Eating healthy is important for everyone but even more so for kids. If kids want to excel in their studies then it will be important for them to perform well academically, communicate with other students and properly concentrate on any task. They can achieve all this easily, if they have a healthy diet.
Improving Attendance:
Your kids will not be able to complete their home tasks and tests if they are absent frequently. This is why the food they eat should be rich in mineral, proteins and vitamins so that the kids stay healthy and have to take less number of sick leaves.
Better Focus:
School is a place where students need to interact with other students and teachers. If they do not take proper food, then hunger will create distraction as well as make them irritated. Thus for maintaining their focus, it is important to take a healthy balanced diet.
Higher Test Scores:
As per FRAC or Food Research and Action Center, students taking a complete and healthy meal work more efficiently and make less number of math errors as compared to others. It is also seen that they also score well in visual as well as vocabulary skill tests.
Healthy Food and Better Grades
Journal of School Health recently published a study in which about 5,000 fifth graders as well as their parents were surveyed. Using the information a score was calculated for every student based on carbohydrates, fats, proteins in the food and amount of saturated fats, nutrients and salt present in the food. After that, academic performance of these students was measured based on standardized writing and reading test.
It was found that those students who were eating healthy diet and had better diet quality scores were forty-one percent less likely to fall short in the test in comparison to students who had low diet quality scores. In addition to it, those who were eating more vegetables, fruits and less of fats were able to perform better in the test. This survey makes it clear the importance of having healthy and proper diet in improving grades as well as academic performance in students.
Importance of Proper Breakfast
According to research studies, a good breakfast is important for kids and helps them learn properly. The reason for it is that while kids sleep in the night, there is a long gap from the time they have their dinner and by morning, the body as well as brain require fresh supply of blood sugar or glucose. We would like to add here that if there is lack of glucose then the brain stops performing as required. Kids then find it difficult to understand new information, there are problems in spatial as well as visual understanding and it becomes hard to remember things.
In studies conducted on students of elementary schools it was found that in terms of short-term memory as well as verbal fluency, the students who had breakfast scored better as compared to students who did not take breakfast.
What to Eat in Breakfast
It is important not to give sweetened cereals to kids since these have comparatively high glycemic index. This index is used for measuring the speed at which carbohydrates are absorbed by body and changed into fuel. It is better to give food items, which have lower glycemic index like the whole grains. As for example, carbohydrate present in bowl of oatmeal and sugary cereal are almost same but have different glycemic index.
Summary:
Healthy diet plays an important role in how well kids perform in the school and the grades they achieve. The diet should be rich in all the proteins, minerals and vitamins so that kids can improve their performance.