Mrs. Weer’d brings us our daily dose of junk science:
Childhood obesity affects math performance in school, along with child’s social skills and well being, according to a new study published in the journal Child Development….Kids who were obese throughout the study period performed worse on math tests in the first through fifth grades than children who were not obese.
GRANT FISHING!!! Let’s look a little more:
In addition to the math performance findings, obese children reportedly felt sadder, lonelier and more anxious than kids of healthier weights. Researchers said this emotional well being also could contribute to their poorer performances in math….While weight may indeed contribute to poor school performance, there are likely several confounding factors that also contribute to an obese child’s overall well-being, experts said.
“Obesity does not prevent kids from doing math, but obesity develops in families where there may be less oversight, less education, fewer resources,” said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Center.
Correlation does NOT mean causation. Really we’re not talking about fat kids at all, we’re talking about a family that fosters fat kids, and social stigma that teases the fat kid. Hey, but when our “Progressive” dictators are pushing to ban foods and drinks “for our own good”, they’re looking for as many crappy studies that will frame the debate EXACTLY how they want it, and are willing to pay for it.
Good job guys!
I’m surprised they didn’t fit global warming into there to ensure even more grant money…
They probably tried!
I think a quick survey at any Mensa gathering would disprove that nonsense.
Fought my weight nearly my entire life — yet finished #2 in my class in high school, got a 2.9 GPA in electrical engineering in college, and nearly finished a master’s in computer science. I’m overweight because I like to eat, most of my hobbies are sedentary, and exercise for its own sake bores the s$#@ out of me.
That said, I do remember getting a “D” in math around the fifth grade. I was (shock!) bored of going over the same thing for the fourth time; in high school ISTR getting 99/100 a few times, largely because it WASN’T BORING.
I know a LOT of people like you. Actually our Salutatorian was somebody I went to school with from Kindergarten through High School. Frankly I think she was vastly more intelligent than our valedictorian (who was REALLY good at acing tests, but didn’t seem to know a whole lot beyond that) and she was always a big girl. She was also CRAZY nice to everybody, so while other people got teased for their weight in the lower grades, she didn’t get bothered much.
Also I hung with the band and theater crowd, which as stereotypes go are the bright nerdy people rather than the “Dumb Jocks” (of course there were idiots in the band, and the captain of the Tennis Team was the dude who wrote the code for OK Cupid while getting his undergrad in MIT, and is now a muli-millionaire) But needless to say the Jocks were vastly more physically fit than the band-geeks…but the GPA and study ethic was a LOT higher in my circle than the people who were heading out to the sand pit to get drunk every weekend after the big game.
Also any tenuous correlation in the numbers will soon totally evaporate as more and more things are done on computer and done with robots and mechanical means. The whole point of progress of technology is spending less time doing grunt labor. The downside of that is its easy to pack on some extra weight in the process.
So when will the studies on “Second Hand Obesity” come out?
I know there’s stuff on fat parents having fat kids, but where’s the “Seeing Fatties eat makes you a fatty”?
The pointy-heads have to continue their deionization of those that don’t conform somehow, and what better way than treating obesity as if it were infectious?
Remember, a preacher saying too much sugar encourages sin is a theocratic crank, but someone from the department of Health and Moral Hygiene is just a sober public servant looking out for the public good.
If fat people are dumb I must be a fucking genius!