The Link Between Junk Food and IQ
A study from the University of Bristol appears to show that children, who eat a lot of junk food, have lower IQ levels at eight.
Who’d have thought that all those burgers, sandwiches and breaded chicken were not good for you? After all they must be as when you travel around like I do, it is all I can find for lunch. So I take my own gluten-free meals. Perhaps most places are not as bad as Scunthorpe, but there are a few horrors out there.
It will be interesting to see if there is a correlation between children’s IQ and the quality of the special diets on offer in the location.
The Anonymous Widower 
It would be interesting to know whether there was a correlation between having a low IQ and feeding your children junk food. Maybe that’s the real connection.
Comment by Philip Wallbridge | February 8, 2011 |
I’d thought the same myself. As a coeliac ( in 100 of the population) I also wonder what would have happened to me, if I’d been brought up in the last 20 years.
Comment by AnonW | February 8, 2011 |
I am always wary of correlation based statistics, as without evidence of causation, they are meaningless. In this example it may be that children from certain social economic groups have a lower IQ as a result of a lack of parental interest at an early age and that these children are also more likely to be given junk food to eat.
Take this silly example; if we were to record the size of the ears of people who die in accidents, then I would hazard a good guess that they had smaller ears than those of the average person dying from natural causes. Would this indicate a connection between the size of ones ears and ones attitude to risk? Of course not; there is no evidence of causation between ear size and an lack of risk aversion. The reason that I strongly suspect correlation is that ears continue to grow throught ones life, and therefore anyone whose life is cut short by an accident is likely to have smaller ears than the average person at death.
It makes good news though. I can imagine the Daily Mail headline “Car Insurance Hike for Small Eared People”, and the Sun “Scientific Proof that Noddy is a Greater Risk than Big Ears”.
Comment by John | February 8, 2011 |
John, I agree about the correlation and causation issue, and I am aware that the the majority of the population dont seem to get it at all! I do think all journalists should have to take and pass a course in statistics before they are allowed to peddle the rubbish many of them peddle as a result of having no understanding of correlation and causation!
Comment by liz | February 8, 2011 |