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Junk food diet linked to lower IQ - study
Yahoo ^ | 2/7/11 | AFP

Posted on 02/07/2011 8:29:21 PM PST by NormsRevenge

PARIS (AFP) – Toddlers who have a diet high in processed foods may have a slightly lower IQ in later life, according to a British study described as the biggest research of its kind.

The conclusion, published on Monday, comes from a long-term investigation into 14,000 people born in western England in 1991 and 1992 whose health and well-being were monitored at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half.

Parents of the children were asked to fill out questionnaires that, among other things, detailed the kind of food and drink their children consumed.

Three dietary patterns emerged: one was high in processed fats and sugar; then there was a "traditional" diet high in meat and vegetables; and finally a "health-conscious" diet with lots of salad, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice.

When the children were eight and a half, their IQ was measured using a standard tool called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale.

Of the 4,000 children for which there were complete data, there was a significant difference in IQ among those who had had the "processed" as opposed to the "health-conscious" diets in early childhood.

The 20 percent of children who ate the most processed food had an average IQ of 101 points, compared with 106 for the 20 percent of children who ate the most "health-conscious" food.

"It's a very small difference, it's not a vast difference," said one of the authors, Pauline Emmett of the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol.

"But it does make them less able to cope with education, less able to cope with some of the things in life."

The association between IQ and nutrition is a strongly debated issue because it can be skewed by many factors, including economic and social background.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: diet; junkfood; loweriq; study
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To: NormsRevenge

Poor Albert Einstein, two of his favorite three foods were ice cream and meat & processed cheese sammiches. Just imagine, if he didn’t eat this junk food he could have been a smart man.


21 posted on 02/07/2011 9:18:38 PM PST by jiminycricket000
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To: jonrick46
I knew I made a slip of the umbrella: I think this is a case of umbrellas in Hong Kong are causing rain in Spain.

. . . New glasses.

22 posted on 02/07/2011 9:21:50 PM PST by jonrick46 (We're being water boarded with the sewage of Fabian Socialism.)
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To: coloradan

These studies are so phony. They all rely on people remembering what they ate, how often, etc. This is such BS.


23 posted on 02/07/2011 9:34:40 PM PST by Pining_4_TX
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To: NormsRevenge

In a related study, frogs trained to leap into the air at the command of “JUMP!” were found to go deaf after having their legs amputated.


24 posted on 02/07/2011 9:35:28 PM PST by Age of Reason
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To: freedumb2003

I suspect grains, whole or otherwise, are unhealthy.

I also suspect cooking any food may be unhealthy.


25 posted on 02/07/2011 9:37:27 PM PST by Age of Reason
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To: kingu
The entire premise of the study is absurd. Junk food isn’t a causality of lower IQ scores, it is the home life that does it. Caring parents make far more difference than where you eat. Though the argument could be made that a high junk food diet can be a sign of a lack of strong parenting and familial ties in the home. After all, no one’s at home to cook dinners, what else aren’t they doing?

Perhaps not helping a child learn? Not providing good moral guidance? Perhaps even letting a television or video game be the parent?

It is not processed sugars or corn syrups, or some genetically modified potato starch that lowers IQ, it is the lack of homelife that lets a child turn off their mind, rather than stretching it to see the limitless horizons that are out there.

Precisely! If the parents aren't interested enough to occasionally feed their children something other than junk and fast food, they are probably also not interested enough to read to the children, play with them, make sure that they have toys that encourage the use of imagination, etc.

It's also quite likely that the parents may not be the sharpest tools in the shed themselves and that they have passed that along to their children.

This "study" seems very poorly designed and pretty much useless.

26 posted on 02/07/2011 9:38:03 PM PST by susannah59
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To: susannah59
This "study" seems very poorly designed and pretty much useless.

This study brought to you by the letters Huge and Ass

27 posted on 02/07/2011 9:42:48 PM PST by freedumb2003 (The TOTUS-reader is a Judas Goat, leading the American sheeple to the slaugherhouse /Parmy)
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To: susannah59
This "study" seems very poorly designed and pretty much useless.

It's extremely well designed for what it is, a piece of political propaganda. Fat kids didn't do it, poor health didn't do it, now they're trying to demonize 'fast food' by saying your kids will be stupid.

Honestly, I've always had a hard time trying to figure out who they're propping up with these studies. Global warming frauds are easy: corn, solar, other scammers. I have to assume that these studies are being funded by more 'nutritious' junk food, the 'healthy alternatives' that address none of the core issues.

Or, well, it could just be normal liberal wastes of time, making people feel guilty without offering the slightest bit of a solution, which is far more likely than any conspiracy.

28 posted on 02/07/2011 9:44:38 PM PST by kingu (Legislators should read what they write!)
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To: Age of Reason

and there is this too.. but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions..

Starting solid foods earlier linked to obesity risk
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110207/hl_nm/us_starting_risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Babies raised on formula who start eating solid foods before they are 4 months old may be more likely to become obese than those who start later, suggests a new study.

The findings support U.S. guidelines that say parents should wait until babies are between 4 and 6 months old to start feeding them solid foods, said Dr. Susanna Huh, one of the study’s lead authors from Children’s Hospital Boston.

“Adhering to those guidelines could reduce the risk of obesity in childhood,” she told Reuters Health.

Previous studies have shown conflicting results on whether the age at which babies start eating solid foods is related to their chance of being obese a few years down the line. Especially among babies who are raised on formula, the transition to solid foods might mean a jump in the amount of calories they are consuming - before parents have learned how much energy their baby really needs.

In the current study, Huh and her colleagues tracked about 850 babies and their mothers over 3 years. When babies were 6 months old, researchers asked the moms whether they had breastfed - and if so, for how long - and when they started feeding their babies solid foods, such as cereal, fruit, and dairy products.

When kids were 3 years old, the researchers measured their height and weight to determine which kids were obese, defined as being in the highest 5 percent of their age and gender for body mass index (BMI), a measure of the relationship between weight and height.

For babies who were breastfed for at least four months, the age that they first received solid food - before 4 months, at 4 or 5 months, or 6 months or later - had no effect on whether they were obese at 3 years. Regardless of when they started eating solid foods, breastfed babies in the study had a one in 14 chance of being obese as preschoolers.


29 posted on 02/07/2011 9:48:59 PM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ... Godspeed .. Monthly Donor Onboard .. Obama: Epic Fail or Bust!!!)
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To: NormsRevenge

LOL

Don’t tell Woz or half the nerds here in the valley.


30 posted on 02/07/2011 10:26:26 PM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously..... You won't live through it anyway.)
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To: jla

Only cereals we could eat as kids were Cheerious, Shredded Wheat and Rice Krispies with no more than two teaspoons of sugar.

Trust me, you go to school hungry for putting more on.

To this day I can’t stand sugar, sweets, candies or desserts.

But I do love the skin of Hot Dead Chicken and those $1 dollar chicken sandwiches sans bread. I also can’t stand the taste of white bread or the crust from pizza.

LOL I can remember my Dad trying to get me to eat the crust with the rest of the pizza.

He was laughing about it the other day and I said I still don’t care for “whole” pizza.

But I have always loved vegetables. Mmmmm, I always them first.


31 posted on 02/07/2011 10:31:41 PM PST by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously..... You won't live through it anyway.)
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To: NormsRevenge
This study is baloney. (pun intended)

As a kid I lived on sugar, and barely recall eating that 'dinner' thing as I was always out playing. And my IQ was 110 (I peaked on the teacher's desk one day)(1) in Elementary School.

Then a decade ago or longer (time flies) I took another IQ test for snix - with a hangover from hell, so bad I didn't complete the last few questions - and scored a 127.

I then took my last IQ test a few years after that, while 100% SOBER, and I'll just say it is now a 'bit higher' than the 127 (it's in the top 2%).

And I'm not even sure we had junk food 'way back when', but if we did I lived on it. (would that be like Donuts, Coke, Hamburgers, Malts and Coffee?) (Yes I drank COFFEE as a kid)

(1) I could never figure why I was always getting a Red Check Mark on my report card as 'Under Achieving'. Now I know why, I was b-o-r-e-d and was daydreaming.

32 posted on 02/08/2011 4:24:31 AM PST by Condor51 (Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Congressman. But I repeat myself. [Mark Twain])
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To: kingu

You get the prize for the right answer! May be over these researchers’ heads though.


33 posted on 02/08/2011 5:55:22 AM PST by jch10 (Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war...)
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To: NormsRevenge

Hummmm....Yummmmmmy.

It has taken me 3 days to finish a big bag of popcorn. I have eaten nothing else, and it has been a delight.


34 posted on 02/08/2011 8:56:37 AM PST by Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)
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To: NormsRevenge
Social Science's Golden Rule: Correlation equals causation.
Social Science's Grand Assumption: The public does not know the difference.
35 posted on 02/08/2011 1:31:18 PM PST by philled (Lay on, Macduff! And damned be him that first cries “Hold, enough!”)
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To: BerryDingle

That brunette on the right looks like she’s about ready to jump him and swipe a bite.


36 posted on 02/08/2011 1:38:31 PM PST by Hoffer Rand (There ARE two Americas: "God's children" and the tax payers)
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