Intro
Being a huge fan of meat, I can not stand a meal without meat, because I cannot enjoy anything if vegetable is the only thing I chew. However, my ambitious for meat has weaken after I have read an article on newspaper that claims that consume too much meat will makes people stupid. If I have to choose between my intelligence and meat, I will definitely chose to eat less meat, because there are way much pleasure we could earn by our intelligence rather than the joy you enjoy when you consume meat. So I decide to dig deeper if consume of meat will makes people stupid?
Studies
- In 2008, Scientists in Southhampton University have done a research about this topic. The Target of the study were adult who were older than 30 years old (8170 people) , and the aim of the research is to investigate their IQ and dietary habit when they were 10 years old. The result of the research is 4.5% of the sample have habit of consume vegetable and 123 people in the sample like to eat meat in their meal very much. The researcher found out that people who prefer meat rather than vegetable only increase their IQ 15% when they became adult and the other who likes vegetable more have increase unto 38% of their IQ.
- According to a Study from Harvard which published on Annals of Neurology, a study of 6,000 women was conducted in order to test their dietary habits and brains function in 4 years. They found out women who ate most saturated fat scored lower on tests of brain function and memory. Women who ate the most Monounsaturated fats scored higher on the test. However, this study only target women as sample, so it became less compelling to Men about this issue, also the weakness of this study will make people be confuse about the issue about whether Men’s IQ will affect by eating meat.
- In National Child Development study (UK) , people who are vegetarian at age 42 have a higher Childhood general IQ than those who are not.
Different than the second study, this study consider not only women but also men which eliminate the affect of bias between gender. By the way, the graph also show that the average childhood IQ of men in the study has a higher IQ than Women’s Childhood IQ.
Are Meat bad for us
After seeing those research above, people may be frighten about consumption of meat. 2 out of 3 studies above is investigating about childhood IQ, and the other one is a studies is only study which involve women. So there are chance that those studies can not 100% convincible to us. On the other side, people need a lot of element in meat to keep our body healthy, such as Vitamin-B, Protein and Omega-3 Fatty acid. So you are still the judge on how much meat you are going to consume.
Conclusion
There is definitely a correlation between the meat consumption and Intelligence, however, it is possible that third variables may exist. By the way, eat some vegetable during you meal will definitely have no harm to your health or even improve your health, so it is good to balance your dietary habits in order to improve your health. One thing really important is consume too much meat may also cause obesity, and the problem follow by obesity is much worse than a lower IQ, because it may cause Death, So it is better for us to have appropriate amount meat for each meal but not overload.
Reference:
http://health.sina.com.cn/hc/ys/2014-08-14/0913146453.shtml
http://www.rd.com/health/healthy-eating/foods-that-make-you-dumb-2/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201005/why-vegetarians-are-more-intelligent-meat-eaters
It is too extreme to say that because of the risk of eating meat people should all be vegetarians. First, it is a personal choice of each person to decide whether he/she want to consume meat despite the risk, because the risk of eating meat is not huge and most people still want to take the risk of eating meat. Second, as I have said in my blog, in order to balance the function of organ and supply the daily energy people need, it is also necessary for people to have some meat in their meal. People can have their own opinions on this issue, and no one can judge the rightness of this question because if people are judging whether people should ban meat in their meal, there is no more pleasure from eating.
Meat might make people stupid, but it certainly is a risk for cancer. The CDC recently listed red meat as a carcinogen, which has many meat lovers up in arms. I think there are certainly negative effects to eating meat, but I think it is a little far fetched to believe that it is considered in the same category as smoking and chewing tobacco. But maybe, due to all this evidence about health risks of meat, we should all become vegetarians! Nice post.