In a recent study taken by 5,500 UK school children has indicated that kids who eat fastfood takeaways such as burger and chips at least 3 times a week achieve lower scores in school tests. The survey claims that no matter the race, weight and parental income the findings are the same, fast food takeaway’s dumb down the kids’ learning abilities.

Dr Kerri Tobin, who oversaw the study, largely pointed the finger-of-blame to kids who ate at famous burger joints such as McDonalds and Burger King nearly 50% of the week to the low literacy scores. However, Dr Tobin also said that kids who did feast at fastfood joints also suffered from a lack of parental interest in their children’s homework.

UK schools have been active in how their pupils eat in recent years. We can all remember the public drive by Chef, Jamie Oliver, to provide our schoolkids with healthy eating habits. Schools have also banned kids from leaving the school grounds to go and visit the nearest burger or chippy.

Even with all this info at hand, parents are the ones who should be looking at themselves the most. I can still see the tv footage of parents taking orders and then passing fastfood burgers to their kids through the school gates or the burger/ice cream vans positioned perfectly as the school dinner bell rings.

At the end of the day it’s not rocket science, feeding kids unhealthy meals for a large percentage of their weekly diet is bound to have an adverse effect. It’s not just the kids physical appearance and health that suffers but also now science is now showing that their intelligence can also be under threat.