Strollerderby

Statistics are funny things, aren't they? One could argue that mothers who had the occasional glass of wine during pregnancy are themselves more intelligent, knowing what will and won't cause problems yet not harming their unborn children with excessive intake. Higher intelligence naturally translates into better diet, meaning fish and grains and no doubt, prenatal care and vitamins. Overall, higher intelligence in the parents means higher intelligence in the children, for many reasons.

Of course, that's just a theory :D

I, too, like the first-mentioned study's results about alcohol. We're pretty sure it's why our younger son is "smarter" than his older brother: I'd loosened up a bit by the time kid #2 came along.

So, uh, did they do anything to control for the fact that, according to the above, lower-income families (who likely have less access to prenatal, obstetric, and pediatric care; who likely have less access to high quality schools and quality childcare; where parents may be working quite hard and not have as much time to help teach their children at home as families where one parent, say, can afford to stay home, et c. et c.) are more likely to purchase margarine? Or was it just one of the many studies coming out these days that are saying: POOR KIDZ ARE DOOMED?  Because I am a little tired of these studies.  We know that poverty hurts families, and hurts developing children especially.  Let's stop proving it, if that's the case, and start spending some cash on alleviating the poverty.  And if they didn't control for any of that, then isn't it likely that margarine doesn't make much difference (I graduated cum laude from an Ivy League school and a top-tier grad school, and have always eaten margarine to the exclusion of butter; my butter-eating hubby did  less well than I in the same type of college and grad school) and this reflects economic differences? And if that's the case, shouldn't these "scientists" be ashamed of themselves for proving, you know, nothing?

I agree, leahsmom.  It sounds like yet another study justifying that nothing should be done to help poor kids because they're stupid anyways, so why bother?

*sigh*

Correlation is not causation. Margarine does not make your kid dumber. The kids in this study who ate margarine had lower IQs, but that could be caused by all sorts of things unrelated to margarine.

Also, I was raised eating margarine, and you shoulda seen my SAT scores - they were awesome :)

The article does say that all other factors were eliminated in the margarine finding.

CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION!!!

Maybe kids from lower income families eat margarine more than butter and maybe those families have less money for pre-natal care or education related toys for thier children.  There are hundreds of possible confounding factors that could explain why kids who eat butter are "smarter."  Also, less afluent families probably eat more frozen and fast food meals, how many of those do you know that have fish and whole grains?

This is so ignorant!

Also, in response to Manjari....

it is impossible to rule out ALL other factors.  There are millions of possible explainations for why one child has a highter IQ than another.

The study specifically states IQ was correlated with margarine... correlation means close to nothings, causally speaking

True!