Does anyone actually give a turkey twizzler about IQ, anyway?

Ooh, so here’s a thing I read in the national newspapers this week and immediately had some thoughts on. Turns out that eating junk food as a toddler means you’re more likely to have a lower IQ later in life. Hmm. Right. Was this, by any chance, brought to us by the same people who said that drinking breastmilk as a baby means you’re more likely to have a higher IQ later in life?

I love it when research like this comes out. It provides my chuckle-for-the-day, if nothing else. The first thing I always want to know is, how exactly do these people reach these conclusions? Really, how do they do it? Do they install themselves in the dining room of those in their sample and take careful notes at each mealtime for, ooh, a random period of four weeks, say, before returning, five years later, with their clipboards and a representative of MENSA to officiate at the testing? And, I know they say they have ‘adjusted’ for other factors such as education and social class ‘n’ stuff, but what does that mean, and how exactly do they do that - is some kind of handicap system involved, so you get points knocked off at the outset if you read the Guardian or have a people carrier?

Well, honestly. What silliness. To be fair, it’s not really the researchers’ fault. I’m quite sure they have the nation’s health at heart. It’s those naughty, naughty newspaper people who insist on using this kind of thing as headline fodder and then working it up accordingly so the result is something that makes most normal people fall about with laughter.

I've gotta say, I don't believe it's good idea to give toddlers too much junk food for a variety of reasons. Its effect on their intelligence quotient is not one of them. Really, does anyone else out there give a turkey twizzler about their child's IQ score? Any other parent who'll confess to caring about such a meaningless measurement of brain power? Even if you did, is five points either way on the IQ scale a big deal? I don't know much about these things, not being a member of MENSA myself, but it doesn't sound like much to me.

Interestingly, it seems kids' IQs are only affected by what they eat before they’re three. After that, it doesn’t matter how much Nutella they’re mainlining: they’re either clever or they ain’t. This is good news for the future intellectual progress of the Misses P, who didn't really eat much junk as toddlers - since I kow-towed daily to the demands of the Annabel Karmel mealplanner back then - but sure do have a taste for the stuff now.