It seems like the amount of fast food intake in children may end up affecting just how they end up doing in school, a new study suggests - so, as if there weren't enough reasons to do so in the first place, it might be time to cut back on the intake of these meals.
Child obesity - and, in general, the obesity epidemic - is a major health concern at the moment, and there are currently many scientists across the world actively working to learn more about this disease as even governments become more and more aware of the fact that it can even be a disability, like with the recent European Union court rule regarding obesity.
According to The Ohio State News, the latest study comes from the university the paper is based on, and has found that there's a direct correlation between higher fast food intake and lower test scores in children in the fifth grade. It seems like the more they ate from places like McDonald's, KFC, Burger King etcetera, the worse they did in basic subjects like math, reading and science - up until they were in the eighth grade years later.
Science Daily reports that the study was entitled "Fast Food Consumption and Academic Growth in Late Childhood" and published on the journal Clinical Pediatrics, with a total of about 11,740 students as its total population. The children were tested in reading and literacy plus the fields of mathematics and science, in fifth and eighth grades, as well as completing a questionnaire on the first test (in the fifth grade) regarding their food consumption habits.
In the study, it was shown that 29 percent of the children had not eaten any fast food in the previous week of the questionnaire, but 10 percent said they'd eaten fast food every day and another 10 percent said they'd consume it around 4 to 6 times a week, while more than half of the children ate fast food 1 to 3 times a week.
The results showed a direct connection between fast food intake and lower marks in school.
"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, the lead author of the nationwide study, according to Eureka Alert. "Relying too much on fast food could hurt how well children do in the classroom."
