the publicity, but child neglect is far more common. What are the differences between child abuse and neglect? Abuse is an act of commission while neglect is an act of omission. Abuse is typically episodic and of short duration, neglect is chronic and continual. Abuse usually arises from impulsive outbursts of aggression and anger; neglect, on the other hand, arises from indifference, inattentiveness, or being overwhelmed by parenthood. At its most extreme, neglect becomes abandonment. Malparenting of either sort is heavily concentrated in the lower socioeconomic classes. Letting a child skip school, for example is not considered neglectful in some poor communities; rather, it is the normal pattern of upbringing. The media, politicians and child advocacy groups usually treat child neglect and abuse as if it were evenly spread across all social classes and imply that children have about an equal chance of being abused or neglected whether they come from a rich home or a poor one, whether the mother is a college graduate or high school dropout. Yet from the earliest studies to the most recent, malparenting has been strongly associated with economic class. The groups who argue otherwise do not have data to support their claims; instead, they argue that child neglect and abuse are reported when it happens to poor children but not rich ones. However, the socioeconomic link with malparenting is undeniable. A study in 1967 revealed that 60 percent of families involved in child abuse were on welfare. The American Humane Association reported on 1976 that half of 20,000 reported cases of child abuse were from families below the poverty line and most of the rest were concentrated just above it. A study in 1984 of child maltreatment in El Paso Texas revealed that 87 percent of alleged offenders were in families with incomes below $18,000 and 73 percent of the female predators were unmarried. A federally funded national study in 1979 found that 43 percent of the cases of child abuse came from families with incomes under $7,000. Only 6 percent of abuse or neglectful families had incomes of $25,000 or more. Finally, a second National Incidence study in 1986 found that the rate of abuse and neglect in families with incomes under $15,000 was five times that of families with incomes above $15,000. Only 6 percent of families involved in neglect or abuse had incomes above the mean for all American families. Given the one-sidedness of the evidence, why has the myth of classlessness been so tenacious? Pelton blamed social service professionals and politicians, arguing that that both had a vested interest in a medical model in which child abuse falls of its victims at random, like the flue. The authors of the bell curve believe that, because most Americans hold child abuse and neglect in intense distaste, most of those who write about malparenting do not want to encourage this hostility toward the poor and disadvantaged by writing about it. Thus, the evening news will continue to report, as they have in the past, that child neglect is not a special problem of the poor when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. Now let's address the issue of parental IQ and parenting. If cognitive ability is a cause of socioeconomic status, which it is, and if socioeconomic status is a related to parenting style, as shown above, the cognitive ability must have some role in parenting style and child maltreatment. Gil's national study of child abuse found that 65 percent of abusive mothers and 56 percent of abusive fathers had not completed high school. A study of 480 indigent women in an urban hospital found that, even within this disadvantaged population, less educated women were more likely to neglect their babies. Similarly, a study of child maltreatment in a Virginia city of 80,000, found that neglecting families had an average eight-grade education and three-quarters of them had been placed in classes for the mentally retarded during their school years. A study of school children in Cleveland with histories of failure to thrive found that their mothers' IQs averaged 81 which means that they were functioning at the lower 10th centile of intelect. A clinical study of ten parents who battered their children severely, six of the children died, classified five as mentally retarded, one as dull, and another as below average in cognitive ability. Finally, a study of 113 two-parent families in the Netherlands found that parents with high cognitive ability responded to their children more flexibly and sensitively while those with low IQ were more authoritarian and rigid, independent of occupation and education. Norman Polansky, whose research began in Appalachia and later was replicated by his work in urban Philadelphia described the typical neglectful mother in this way. She has limited intelligence (IQ below 70), has failed to achieve more than an eighth grade education. and has never held a job. She has at best a vague, or extremely limited idea of what her children need emotionally or physically. She seldom is able to see things from the point of view of others and cannot take their needs into consideration when responding to a conflict they experience. The IQ Polansky refers to corresponds to the upper limit of retardation and his description of her personality invokes further links between neglect and intelligence. Studies of prenatal care reveal that most white women in the different cognitive classes behaved similarly during pregnancy. Smoking was the exception. The smarter the women the less they smoked during pregnancy. Fifty-one percent of dull and very dull women smoked and 19 percent smoked more than a pack a day. In the top two cognitive classes, only 16 percent smoked at all and only 4 percent admitted to smoking more than a pack a day. Mothers with extremely low IQs give birth to low birth weight babies on average 7 percent of the time while the probability of having a low birth weight baby in only 2 percent in women with high IQs. These studies show that the mother's socioeconomic background is irrelevant with respect the chances of her child being of low weight at birth. Note that premature births were not included in these studies. The chances of a child living in poverty in early child hood are closely related to the mother's IQ and her socioeconomic status. In fact, the curves related to the effects of maternal IQ and maternal socioeconomic status on childhood poverty are nearly identical. Thirty-one percent of children born to mothers with extremely low IQs live in poverty while 33 percent of impoverished children have mothers who were extremely impoverish in the year before they gave birth. As you might expect, childhood poverty was nonexistent in women who were extremely intelligent and of high socioeconomic status. The problems experienced by poor children usually are attributed in both public dialogue and academic writings to poverty itself. Most of the world's children throughout history have grown up poor and their poverty was far more severe than the "poverty" experienced by those living in America today. Many of the disadvantages today's children experience are not the poverty itself but the contemporary correlates of poverty; for example, being without a father or living in a high crime neighborhood. The children of low IQ mothers are far more likely to be raised under these adverse conditions than are the children of mothers with average or above intellect. Having said this, there are abundant examples of excellent parenting throughout all but the very lowest range of cognitive ability. The authors used the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) to study the relationship of the mother's IQ to the IQ of her children. The table below summarizes the results of this analysis. Note, there were no Very Bright mothers in the study. IQ in the Mother and the Child for Whites in the NLSY Cognitive class Of the Mothers Mean IQ of The Children Percentage of Their Children in the Bottom Decile of IQ 1 Very bright - - 11 Bright 107 7 111 Normal 100 6 1V Dull 95 17 V Very Dull 81 39 All White mothers 99 10 White mothers in the top three-quarters of the IQ distribution have few children who are in the bottom decile of IQ. For mothers in the bottom quarter of the distribution the proportion of low IQ children rises dramatically. Granting the many exceptions at the individual level, the relationship of cognitive ability to good and bad parenting is undeniable. This irrefutable conclusion holds for a wide range of parenting behaviors, from prenatal negligence that leads to low birth weight and to post natal care of the child which results in neglect and abuse, to developmental outcomes and cognitive outcomes. On the other hand, the data reviewed provide little or no evidence that the smartest women make the best mothers; rather, children can flourish in a wide variety of environments that are merely okay. But some home environments are so bad that even the most resilient children have difficulty overcoming them. These truly disadvantaged homes are disproportionately associated with women of very low intelligence. Comment: This chapter on parenting is long and somewhat tedious. This is so, because irrespective of what aspect of malparenting the authors analyze the conclusions drawn from the various relevant studies are invariably the same. Although, as the authors stress, there are exceptions, in general low IQ mothers and fathers make bad parents and their children suffer greatly from their bad behavior. Of more importance, I believe, is the finding that low IQ mothers tend to have low IQ offspring. The authors pursue the relationship between the cognitive ability of mothers to the intelligence of their children at great length in subsequent chapters of The Bell Curve.

The Nutritional and Medicinal Properties Of Wild Purslane

In the United States few consider parslane to be anything but a troublesome weed. In fact, most could not name the plant or consider eating it. Fewer still realize that this marvelous "weed" is revered for its nutritional qualities in other parts of the world, especially in India. In this respect, parslane was one of Mohatma Gandhi's favorite foods. There are several varieties of purslane but the one that is most sought after grows all over the world and is referred to as wild purslane. In addition to its succulent leaves and stems, the yellow flowers of the purslane plant are priced for the beauty they add to salads and other similar dishes. First, let's consider purslane's nutritional qualities. This wonderful green leafy vegetable is very low in calories (just 16 kcal/100g) and fats; nonetheless, it is rich in dietary fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Fresh leaves contain surprisingly more omega-3 fatty acids (a-linolenic acid) than any other leafy vegetable plant. In this respect, 100 grams of fresh purslane leaves provide about 350 mg of alpha-linolenic acid. Research shows that foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, and help prevent the development of ADHD, autism, and other developmental differences in children. This stuff is good for you and your children and, unless you have kidney stones should be a part of your diet. Purslane also a rich source of vitamin C, and some B-complex vitamins like riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine and carotenoids, as well as dietary minerals, such as iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and manganese. In fact, It has 7 times more beta carotene than a carrot! Finally, purslane contains two types of betalain alkaloid pigments, the reddish beta-cyanins and the yellow beta-xanthins. Both pigments are potent ant-oxidants that have anti-mutagenic properties that reduce the risk of cancer. (Proc. West Pharmacol. Soc..45:101-103, 2002). Where can you find it? Unfortunately, few stores carry this valuable vegetable and, even if you are lucky enough to find it, purslane is expensive, $5.00 or more a pound. The good news is that wild purslane, the good stuff, is everywhere. In fact, you are probably are walking on it or pulling it out as a weed without knowing it. Purslane grows in the worst conditions imaginable, including barren dry clay or adobe soils and cracks in sidewalks and pavement. Once you are aware that it is there, you will find it! Purslane is easy to propagate, just pull it up by the roots and transplant it into the garden or a pot. The plants you grow in the garden will be much more attractive than the ones you find struggling to survive in the driveway. Purslane is a warm weather plant that will not survive in the winter in most areas of the United States. However, you can grow it in a greenhouse. Purslane is a wonderful addition to any salad and I use generous amounts of it in soups, stews and curries. It also is wonderful sautéed and can be used as a side dish with any main course, it is especially good with fish or chicken. Precaution: Purslane contains high levels of oxalic acid, a naturally-occurring substance found in some vegetables, which may crystallize as oxalate stones in the urinary tract in some people. 100 gm of fresh leaves contain 1.31 g of oxalic acid, more than in spinach (0.97 g/100 g) and cassava (1.26 g/100 g). Thus, people with known oxalate urinary tract stone disease should not eat purslane.