Does Eating Junk Food Make Kids Dumber
![315229519_15a24064b6[1]](http://www.losethattyre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/315229519-15a24064b61.jpg)
At times when I’ve been reading about foods and how they affect your body and mind. I remember reading once about somebody who switched from, eating meat etc and switching to a vegetarian diet and then went on to raw food. And said that the difference between the way he felt before switching to the various diets said he felt so much better. The main improvement he noticed were increased levels of energy and much clearer thinking.
Just recently through studies researchers have found there is a connection between what we eat and how we perform, when doing mental tasks. This particular research was done using children, so adults probably aren’t exempt from what certain foods can do to your mind.
It would seem there is a direct relationship between eating fatty and high sugar foods, which can affect children’s mental performance. During the study 5,500 children who were aged 11 years old were asked how much junk food they ate a week.
Over half of them had eaten some kind of fast-food three times in the week beforehand. Over 10 percent said that they had eaten junk food between four and six times in a week. And a further two percent said they had eaten junk food over four times a day.
They were given during the study some literacy and numeracy tasks which were tests, to see how well they performed. The pupils who consumed junk food four and six times a week had a score of 6.96 which was below average in reading.
The children that ate junk food daily went down a whopping 16.07 points, and the ones who had it three times over a day went down to 19.34 points those were for literacy tests.
For the new new numeracy tests the results were as following, the children eating four and six times a week of junk food their scores were 6.55 points, then those that ate it daily their scores were 14.82 points, and those who consumed it three times a day they scored 18.48 points.
Someone called Tam Fry has been quoted as saying, who is part of Britain’s National Obesity Forum if you give your children better food their concentration, learning and over all behavior improves a lot. Could be this one of the reasons why there are so many children these days, that are not doing so well academically and get bored and cause other problems in their lives.
This is most certainly a very interesting piece of research, as far as eating is concerned and how it affects your mind. Perhaps we as adults should take something away from this, because even though work isn’t so much like school, if you are doing a mentally challenging job and stuffing your face with junk food every day you probably aren’t going to get very far.
When I apply for a Mensa test next, I’ll make sure I eat plenty of pizza, McDonald’s and anything else I can get my hands on so I am guaranteed to fail. Game of Scrabble anyone ?
Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Is this study really accurate? You have to keep in mind the socioeconomic levels of the people surveyed. Lower class people typically eat more junk food because they can’t afford healthier food, and they don’t usually go to the best schools, so of course they aren’t going to do as well on tests. I’m not saying junk food is good for you, I’m just saying there could be other reasons for the results. This vendetta against junk food is starting to go too far. I recently read a book called Junk by Christopher Largen in which all junk food was banned–in fact, it had the same stigma as drugs do today. Doesn’t sound too far off from what’s starting to happen now. Bottom line: everything is okay in moderation.
Huh? pretty ignorant statement.
Hi Annie wasn’t meant to be just highlighting what eating it can do to young children.