Fish is known as brain food because it contains natural substances that help your intellectual functions. But there are other foods that should be known as “stupid foods” because of the havoc they wreak on brain development. A study at The Ohio State University shows that if kids eat a lot of fast food, their school performance plummets. The research indicates that when children in the fifth grade frequently consume fast food, by the time they reach the eighth grade their tests scores for science, math and reading all suffer. According to the research, students who ate the greatest amount of fast food ended up with test scores that were, on average, about 20 percent lower than students who never ate fast food. “We went as far as we could to control for and take into account all the known factors that could be involved in how well children did on these tests,” says researcher Kelly Purtell. “There’s a lot of evidence that fast-food consumption is linked to childhood obesity, but the problems don’t end there. Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom.” The study used data gathered in research called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort which involved youngsters attending kindergarten in the 1998-1999 school year. In this survey, scientists tracked the progress of more than 11,700 students. “Fast-food consumption was quite high in these students,” Purtell says. Only 29 percent of the children abstained from fast food during a given week. About 10 percent ate fast food every day and another 10 percent consumed it four to six times during the week. About 50 percent ate fast food one to three times a week. Children who ate fast food four to six times per week or every day had the most trouble in school in comparison to kids who did not eat any fast food. “We’re not saying that parents should never feed their children fast food, but these results suggest fast-food be limited as much as possible,” said Purtell. Purtell notes that the research doesn’t provide absolute proof that fast-food consumption causes poor grades. However, other research indicates that fast food is missing important nutrients vital for brain development. It lacks iron and is high in sugar and fat, which can hamper memory and learning. Source
