Joe Wicks says junk food causes ADHD

Except actully, there's some evidence that caffeinne, for example, is helpful for people with ADHD. Prior to getting DS properly diagnosed and on medication. As with many others with ADHD children, the occasional use of caffeine is something we found helpful prior to DS being medicated. I can't really talk about the chemicals in many drinks etc, and certainly I'm not wild about them, but there's a lot of evidence that it's all very low in the bigger scheme of things.

I think there's more than enough truth to the fact that diets can make existing conditions worse/ more manageable. But to blame them for causing ND is ridicuolous. And in our house, DS is the one who has always been such a good eater that he's been eating all cooked from scratch, mostly the same food we eat, pretty much since he was weaned. While DD who is a fussy pain in the ass eats much more processed food as a result and doesn't have so much as a hint of any ND whatsoever.

Which is to be expected anytime a celebrity dares to talk about the poor diet that too many people seem to have no problem with their children consuming.

Ok, sorry I did perhaps target Joe in my original comment unfairly! I just feel extremely annoyed at the generalisations around ADHD and autism, particularly the past couple of years where everyone is questioning the rise in diagnoses and disputing the validity of them.

I have ADHD and am parenting two nd children. Having an understanding of ourselves, how ours brains work and accepting our differences, along with appropriate medication has been truly life changing for me and I often wish I had known and been treated sooner as I have felt a failure my entire life. I want my children to grow up knowing that there isn't something they or I did 'wrong' that makes them the way they are. It's a brain difference. I totally agree that diet, along with many other strategies such as managing screen time and having boundaries etc, help to manage daily life for children with ADHD. It's when sources such as the Daily Mail, take this idea and run with it as a way of implying ADHD isn't real, or can be fixed by better parenting in some way or another, that I get frustrated! However I fully accept that isn't what you are suggesting @fieldsofbutterflies and probably nor was Joe!!

ADHD is only a disorder in today's society where children spend most of the time sitting in class and there is little physical play space. It was probably an asset in stone age times. Catching prey or running away.

Some additives are known to cause ADHD behaviours but they are banned in the UK (although they might now be creeping back in)

My DC would show ADHD-like behaviour after a lot of sweets or a lot of screen time

Of course it's taken off because you chose a bare faced lie as your thread title.

You should write for the Daily Mail yourself if you don't already

I think he’s absolutely right in that there’s a huge growth is these inattentive behaviours, and for some kids it is diet and inactivity and brain stimulating tv and apps that create an inability to focus. For many, like mine, who gets minimal tv and junk food, it’s much more integral than that. But if you fixed diet you’d clear up a lot of childhood behaviour issues, including some which are probably being classed as adhd.

Me too

He needs to stick to what he knows best. Doing exercise and getting his wife pregnant.

I think it's clumsily worded, but I do think that a bad diet impacts cognitive function. If you have ADHD, part of what it will impact is your ADHD affected cognitive functions.

I have ADHD and have no problems admitting that high caffeine helps combat the effects of it. I don't see why other chemicals wouldn't also have an effect, be it positive or negative.

Of course it's wrong to say that junk food causes ADHD.

While it's obviously better for children to have a healthy than an unhealthy diet, diet is not the cause of ADD. And who made Joe Wicks the expert on the subject anyway?

He can't be uneducated or ignorant as he has a degree.
Psychiatrists have a medical education.

I don't really know much about him but the thread title is misleading and the insults on this thread are shocking.

That's his credibility out the window

Exactly he has no medical education or is a psychiatrist. He has a sports science degree.

Have you actually read the article?

I have read no replies.

Joe Wicks can fuck off.

Even if he is wrong about ADHD, the point about eating less junk food is well made.

I have bipolar and ADHD. All of my children have ADHD. I don't agree that processed food causes ADHD but I do know first and second hand that eating a clean diet, low in simple carbs and high in fat and veg heavy really helps the symptoms of both of my conditions. Sugar/bread and processed food causes my blood sugar to go all over the place and I get ratty and short fused. So do my kids.

But if I have a full English breakfast with mushrooms and tomatoes ( no bread), a chicken salad for lunch and maybe some soup for my evening meal with curfew and cream through the day then my mid OSS much more stable and I have a clarity that I don't have on toast/ sanidwhiches/ maccies.

My parents wouldn’t let us eat and drink a variety of different groceries others seemed to have in abundance for these reasons, they were pretty liberal other than that so no fizzy drinks unless homemade, no sweets at all, rare to have cordial as the E numbers in them. My parents were pretty liberal other than that but my Dad also thought Crap TV mostly ITV wasn’t any good for the developing brain, he also played a lot of classical music or Opera as he said the brain had to work harder when listening to it, consequently making you smarter. That said, he loved Jazz and my Mum liked the 60’s bands, Rolling Stones, The Kinks etc.

Just a few years before he became Professor Joe Wicks.

I can believe that too much sugar causes children to behave hyperactively for a short amount of time. He seems to be conflating that with actual ADHD which is bonkers. It is usually possible, if you are around children enough, to tell the difference between excited, hyped up child that is sugar crazy and ADHD child who literally cannot help themselves or their impulses and is like it all the time, bless them.

No, he's a twat because of the absolute glee with which he made parents feel inadequate, and continues to do so. He's a twat because of how he made women feel inadequate and how he objectifies his wife. He's a twat because he belittled schools' efforts during Covid. He's a twat because he is a tedious virtue signaller for whom any opportunity to tell parents, women, children, wives, schools that they aren't as good as he is is an opportunity to be grasped with both hands.

He's abhorrent.

ignorant and uneducated?
He has a sports science degree and an MBE so he must be doing something right.

For what feels like the millionth time, he didn't say bad diet causes ADHD 🙈

He literally has no medical training so obviously he’s a bit of an idiot for saying this.

The only thing I could potentially agree with although I’m clutching at straws here is he is ignorant enough to think a child high on sugar is the same as the hyperactivity seen in children with ADHD… but that’s a completely different thing and it just shows he’s uneducated.

Joe Wicks should get back in his box. He barely seems competent in what he is supposed to know about let alone the pathology of neurodiverse presentations. That’s all someone with ADHD (or a parent of a child with ADHD) needs, the insinuation that having ADHD is their fault because they didn’t eat right.