Slashdot Log In
French Scientists Link Higher BMI with Lower IQ
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Oct 15, 2006 04:21 PM
from the hey-I-resemble-that-remark dept.
from the hey-I-resemble-that-remark dept.
Xemu writes "French scientists have linked obesity to lower IQ reports the Telegraph. In a new five-year study of more than 2,200 adults, people with a low body mass index (BMI) could recall 30% more words in a vocabulary test than those who were obese. The fatter subjects also showed a higher rate of cognitive decline when they were retested five years later. In the United States, 30% of the population is obese according to OECD. That's the highest rate of obesity anywhere. Do these high obesity rates affect the average IQ of the population?" (Of course, this sidesteps discussion of whether IQ tests measure anything significant at all.)
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
During the rainy season, I don't exersize, so I lose muscle mass and get skinny, and I look - pardon me for saying it - like a geek. And my BMI is normal ( and allegedly healthy ). But during the other ten months, I am more muscular ( and probably a lot healthier ) and yet I am technically obese, according to the BMI.
Do I feel smarter? Heck, I'm a slashdotter - I think I'm smart all the time.
Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds right then, most body builders I've met aren't exactly bright...
Parent
Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we've noticed. : p
(sorry, couldn't let that one slip by)
Parent
Re:BMI is not accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
You mentioned when you are slimmer your less occupied with food and such. Your brain is noticibly performing better as you can notice the differences. It apears though that this study is gearded towards saying slim people are just smarter or have the ability to be smarter easier then fatter people. As if fat content in a prsons body directly reflect thier mental abilities.
Now, What if the slimmer people have traditionaly concentrated on more mental work and less physicle work, therby training thier brain instead of thier muscles. Would this mean that a person who is slimmer is smarter because they are slimmer and less occupied with food or that they have traditionaly used thier brain more and remembering things or solving puzzles becomes more easy to them. Therefore a person with a larger build, spends more time not using thier brain and more on thier muscles, watching TV, or whatever else and thier ability to perform as well as the slim person is diminished?
I remeber in third grade when we started multiplication. I used flash cards and could do almost any problem in my head that involved less then two numbers of two digits or less (20x7). After using calculators for a while, I could do this anymore. But I have been able to return to it becauseof vaious jobs ove rthe decades. (like roofing, framing and general construction working wich involves alot of math)
So, from my personal experience, Could it be just how a slim person spends his time verses how a fatter person might? Obviously anyone who plays sports is going to be better then anyone who doesn't. And people playing for severla years will have somewhat of an advantage over those playing for a few weeks. Is this just the reverse were the game is a mind game instead of football? And someone with several years experience because of lifestyle differences will have an advantage over someone who doesn't exercise thier mind? Could it be that slim or fat is just a reflection of how a person spends thier time and has nothing or little to do with thier fat content outside what a fat person does compared to a skinny person.
I would like to see this studdy done again and the occupations of the people be part of it. I would bet some one of larger BMI who does something like programing or construction were he reads blueprints, sets grades, or transferes scale to live building projects might do a little better then someone who is just fat and works at wopper floppers of america. But if the burger king employee of the month does the same as one of the others of same BMI, I would conceed that fat might have an impact.
Parent
Re:But what's your suggestion? (Score:5, Funny)
"now this may sting a little"
Parent
BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
This also seems to sidestep discussion of whether BMI measures anything significant at all.
=Smidge=
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
Concur but I have a different take on this wording. Of course IQ tests measure something significant. The question may be whether or not "IQ tests are a signigicant measure of anything at all". My wife is an elementry teacher and we recently discussed how children are placed into gifted classes. She said that they used to do IQ testing but that has fallen out of vogue due to their being a rather politically incorrect measure (not to mention all the other types of "intelligence" (emotional, creative, et crappra)). This is sad. IQ tests are a near-perfect indicator of intelligence. That is they have a very low incidence of Type I (false positive) error. The cultural biases come into play and lead to false negatives (Type II errors). It seems the logical approach would be to use a combination of tests or qualitative assessments rather than ditching a good but non-perfect test.
Parent
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:4, Interesting)
IQ tests are a reliable measure of one's ability to perform well on IQ tests. You may choose to call that "intelligence" and wrap it all up in a tidy tautology, but that doesn't really prove anything.
While debating the methodology of a study is valuable and worthwhile activity, it tends to get in the way of what generalizations can be drawn from the data. Since there is a strong positive correlation between BMI and actual obesity (even if that correlation is not 1.0 due to factors such as highly muscular individuals), and there is a strong positive correlation between IQ tests and actual intelligence (due to cultural and educational testing biases) this data identifies a negative correlation between obesity and intelligence. That's interesting and potentially useful. Now it's time for studies with more precise methodology.
Parent
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
It measures something (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the people who don't think they mean anything at all usually are either fat or stupid.
Parent
Re:BMI = Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
Then I grew up and lost over 80 pounds.
Anyone who show as "obese" on the BMI charts but has enough muscle to throw things off is obviously either way toned, or way strong. Seriously. If you're an average person, even a once or twice a week gym habit, and you show as obese... then you're 99% probably fat. Grow up and admit it. Especially in the USA, "normal," is a long way from "fit." The vast, vast majority of people with high BMIs are fat, end of story.
Sure, Tom Cruise is the poster child for "overweight by BMI standards." He's obviously not. If you can see your sculpted abs, you probably aren't as well. Otherwise, you are. Deal with it.
If you want to ignore it, that's your decision. Be overweight. But stop pretending you're not. And also, more to the point, stop trying to convince everybody else that they're not overweight because you can't deal with your own issues. And yes, that is a more generic rant than just one aimed at the parent poster, but its still true.
Parent
IQ Tests (Score:5, Informative)
This wasn't a general purpose IQ test. It was a specific test of people's ability to recall words. They're talking about memory in particular, not some fuzzy idea of general intelligence.
Re:IQ Tests (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:IQ Tests (Score:5, Insightful)
We damn well do know that people with high IQ are usually more successful than those with low IQ.
True, but (as shouldn't even have to be pointed out in this discussion) correlation does not imply causation. Specifically: when people are given better education, their IQ increases. IQ is decidedly not (as you claim) "mostly in-born [and] inheritable" unless you really believe that there is a measurable sense in which whites are inherently (on average) intellectually superior to blacks and hispanics in the United States.
Now, even aside from any issues of political correctness, I hope you aren't in fact claiming that, because it's been pretty thoroughly refuted. If you take someone (of any race) out of poverty and give them a good education, their average IQ increases dramatically. While in any group (including those in poverty) there will be certain extraordinary individuals who have a high IQ (or whatever positive attribute you're measuring) despite all disadvantages, the frequency of these individuals goes up an awful lot if you take away the disadvantages in the first place.
The reason some people dislike IQ, or claim it does not measure anything useful, is that most discussions about it implicitly assume that it succeeds in its goal of measuring intellectual capacity independently of cultural and educational factors. In this it fails completely. Which doesn't mean that it isn't measuring anything useful, but your comment shows there are still plenty of people who think IQ is some sort of "in-born" attribute. It's not.
There is a sort of unfairness that goes against Western ideals. The idea that anybody can pull themself up out of poverty, that every child has a chance to succeed intellectually, is threatened by this.
I'm actually kind of with you on this. I don't think the world is as fair as a lot of people would like to believe, and I don't think that anyone can pull themselves out of poverty, everyone has a chance to succeed, etc. -- and even though I think IQ is (mostly) bunk, I think some amount of intelligence is inborn. But nowhere near all. Even people who could have been very successful intellectually can fail because of their surroundings. All of which suggests, to me anyway, that it is important to do what we can to help others out of poverty and to provide children with good educations, since they may not be able to attain these things themselves regardless of their actions (that is, unlike some Americans, I don't see poverty as a moral failing).
But, as I said, the fact that the world isn't fair doesn't mean it's unfair in the particular way you suggest, that is, that IQ is an innate property transcending culture, language, and education, and rich folks just happen to be innately the smartest.
Parent
Re:IQ Tests (Score:4, Interesting)
The obvious theory is that both genetics and child care (nutrition, education) are vitally important.
Parent
This story is riddled with nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they make the classic error of attributing causation when the study found correlation. If that was in the original study, then I'd question the researcher's methodology, but I suspect the blame lies with whoever wrote the article. Testing people's intelligence and comparing their weight does not show a causitive link between wieght and intellect. It could just as easily show that poor judgement translates into bad eating habits and low IQ.
Second, the criticism they reported came from a politician who tried to use anecdotal evidence to debunk the link. That's right, she said she knew witless skinny people and clever fat people, so the study must therefor be wrong. Someone ought to tell her that the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".
Re:This story is riddled with nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
So obesity is (at least in Western and Central Europe, the study is french after all!) negatively correlated with the social status. People with low income tend to be more obese than people with high income. People with a high IQ also tend to have higher income than people with a lower IQ. Thus both correlations together tell you, that obese people have in average a lower IQ. If there is a causality, it may be this: Lower IQ -> lower wages -> more prone to obesity.
Parent
As a fat man... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I test pretty well for intelligence, but being fat is part of a vicious cycle with laziness and depression, leading to a lack of achievement. I wonder, in fact, if the results would be similar in the population of people with untreated major depression regardless of BMI. Based on no scientific data at all, I would suspect increased BMI as being a symptom of another problem which could be the causative factor in the poor IQ showing.
I dunno (Score:4, Insightful)
This last bit from the TFA sums up how I feel about it:
"But Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister, said that the research seemed unsustainable. "You just need to look around the world and you will see hundreds of thin nitwits and clever fat people,""
It is worth pointing out that good looks & a tall height can be as relevant to your success in life as your weight.
Not IQ, but energy level (Score:4, Insightful)
Link with poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
What Words? (Score:5, Funny)
Fat and Stupid? (Score:5, Funny)
one thing to think about... (Score:5, Insightful)
So does obesity somehow lead to mental decline? Or are people who are less intelligent more likely to let their physical health deteriorate?
Or maybe less intelligence leads to poverty which leads to obesity. Then again, it could be the other way around...
Correlation does not equal causation. If I had to place a bet, I would say that the link between obesity and intelligence isn't biological like the article is inferring. There may be some kind of link there, but I bet that other factors are more influential.
Re:one thing to think about... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't stand posts like this. You obviously have not read the academic report and therefor your conclusion about its fallacy are completely worthless. I have not read the actual report either but to hear you make an instant "it's probably due to this other factor" summary about something you have obviously not even read is infuriating!
The primary task of academic studies is to identify the true reason for an observed correlation. Every researcher knows that "Correlation does not equal causation" and the fact that the report has been published in a respected journal means for definate that the researchers have taken steps to ensure other obvious factors - like the ones you mention - are accounted for.
Parent
Perhaps... (Score:5, Funny)
Then perhaps people get fat because they can't remember they have already eaten.
Memory != IQ (Score:5, Informative)
This is simply not true. If you actually take an IQ test, you will see that it does not test your memory as had been done in the study, but rather your cognitive thinking skills. In fact, there are many people who can memorize history or math equations or whatever, but they come up far short when they have to apply the concepts they memorized.
Again, memorization is not critical thinking, and memorization != IQ.
study doesn't say anything about "obese" people (Score:4, Informative)
In particular, they broke up BMI's into five groups: (1) 15-21.5, (2) 21.5-23.4, (3) 23.4-25.2, (4) 25.2-27.7, and (5) 27.7-45, where BMI's up to 25 are considered normal, up to 30 are considered overweight, and over 30 are considered obese. Even within the final group, not all the participants are obese.
It begs the question of why they didn't compare "normal" weight IQ's to "obese" weight IQ's, as this would be a big story and a more impressive research finding! It's likely that either they didn't have enough obese participants to satisfy statistical significance (so most of group (5) is actually individuals with BMI's of 27.7 to 30), or they didn't find that obese people had lower IQ's. When the BMI groups that they break up their data into as strange as this, and not at all the groups that are normally used in research papers, it begs the question of what kind of data massaging they had to do to find their conclusions. Did they try 100 different breakdowns of BMI groupings until they found one that (barely) satisfied statistical significance?
I remain skeptical as to the conclusions of this paper.
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is slightly beside the point though because the study noticed a drop in 'cognitive function' in obese people, not IQ. Cognitive function most certainly is significant, albeit specifically to the function measured (which in this case was primarily arthmimetic and vocabulary). It was only the reporting newspaper which introduced IQ, probably for the benefit of dumber/fatter readers.
Parent
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There certainly is a definition of "intelligence" (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not true.
There certainly is a pretty well established definition of general intelligence 'g' used
in psychometric studies which has, contrary to what some people may desire, withstood many
challenges, and is logically and empirically consistent.
Essentially: you have a test of a multitude of widely varying tasks all of which are at some level, obviously "mental", and you measure the performance of people on all these varying axes.
Intelligence is the projection along the first principal component, reflecting the fact that people who do well on some of them, tend to do well, up to some degree, on most of the other ones.
This is a highly consistent phenomenon among all human groups tested.
It is correlated with numerous, objective, biological measurements in prospective, controlled experiments.
This is also a falsifiable hypothesis as well, as for example, performance on a number of
*other* tasks, most of which are probably less mental, significantly less
correlated with 'g', except probably among the very lowest tail which reflect significant disease or genetic disabilities with systemic effects.
Obviously, there isn't going to be any scientific definition of "success in the real world".
No not in a comprehensive sense but you can definitely come up with specific proxies which approximate it, and quantify it fairly well. For example, 'felony imprisonment' is clearly 'not successful' by almost everybody's standards.
Parent
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Funny)
The disproportionately high representation in groups like MENSA of lonely singles who earn below average salaries in unsatisfying jobs seems to counter your "decades of data" (which I have never seen.)
Or are you defining "demonstrated intelligence" as the ability to recite Star Trek dialog by rote and "success in the real world" as having your very own crafts store at the local Renaissance Festival?
Parent
Mensa bashing (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Mutual Admiration (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm not just saying that cause I was rejected. No, really.
Parent
Re:Mutual Admiration (Score:5, Funny)
Have I got a web site [slashdot.org] for you!
Parent
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Timothy has low IQ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite all this intelligence he refused to take care of himself, got obese, had several heart attacks and then a series of massive strokes. For decades his doctors told him to lose weight, to stop eating junk food, to drink more water, to exersize and he ignored not only his doctors but his family and friends too.
Now he can barely talk, his mobility is severly limited, he has problems reading and all he does is watch tv.
Was my dad smart or dumb? I used to think he was brilliant but now I realize that he was dumb. Too dumb to prioritize, to take care of the important things in life. The time he took to learn that one more language or to write that one more book should have been spent taking walks or something.
I know lots of "smart" people who are actually dumb like that.
Parent
Of course IQ measures something... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
A truly groan-worthy pun... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Which you aren't smart enough to ignore.
KFG
Parent
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, fatty, but everybody thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Everbody. It's okay though, you can take solace in the fact that everyone has the same lame excuses for their short comings.
Parent
Re:IQ means nothing... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
IQ means nothing, MENSA is pointless and so on (Score:5, Funny)
-------------
Funny story: The guy downstairs had his "MENSA Bulletin" delivered to my mailbox by mistake (probably due to the innerwebs and lack of blue mailboxes!), so of course I kept it. I've been leaving it prominently near the john for some high brow bathroom reading. And man oh man, have I been disappointed. The articles are poorly conceived and written, the letters from readers absolutely dumb. The pictures of "smart people" show them not even badly dressed, but incapably dressed--as in , for example, they clearly missed belt loops when they were putting on their belts (Is looking accidentally slovenly for nationally distributed photographs the mark of a genuinely intelligent person who likes themselves? I submit that it is not.)
So my friends have been coming over, and when they inevitably have to use the restroom, they see the magazine and go "You're in MENSA?" all accusingly. And of course I pretend to be, and mutter something about how "we're trying to reform the government under our own intelligent rule" (did you see that episode of The Simpsons too?)
And as I can feel their opinion of me lessening, lessening...I finally let on that, no, of course I'm not a part of fucking MENSA. And every time, they respond with something like "Oh I was gonna say, because those people are idiots!" And then we page through the magazine together, mocking it the entire time. And we live happily ever after. The end.
Parent
Find a shady place to sit (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually have received invitations to attend MENSA meetings in the past, but have always declined. (Is that how recruitment is done? God only knows.) I politely say that I have a "differing philosophy". Namely, I believe that intelligence and success should be measured in terms of real, humanistic achievement in the real world, and not by corny metrics that determine whether or not a person should be admitted to a shamelessly self-promotional smarty-pants club. But of course I don't say all that. Politely declining the invitation is really enough.
I know that must just fry you--that there are people out there in the world who are at least reasonably smart and reasonably socialized, and who look at their introverted and prideful intelligent brothers with pity. It may seem at odds with what I read as teenage angst, but I assure you we exist.
And speaking of teenage angst, you might want to stop using the lexicon of a teenager. "Jocks"..."frat guys"...it's the language of someone who still thinks of people in terms of symbolic high school lunch tables (i.e. somebody not all that smart after all). If you're just some silly immature kid (I understand that about half of Slashdot readers fit that description)--then you get a free pass, because that's all you've seen so far in terms of how people organize themselves. But if not, then, well, there's that whole pity thing again. To phrase this in terms you've voluntarily adopted, I am no jock, or frat-guy, or anything else. I sit at everyone's lunch table, and I don't use their interests as some kind of bogus reason to judge and dismiss them.
So I guess to be more crass about things, that, my boy, is why I haven't joined your fruity little club.
Good luck--may your false pride and wanton disdain for others take you to great new heights.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:frist psot (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Jokes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Not hiring! (Score:4, Interesting)
She remains a brilliant (slightly biased opinion, but not by much) chemist (pretty much disproving the original article), and now that the hormone is regulated, she has lost most of the weight she gained, though she remains scarred from the experience. And trust me, were she looking for a job from you, you bet your butt you would be sued under EEO and ADA laws. You can probably plan on that anyway. Hope you've got a good lawyer.
Parent
Re:BMI is a poor way to measure body fat. (Score:5, Informative)
All the BMI measures is your risk for a variety of heart related ailments. The theory is that the more massive you are, the harder your heart has to work.
The issue is most people lack the ability, the financial resources, and the discipline to gain an extraordinary amount of muscle mass. So, in the vast majority of cases, the BMI does measure body fat. But, it has nothing to do with the percentage of your body that is fat or how toned you are.
Just thought I would add that to what you are saying.
Parent