Clever kids ’embrace vegetarianism’

Intelligent children are more likely to become vegetarians than their peers, scientists have claimed.

The ongoing 1970 British Cohort study says that the link between vegetarian adults who gave high IQ test scores as children holds up even when adjusted for better education and higher occupational social classes.

Published today in the British Medical Journal, the research shows that the average vegetarian is female and has higher academic or vocational qualifications than the norm.

Scientists arrived at their findings after studying 8,179 men and women aged over 30, gauging their IQs as ten-year-olds before quizzing them on eating habits two decades later.

Almost five per cent of participants were found to be vegetarian, with a handful of this proportion vegans and a third eating both fish and chicken.

Although researchers could not uncover any connection between higher than average incomes and vegetarianism, they claim that the findings concur with previous research that links clever children with a lower risk of coronary heart disease in later life.

Vegetarianism is thought to lower cholesterol levels, reducing the chances of both obesity and heart disease.