However, if you think this is the primary way to improve academic underachievement in disadvantaged children, I really do think you're barking up the wrong tree.
I don't think I'd use the term "primary way." But I would say "ensuring good nutrition and good pre-natal care are really important things to do and will do a lot for cognitive and other forms of childhood development."
I stand by my assertion: there's a huge body of evidence showing solid links between malnutrition and cognitive impairment. I linked to studies on Google scholar in one of my messages. All those studies are peer reviewed.
Here's one. I don't really understand why the studies I've cited are being dismissed (and as a side note, why the criticisms of Abcedarian have been ignored). I mentioned published studies in at the end of the Ecopacket,
like this one. I included the bird study because it was trying to control for factors that can't be controlled in humans. I'm not sure why studies in developing countries were dismissed; we have malnutrition due to poverty in this country too (
as this study points out). Not to mention that malnutrition is a lack of nutrients, not necessarily calories.
Obese kids may be malnourished. There are multiple studies on this malnutrition and development going back
decades. The idea that malnutrition affects development (cognitive and otherwise) negatively has been settled, and I'm not even sure why we're debating it.
Honestly, I'm trying to understand why anyone would necessarily even
need a randomized study specifically showing that better food raises scores on standardized tests before adding it to that list you wrote at the end of your message. This requirement seems superfluous, given that the effects of malnutrition are so well-documented. IMO, the priority should be just getting to it and finding a way to feed people properly.
And I'm going to add this again. You haven't responded to my points about the Abcedarian study. There are have been serious criticisms of that study in peer-reviewed journals. Whenever you've critiqued a point I made, I've responded with more studies. You need to give me solid studies showing that Abcedarian-type methods produce long-term results of the types claimed, in the original study groups. And I'd like to see a response to my criticisms of Abcedarian (sample size, bias, etc.).
