Around the age of 10, children who eat a lot of fast food are said to make up to 20% less progress in reading, mathematics and science when they enter 8th grade than children who ignore fries, soda and hamburgers.
In any case, this is the conclusion of American researchers in the humanities of the Ohio State University.
And to arrive at this result, they first eliminated "all known factors that could influence test success", such as physical exercise, time spent in front of the TV, the rest of the diet, the socio level -economic, and the environment where the children lived and studied.
The explanation would thus lie in the fact that the (bad) food of fast food is low in essential nutrients, which harms cognitive development if one eats a lot of it at this age. In fact, it has been proven that sugar and fats affect immediate memory, and therefore, learning processes.
"We're not saying that parents should never feed their children fast food, but these results suggest that consumption should be minimized as much as possible," the researchers conclude.
