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Study: Fast Food Consumption Linked To Poor Academic Growth

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Put down the cheeseburger: New research shows kids who eat fast food regularly perform worse in school than children who don't.

The research, which comes from The Ohio State University and the University of Texas at Austin and is published in Clinical Pediatrics, found that the more fast food a child reported eating in fifth grade, the lower his or her growth in math, reading and science was by the time eighth grade rolled around.

The study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort on nearly 12,000 students. In fifth grade, those students completed a questionnaire on their fast food consumption habits, and in eighth grade, the students were tested in reading, math and science.

Scientists said fast food consumption was high among the students surveyed; just 29% hadn't eaten any fast food in the week before they filled out the questionnaire.

Kids who ate fast food four to six times per week or everyday had significantly less academic growth in all three subjects, but kids who ate fast food one to three times per week only did more poorly than their non-fast food eating classmates in math.

"We're not saying that parents should never feed their children fast food, but these results suggest fast-food consumption should be limited as much as possible," Kelly Purtell, the lead author of the study, said on Ohio State's website.

Purtell says the study doesn't reveal why fast food consumption results in lower educational achievement, but she theorizes it may be due to fast food's lack of nutrients.

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