Smart Girls Eat Fish

It's been recently reported that not only are girls who eat Omega 3s smarter than girls who don't, the distribution of body fat is also different. The University of California has reported that women who accumulated more fat on their hips than their waists (think Coca Cola bottles!) - and who therefore had low hip-waist ratios like movie stars (movie stars have hips??) - also had higher cognitive scores than girls with higher hip-waist ratios. [Trust a university in California to link brain capacity with waist size! I thought champagne was the reason for my dwindling brain - apparently it's chocolate!]

The researchers proposed that because the fat on the hips and thighs contains more omega-3s than belly fat does, these women were storing omega-3s critical for foetal and infant brain development--and boosting their own brainpower as they grew up. To test this hypothesis, data on about 4000 girls and boys between the ages of 6 and 16 was tested. After the researchers controlled for the parents' income and education and for the children's age, race, number of siblings, and blood lead levels, they found that girls who ate more omega-3 scored significantly better on four cognitive tests, including an IQ test. They ultimately found that although genetics and parental education influence intelligence far more, the dietary effect explained about 1% of the difference in test scores between girls. Boys also perform a bit better on cognitive tests if they eat more omega-3s than other fatty acids, but the effect is "twice as great in girls as in boys".

Apparently this disparity also suggests that evolution has favoured girls who stow omega-3 fats on their lower bodies [I am pretty sure that girls with the body of a movie star are far more likely to beat off a girl shaped like a bean bag in the "can I have your babies" stakes with the men]. The team also found that omega-6 fatty acids interfere with cognition, because girls who ate more of these oils didn't perform as well.

I recall as a little girl refusing to eat fish because I hated the smell. I don't think my brain - or hips - are amused.