Ohio State researchers linked fast food diets to lower test scores.
Michelle Obama’s war on fatty foods in schools is vindicated. Research from The Ohio State University suggests that the amount of fast food a child eats is proportional to his or her scores on academic tests.
The study, which evaluated 11,740 students on their testing performances in reading, literacy, science, and mathematics in the fifth and eighth grades, found that the more frequently children reported eating fast food in the fifth grade, the less improved their test scores were by the eighth grade.
“There’s a lot of evidence that fast-food consumption is linked to childhood obesity, but the problems don’t end there,” said Kelly Purtell, Ph.D., lead author of the study. “Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom.”
While the results don’t say why it is that fast food consumption has a correlation to low test scores, one can assume that the low nutritional value of fast food has a lot to do with it. Diets high in fat and sugar are proven to lower immediate memory and learning processes.