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Fast foods reduce the mental alertness of schoolchildren
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Experts have long warned that fast foods are dangerous to health due to the large amount of fats and preservatives. Frequent consumption of such products leads to obesity, problems with the heart and blood vessels, joints, digestive system, etc. At the same time, fast food products pose the greatest danger to children, for whom frequent consumption of fast foods can provoke problems with the immune system, nervous system, and recent studies have shown that poor performance at school is also associated with frequent consumption of such products.
A recent research project found that junk food has a negative impact on a child’s brain, leading to decreased mental performance. Children who frequently consumed fast food were more likely to have problems with math, science, and read worse than their peers.
According to some data, an unbalanced diet leads to iron deficiency, in addition, excessive consumption of sugar and fats negatively affects the learning process.
The head of the scientific project was Kelly Partell, who noted that the project studied the impact of fast food on more than 8,000 schoolchildren aged 10. The results were assessed by specialists after 36 months.
Among all children, 52% consumed fast foods 1 to 3 times a week, 10% approximately 4 to 6 times, and another 10% every day.
In the last group of children (who ate unhealthy food every day), the experts noted 79 points on the science achievement scale (among children who did not eat such food at all, the figure was 83 points).
Scientists also noted a lag in reading and mathematics.
These results were quite expected, since a year ago one research group found that frequent consumption of fast food products provokes inflammation in the brain, namely in the hippocampus (such results were recorded in laboratory rodents). The hippocampus is responsible for spatial and verbal memory, in addition, obesity - the main danger of fast food - causes changes in the brain and leads to inflammation.
It is easier to teach children to lead a healthy lifestyle by establishing certain rules in the family. As observations of several thousand schoolchildren have shown, among children whose parents did not forbid them to watch TV for a long time, play computer games, and did not set special restrictions in nutrition, health problems arose more often.
Observations showed that children and teenagers from families with strict rules about food, watching TV, and time spent on the computer were more likely to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. In such families, children more often ate vegetables and fruits, and also more often played some kind of sport. At the same time, specialists noted that children continued to adhere to the rules established in the family even in other places where there was no parental control.
It was also found that such rules were more often established in families with daughters and low socioeconomic status.
Experts have noted that there is no direct connection between family rules and children's weight, but scientists still admit the existence of an indirect connection. According to experts, rules change children's behavior, and this, in turn, leads to weight loss. Thus, many parents are able to independently prevent health problems in children with the help of simple rules.
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