Program Loss Fat

So many papers are queued up on the laptop, but here's a quick an easy one.  Observational (every time I cover one of these studies I think I'm not going to do it again, because what does it really show if the results are what you would expect them to be?)  But hey, one for the hopper, anyway, courtesy my fellow food-fancying psychiatrist Drew Ramsey.  He even wrote a book called The Happiness Diet and was kind enough to send a copy to me! When I get some extra time I will deliver a review.  

Study design:  food frequency questionnaires.  Children.  Assessments in early childhood (age 3, 4, 7) and then at 8.5 years of age with IQ tests.  Turns out the crappy processed food your parents feed you correlates with your IQ at age 8.5.  Each standard deviation drop in food quality score sends your IQ dropping 1.67 points.  A "good" diet was:  "salad, rice, pasta, fish, and fruit" whereas a "bad" diet was "processed" with "high fat and sugar content."

There aren't that many studies of intelligence and feeding.  Most of them are done in babies, comparing breastfeeding and formula feeding, and those have shown an increase in the IQ of breastfed babies except it all seems to get very murky when adjusting for the IQ and education of the parents.  And there's the rub.  It seems obvious that parents with higher IQs will probably ensure their precious offspring have all the best organic mashed eggplant and pastured egg yolk breakfast.  And Healthy Whole Grain Pasta, of course� even adjusting for age and education and IQ of the parents won't completely unentangle this data.

But if it makes you feel better to whip out this study for grandma when she comes over with the vat of teddy grahams, be my guest.