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Saturday, December 16 2006 @ 05:48 PM Central Standard Time
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Is there a relationship between IQ and preference for vegetables?
Apparently so.
According to a new study released by British researchers, there is likelihood that a child’s taste for meat declines as his/her IQ rises.
"Brighter people tend to have healthier dietary habits," concluded lead author Catharine Gale, a senior research fellow at the MRC Epidemiology Resource Centre of the University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital.
In a report published in the December 15th online edition of the British Medical Journal, Gale said, “We know from other studies that brighter children tend to behave in a healthier fashion as adults -- they're less likely to smoke, less likely to be overweight, less likely to have high blood pressure and more likely to take strenuous exercise.” She continued by saying that these studies reinforces claims that people with a higher IQ tend to have a healthier lifestyle."
In the study conducted by Gale’s team, they looked into previous data of nearly 8,200 men and women, 30 years of age, whose IQ had been tested when they were 10 years of age.
They found out that children who scored high in their IQ examination were more likely to be vegetarians than those who had low scores.
Other factors linking the vegetarians, aside from their IQs, were gender, social class, and level of education.
According to Dr. David L. Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center and an associate professor of public health at the Yale University School of Medicine, “Evidence is also strong and consistent that greater intelligence, higher education, and loftier social status -- which tend to cluster with one another -- also correlate with good health
Studies made on vegetarianism have consistently showed its linkage to good health. An example mentioned by Katz is that of the vegetarian Seventh-Day Adventists in California, “they have lower rates of almost all major chronic diseases, and greater longevity, than their omnivorous counterparts.”
These studies, however, have sparked questions from other experts who suggests that the findings might not be the whole answer.
"This study left many unanswered questions such as: Did the vegetarian children grow up in a household with a vegetarian parent? Were meatless meals regularly served in the household? Were the children eating a primarily vegetarian diet at the age of 10?" said Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "In addition, we don't know the beliefs or attitudes of the parents of the children, nor do we know if there was a particular event that led these children to becoming vegetarian in their teens or adulthood."
Ma. Roma C. Agsalud
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