Overweight children have lower intelligence and are more likely to be depressed, controversial study finds READ MORE: How Gen Z are shunning millennial vices for ketamine and vaping By Emily Stearn, Health Reporter For Mailonline Published: 12:43 EDT, 3 June 2024 | Updated: 12:55 EDT, 3 June 2024 e-mail 42 View comments Overweight kids are less intelligent as their slimmer peers, controversial research today suggested. Scientists in the US, who tracked more than 5,000 nine to 11-year-olds, found pupils with a higher body mass index (BMI) performed worse in tests. And they were also more likely to have symptoms of depression, researchers said.
But it is not clear if a poor diet harmed brain development or if an under-developed brain caused over-eating. Experts have long warned a 'quick fix environment' combining unhealthy diets with increasingly sedentary lifestyles have caused problems in the way children develop. Your browser does not support iframes.
Previous studies have also suggested BMI is associated with alterations in the brain's prefrontal cortex development. Deficits in working memory may contribute to poor dietary decisions. The researchers from Washington University in St Louis, Missouri assessed data from more than 2,500 girls and 2,700 boys between 2016 and 2018.
Over a follow-up of two years they discovered kids who scored one point lower on picture and vocabulary tasks had a higher BMI of 0.012 (1.6 per cent) on average.
Children classed as overweight or obese.
