Author: Rob Frank
Last saved by: Be Here Now

Summary/Response Sample Using "Can Diet Help Stop Depression and Violence?"
By Rob Frank 
(I wrote this essay within the time limit and used only my outline)
	There are no easy solutions to the problems of anger and depression, but Juriaan Kamp insists in "Can Diet Help Stop Depression and Violence" that fish oil may be the answer. While his intentions may be good, and his article may actually reach people in the end, the support that he offers for his argument is lacking. To his credit, Kamp offers some evidence to support the argument that consuming omega-3 fatty acids, particularly those found in fish, can have psychological benefits in addition to physical ones, but it's unclear that the author's specific conclusions can be extrapolated from the research he provides.
	One of Kamp's strongest points is his reference to the fish oil experiments that Hibbeln conducted, though this point would have been much stronger if it had included any specifics about the experiments, including the number of subjects. Also, Hibbeln's arguments that used foreign countries as examples didn't take into account a multitude of other possible contributing factors. Perhaps the greatest faulty logic in the article can be found in the use of the prison studies as examples of how a better diet will benefit everyone. "If it works in prisons, it should work in the community and the society at large." This comparison assumes that everyone lives on a diet that resembles the food fed to prisoners. Also, there was another study that involved children, and it only had 117 subjects, which is not very significant. 
	It didn't help Kamp's argument that the studies on prisoners and the studies on children were conducted in the same department at the same university. While it does help the credibility that the university is Oxford, and that some of the research was replicated in the Netherlands, a more diverse selection of sources would be better. The World Health Organization is cited, but only for some general mental health statistics, and the only other real authority in the article is Hibbeln. 
	Still, what Kamp lacks in research, he makes up for with scare tactics. This overall article is aimed at reaching depressed people, but it also tries to exploit the fear of a more general audience as well. A wide range of mental health issues that affect children are brought up in an attempt to scare parents, and then Alzheimer's disease is mentioned in order to grab the attention of older readers who may be afraid of that. 
	However, even with all of my skepticism over the issue, I am intrigued by the idea that diet can have such a large effect over mental health. If the research was a little more clear-cut, then I could evaluate this issue further, but I didn't find Kamp's sources very convincing. Perhaps more research will be done in the near future, but for now I have decided to do a little research of my own. For the past few weeks, I have been taking fish oil supplements, just as Kamp suggests. It's still a little early to tell, but I don't think it's working.