Kids With High IQs Become Vegetarians

Yesterday’s Live Science reported that Kids with High IQs Grow Up to Be Vegetarians. British researchers found that high childhood IQ is a predictor of vegetarianism by the age of 30.

Vegetarians were likely to be female, of higher social class and better educated, but IQ was still a significant predictor of being vegetarian.

So far so good. I’m educated and highfalutin’. But wait, there’s more:

There was no difference in IQ score between strict vegetarians and those who said they were vegetarian but who said they ate fish or chicken . . .

What? How smart are those vegetarians if they don’t know they’re not really vegetarians? There I was, thinking I could tell you all that the smarter you are as a kid, the healthier you’ll be as an adult, but how could I possibly make this conclusion (like other studies have)?

But wait, there’s more:

The study left many unanswered questions such as: Did the vegetarian children grow up in a household with a vegetarian parent? Were meatless meals regularly served in the household? Were the children eating a primarily vegetarian diet at the age of 10?

And the question I’d want answered is: Do the kids with the highest IQs grow up to be vegans?

Um, don’t you think those are fairly important questions? How can you take IQ, separate from a gazillion other factors, and make any meaningful conclusion? The researchers do say they cannot make any solid conclusions. Nevertheless, I’m not sure I feel comfortable with studies that report correlations, which as we all know do not imply causation. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to believe that vegetarians are smarter. What this study really says is that kids with high IQs will describe themselves as vegetarians by the age of 30, even if they eat chicken and fish.

Do kids with higher IQs grow up to be adults who, shall we say, bend the truth?