Physically fit boys and girls scored higher on reading and math, research reveals

[jtab4994]

So is this chicken, or egg?

Physically fit kids are more likely to come from middle class/wealthy families, and fat kids more likely to come from poverty. Sure, you can have a fat dumb rich kid or a smart athletic poor kid, but in general the poor physical shape of a kid is a symptom of underlying problems (poverty, poor parenting, bad role models), and making him eat carrots for lunch won't cure his academic problems.

[Brian.Pearson]

We used to have a game called "run through". There were a bunch of kids lined up -- well actually two lines facing each other -- and one guy starts it by being in the middle. The guy in the middle would eventually tackle somebody else, and those two tackle some more until there's one guy left. Our mothers didn't like that because it tended to mess up up the knee part of their jeans.

But we got a lot of exercise. On top of that, we had track, basketball, football, and dodge ball. Band had exercise, too.

And on top of that, a lot of us had bicycles and we put a lot of miles on them. A buddy of mine played a lot of ping pong an we were pretty evenly matched.