I thought it was mediocre. The experiments lacked depth, some of them lacked proper comparison with available alternatives (eg. Frosties as a breakfast)and it didn't give breadth of information to make the findings valid. The experimental group was so small as to almost make it invalid. The focus purely on IQ, rather than physical health (stamina, strength,growth, immunity and emotional wellbeing) gave a skewed message, especially with the summary points at the end.
For example, the Frosties cereal. Her conclusion was that it's better to eat something than nothing as it will help cognitive function. Yes I agree with this to some extent. However that's not the whole picture. The Frosties cereal wasn't compared with other alternatives, for example, a non-sugar cereal (slow release carbohydrate)nor was a carbohydrate breakfast compared with one that contained some protein (like an egg or two)or purely protein. So how can one really draw any conclusion? How do we know that on a slow carb (wholegrain toast with a scraping of Oliveo/butter) along with some protein (an egg or two) might not have yielded even better results in cognitive tests? We simply don't.
Cognition isn't the be all and end all in terms of breakfast either. What about strength, stamina, immunity, eye health, growth snd a sense of wellbeing? The suggestion, whether she intended it or not seemed to be that a bowl of cereal like Frosities was sufficient for breakfast. I wouldn't think that just one bowl of cereal wouldn't keep a child satisfied for very long. I remember our biology tutor telling us as 14yr olds of importance of eating protein for breakfast for strength, alertness and growth. She was very dismissive of cereal as enough to start the day. The importance of eating some protein for breakfast has been well documented and yet this was glossed over as there wasn't enough of a 'shock' factor. Fat and protein slow the absorbtion of the sugar and tiny bit of fat is good for children. Cereal such as Frosties on its own creates a glycemic high followed by the inevitable dip a couple of hours later. Professor Reagan might not have found Frosties sugary but anybody with a brain knows that juice and jam also contain sugar! Did you notice the amount of Frosties cereal she was referring to? No, curiously enough it wasn't stated! The stated serving on the side of cereal packets is 30g! That's a quarter of a bowl. Many children (and myself included!) will fill the bowl to more than half or the top if they can! So that would double the sugar content straight away! The nutiritional content she spoke of in Frosties is mostly achieved through the addition of crude B vitamins and iron, not because the cereal flakes were particularly nutritious.
With the number of obese teeneagers on the increase and inextricably linked with that, diabetes too, I would have thought that it's pretty crucial that children aren't encouraged to eat too many sugary cereals nor get into the habit of eating them. The risk of diabetes and obesity is of more national importance than a few IQ points.
And what about the fish oil formulas? I found this too was flawed. I must have missed the part where she compared all the different brands and examined the amount of EPA in each formula and whether the PCBS had been removed or not. Boots don't sell one of the best reputable formulas anyway. She, I'm sure knows full well, that many parents and children don't take fish oils purely to increase cognitive performance but for other reasons such as decreasing inflammation, protecting the heart, lowering triglycerides and debatably increasing a sense of happiness and protecting against depression. This wasn't mentioned. One might say, "Well why should it? She was experimenting what increases IQ." However this was misleading. It could be argued that a sense of wellbeing and physical health could make it easier to concentrate and apply oneself to a subject. It also ignores the nature vs nuture consideration of IQ.
The only redeeming part of the programme was the discovery that Vtech have a numbskulled research dept. It was disturbing to discover that this company hadn't researched the input process adequately enough. Teaching a child to input umbers backwards could really confuse a child and could even wrongly give the impression that they're dyslexic fgs.
And what a funny litle research group for the testing of IQ and different toys. Remind me again, how many children were involved in the experiment and what was their age group? A handful of varying ages wasn't it? I noted that the child reading through the book with a pen that could be pointed on the page and read to her was dismissed. Personally, I found that to be a pity. Some parents are more educated than others and some have more time to read than others. Isn't a miracle in some sections of the UK that children even read books at all? Any sort of interest in a book should be applauded and if it takes this to do it, so be it. It's a start. Boys are reputably lagging behind in the reading stakes as it is. Of course parent interaction would be best, but we live in a far from ideal UK right now. As the marketing woman said it's not intended to substitute but to compliment conventional book reading. No, let's chuck that one out, how could it possibly stimulate the brain.
The more I think about the programme, the more flawed, flimsy, simplistic and headline grabbing, I think it was. The playing a musical instrument probably does increase IQ due to involvement of eye-hand coordination and the mental stimulation of learning an instrument. Does this mean that listening to music is so much less stimulating that it should be slung in the crap bucket? She triumphantly (ha!) trumped (ha,ha) the Mozart Effect author when she interrogated him however I get the impression that the conversation with him was heavily edited. He said that a child's IQ can't be measured but he must have been able to defend his finding with some form of tests that were conducted though? How does she conclude that the IQ of a child playing an instrument can be tested if a yet a child listening to Mozart can't? She didn't explain. In fact, what one test that was mentioned, concluded was that listening to any music can stimulate the brain. In that one experiment that was mentioned, the woman said that the results from listening to Blur were the same as listening to Mozart and only lasted for 15 minutes. Oh, shall we just dimiss listening to music with children then? Couldn't it be argued that listening to any music with a child might make them feel closer to the parent, happy, alive, loved, make them feel creative and prompt them to want to dance, get out some paint pots or just daydream? How do childhood tests for IQ predict future artistic ability for example? We weren't told. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that the effects of music and what it then stimulates the child to do is as short lived as 15 minutes and can't prompt any kind of long term wish to repeat the process and stimulate again.
This might sound cynical, but I think the Frosties conclusion was deliberately included to get her maximum newspaper coverage and prompt debate at the expense of well researched information. I've seen far better conducted scientific research on programmes from the BBC, sadly this wasn't one of them and I sincerely hope that Prof. Reagan hasn't any vested interest in Kelloggs.