Joe Wicks says junk food causes ADHD

[RiffRaffBananas]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13292511/amp/Joe-Wicks-blames-ultra-processed-junk-explosion-children-ADHD-reveals-ran-sugar-kid-thinks-love-Sunny-Delight-Wagon-Wheels-jam-sandwiches-caused-behavioural-issues.html

I politely disagree with Joe. I have a very health conscious friend who cooks from scratch, plenty of vegetables and a Mediterranean diet as recommended by all healthcare professionals and has two children. One has ADHD and one doesn’t.

Has Joe jumped the shark on this one?

It could be reverse too. If you have adhd you're more likely to be attracted to food that stimulates dopamine reward centres?

So correlation not causation.

Not sure how my mum born in the mid 50’s when junk food didn’t really exist manages to have it then. I always thought she probably got it from my grandmother (raised on a farm with home grown/ raised foodstuffs) who also seems to have it (undiagnosed but clearly displays traits associated)

Junk food is not good for anyone though.

I remember a programme years ago with Jamie Oliver: he was working with a family who had several DC who had either been diagnosed with ADHD or were awaiting diagnosis. Anyway, their diet was terrible, and after feeding them healthy food, their ADHD ‘symptoms’ either disappeared or were greatly improved. But I think the consensus was that these DC didn’t have ADHD, they were just hyped up on additives. ADHD is not due to diet.

Joe wicks needs to stick to what he knows and not pass comment on medical conditions.

No this is not the case. I think myself that diet and exercise can help with ADHD symptoms.

He’s not a bright lad, is he?

It is more complicated than that. You absolutely can have ADHD and eat a brilliantly healthy diet without UPF.

BUT

Eating a diet high in UPF and sugar really can have an impact on behaviour to the extent that it can start to look like ADHD and certainly make ADHD symptoms far worse. So if you or your children have ADHD or ADHD-like symptoms, it’s well worth cutting out UPF as much as possible.

Am I the only one who misread that as John Wick?!

This was a theory in the 80s when some psychiatrists didn’t believe in ADHD , both diet and ineffective parenting were blamed. Research proved them wrong. Obviously junk food isn’t good for physical or mental health but he’s talking rubbish.

Does he actually say that? I have only skim read the article but he says he thinks his own behaviour as a child was influenced by eating a shit diet and points out there may be a link between diet and behaviour especially in children. It's the daily mail that suggests it's being over diagnosed.

I don't like Joe Wicks and don't think he should be commenting on medical issues but I don't think he has actually claimed that junk food 'causes' ADHD

Of course it’s bullshit- I’m not a scientist but can see that if that were true then whole sibling sets would have ADHD or not.

Food affects mood and behaviour as well as health but most people know this through experience and don’t need a fucking influencer to tell them that.

JW’s “influence” should have disappeared once schools reopened and they didn’t need an online PE teacher. Hopefully he won’t need one of his children to have ADHD to realise that he should think before he speaks.

@Kijuity ,Jumping the shark - Wikipedia

It's horribly ableist to suggest that people with ADHD can be "avoided" or "fixed" by a change in diet.

Cool. What are his credentials…. Oh wait.

Gosh, I didn't realise he is a doctor ;-)

He may be a numpty but there's plenty of actual medical studies which point to some link.

I bet the medical big minds are so grateful to JW for his in depth study into the matter.... fuckwit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

The idiom "jumping the shark" or "jump the shark" is a term that is used to argue that a creative work or entity has reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with, or an extreme exaggeration of, its original purpose.

It is really curious that people on this thread are outraged that you may be able to improve ADHD with diet, but likely have absolutely no issue in giving children amphetamine to fix it.

I genuinely think the world is upsidedown at the moment.

This.
From my skim reading, the impression I got was that the junk food made the symptoms worse.

This.
I have ADHD (not caused by bad diet) but if I eat loads of shite it impacts my mental health and I am much more twitchy and buzzy. DS1 is the same and DSS (both have ADHD). Watch yourself if you feed them any aspartame as they go from bouncy fun boys into fucking little terrors 😜

He's almost right. It's a high carb diet. It doesn't matter whether it's potatoes, bread or pasta ... metabolically it's all glucose.

Not a medical person but I also genuinely believe that there is a big link between our gut biome and our mental health/cognative function.

Firstly, the medical profession doesn’t know much about ADHD, especially in adults, or females of any age (as evidenced by the huge delay in diagnosis and treatment in the UK right now).
Secondly, if you give some kids Ultra Processed food, or non-diet cola, they definitely go a bit “hyper”. I’ve witnessed this many times - and also seen some nasty reactions to those drinks that don’t have sugar, but are sweetened with aspartame and other artificial sweeteners.
Thirdly, Joe Wicks does have a degree in Sports Science. Quite a lot of a Sports Science degree is study of the effect of various foods on the body, so I don’t agree with the PP’s who have suggested (snarkily) that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

With recent studies on UPF’s showing that it’s more harmful than previously believed, he’s probably on the right track on this point.

When you see your DC struggle with ADHD you will try anything for them to have a “normal” life. We tried meds with both of ours but took them off them due to the terrible side effects. So while I don’t blame parents for trying the meds I would advise doing a lot of researching before starting down that path.
DS1 has ADHD and Tourette’s. DS2 has ADHD and was prescribed meds which caused tics. Doing my own reading I discovered that meds were advised against if anyone in the family had Tourette‘s!

Doctors do about 1 hour of training on nutrition btw, and I would be quite sure that someone like JW has studied nutrition much more than any standard GP.