Eating chickens is bad for kids

Well, there's no discussion of their methodology, so I may be making assumptions here, but they may be right, but also wrong.

The problem with many studies today is that they show correlation but not causality.

For example, children who eat chicken on the bone are more likely to be poor. Not that all are, but chicken on the bone is cheaper, so it's likely true. Children who are poor are often raised by parents who either don't care to raise their children properly, or by parents who do care, but who have to work more than they would like to have to and can't raise their children as well as they would like to. (don't take offense, anyone, just saying more likely, not like everyone is this way).

Thus, yes, statistically, it would be likely that children who eat foods like drumsticks are likely to be less well behaved than children who eat boneless meats. That doesn't speak to causality, though.
 
It made mainstream TV news yesterday.

I just shook my head. IF anything it tells me that the parents are not teaching manners. Growing up proper manners was to hold the leg at the joint and carefully and neatly eat away. But ONLY one hand, and only the drum stick. No- one ate the wings at the table; those were for picnicing. and 2 hands allowed.

I'm a little tongue in cheek here-- I know my kids eat the meat off the bones, and they have wonderful manners. Very polite boys. So seriously, the study needs to go to the next level and point at the parents need to teach good behavior, despite what they are eating.

ANother quick point-- studies are over used and overly reported by the news media. IT is a juicy tid bit. ANd the study is not used within the context of what a study is: The link between 2 factors. NOT cause and effect. Rarely do studies focus on cause and effect, that comes in later studies, and may never be determined.

I would like to see a study that includes the parenting style of the children and the eating behavior-- THAT is what I would beleive is the cause .. . . .not eating meat on the bone, as the media implies.

PS. because we process our own chicken, boneless is pretty non-exhistent in my house. Geez, I better becareful: my boys will become cavemen!
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"Eating chickens is bad for kids" is not even what the study is claiming. They say eating something like a drumstick or corn on the cob which involves holding the food and biting off bits makes a kid more assertive and willful, whereas cut up chicken or kernels of corn won't have that effect. Even in the linked blurb it's made pretty clear they aren't saying chicken flesh is 'bad' for kids.

Whether or not the study really carries any weight is another matter. I'd look at it perhaps as kids who are capable of handling whole foods themselves (and are treated as being as capable of small tasks as the adults around them) are more confident or advanced then kids who are coddled and still have mom hovering over them dicing their food up into tiny bites, if anything.

I mean, maybe my daughter is only bossy with other toddlers because she loves drumsticks, but I'm really doubting that.
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Heh, heh, yup the drumsticks did it. By the way,
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Interesting, there is something kind of primal about tearing meat off the bone rather than eating it already cut up in tidy little pieces. My favorite part of the steak is the stuff I have to gnaw off the bone with my teeth. Have you ever given your normally docile dog a meaty bone and seen it hunch over it like he was a ravenous wolf? That said, if you handed my eldest child a chicken leg quarter he'd cut the meat off the bone before he ate it. My middle and youngest child would hold it and bite the meat of with their teeth. I can't claim that any of my three children are "docile", but can say that my oldest is less so than my middle. Anyway, not sure I want a child who is docile anyway.
 
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Then you could take the other approach. You need to feed your kids things they hold in their hands to help make them more assertive and help them with their self-esteem. Corporate executives, star athletes, successful generals, and such don’t get those positions by being meek and mild. Is that an excuse for me to eat more candy bars? Nope, too late for me.

I don’t necessarily agree that this study it totally worthless. That blurb doesn’t give any real background information off what they were studying or the approaches used. It’s quite possible that is just something someone thinks they noticed and has nothing to do with the real research going on. That happens a lot when things go viral. People take something totally out of context and run with it because they can make it sensational.

Maybe some people can remember when Shrimp on a Treadmill went viral. It was a huge joke on the internet. Scientists were studying shrimp when they were forced to continuously swim. It wasn't really a treadmill but a constant current. No context of what they were studying or why they chose shrimp was given, just how outrageous it was that shrimp were on a treadmill. Ha, ha, ha!!!

Brian Williams mentioned it on NBC Nightly News. My thought was he was going to do a decent job as a reporter and give some real information. Nope. I was wrong. He did a shrimp on a treadmill, ha, ha, ha report.

It took some digging, but the real research was on how muscles react when they are under stress. The research was on how differently the body reacts to certain medications when it is under stress versus resting. That could help design a better medication or way to take it.

Why were shrimp chosen? Probably because it was cheaper and easier to set up an aquarium with a pump to get the shrimp to exercise than maybe getting something else to constantly move. My first thought when I read that on the internet was I bet the guy that has to clean up was glad they were not using elephants.

I just look at these kinds of things as something being made to appear sensational so it will go viral and probably has nothing to do with the actual research. That's a discredit to actual valid research.


Something along the lines of this conversation, the idea stolen from a comic strip.

“It’s interesting. One of the Kardashians did this.”

“I disagree”

“No, it says here she did.”

“I’m not disagreeing with that. I disagree that it is interesting.”
 

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