Physical Wellness

School Performance, Greatly Affected By Proper Nutrition [VIDEO]

By Alleah Kiamco | Update Date: Mar 29, 2017 07:22 AM EDT

Anna Johnson, a lead author of a new study published in the Journal of Child Development, said that children who experience food insecurity in infancy and toddlerhood have lower social-emotional skills and cognitive capacity compared to peers who had enough nutritious food in the early stages of their development.

Johnson said that when food insecurity occurred in preschool years, it brings out negative impact on school performance and coping up. Anna and her partner, Anna Markowitz, a University of Virginia postdoctoral research associate studied and investigated 3,700 low-income households for their study and research, the CNN said. 

The study finds that there is a higher risk in poor school performance for kids who experience hunger or lack of nutrition for kids in a very early age than kids in kindergarten across all areas of development.

Good nutrition starts young and while many people question the importance of diet and good nutrition as a major key factor in school success, studies have correlated academic success and high-level performance with a healthy, nutritious diet. 

Sibylle Kranz, an Associate Professor of Education and a certified child nutrition epidemiologist said that there's a huge difference of proportion on kids' nutritional needs than those of adults. Children require diets that are nutrient-dense meals and snacks. Kranz said that though there is a difference on kids in elementary and those in much higher grade levels in terms of food intake and need, there is a common ground of the need to eat nutritious and healthy meals.

In most studies, breakfast is mostly neglected but research repeatedly reminds that good breakfast improves school performance. Kids and schoolchildren who rarely eat breakfast had a greater risk of about 40 percent in doing poorly in reading and math; their Grade Point Averages (GPA) were also 25 percent lower, the Today's Dietician reports. 

No matter what level one is in school, a good amount of breakfast, fruit consumption, vegetable intake with the provisions of vitamins and minerals, are found to be important for a child's school and academic performance.

 

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