We knew that eating fast food is not good for your health. We are now discovering that this diet would also adversely affect school results, according to the results of a new scientific study published in the medical journal Clinical Pediatrics. Indeed, diets in saturated fatty acids and sugar would be bad for memory and learning.
Researchers at Ohio State University (USA) conducted a large-scale study with 11,740 students in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a nationally representative study that began in kindergarten in 1998-1999.
The participants took reading and math tests in 5th grade (7th) and 4th grade. They also had to declare what type of diet they were following.
The results of the study revealed that the diet fast food seems very common for this population: less than one in three young people did not use it at least once during the previous week.
-10% say they consume it every day,
-10% 4 to 6 times a week,
-a little more than half, 1 to 3 times during the previous week.
Scientists also found that students who ate fast food 4 to 6 times a week or every day had lower academic results than other school children.
“We don’t tell parents never to take their children to fast food but our results suggest that the consumption of fast food should be limited. We have gone as far as possible in taking into account possible confounding factors. Our conclusions even take into account multiple other factors that could also play a role in this association, including work at home, screen time, socio-economic status, place of residence or family characteristics ” says Kelly Purtell, professor of Humanities and lead author of the study.
Read also:
Fast-food: their proximity influences weight gain
Fast food would promote asthma in teens
Obesity: American fast food restaurants forced to display the calories in their dishes
