Junk food makes your children dumb, study says

Junk Food Lowers IQ

British researchers said that young children who eat lots of processed and junk food will have lower IQ when they grow up, although the decline is minimal.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health of the British Medical Association, was the biggest study of its kind so far.

About 14,000 children born in England between 1991 and 1992 were monitored four times when they were growing up until they were past eight years of age.

During those years, the children were grouped according to their diets: a traditional diet with meats and vegetables, a diet with ample servings of fruits and vegetables and a diet high in fats and sugars or junk food.

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale was used to measure their IQ when they were eight years old. Those who ate primarily fruits and vegetables had an average of 106, while those who ate mostly junk food had an average of 101.

One of the authors, Pauline Emmett of the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol, admitted that the difference is small. "But it does make them less able to cope with education, less able to cope with some of the things in life," she said.

Linking IQ and diet is no easy task for researchers since there are many other factors involved such as social and economic background. The authors said some of these factors were taken into account to make the findings more relevant.

"We have controlled for maternal education, for maternal social class, age, whether they live in council housing, life events, anything going wrong, the home environment, with books and use of television and things like that," Emmett said.

The authors suggested that the developing brains of children will not reach full potential because of the lack of nutrients, vitamins and minerals in junk food.

Posted by George Daniels on Tuesday February 08 2011, 3:35 AM EST. Ref: Inquirer. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0