The Importance of Breakfast to Childrens Physical and Cognitive Development - Literature review Example

I. Introduction The belief that breakfast is the most imperative among the three meals required of the day is widespread among parents and teachers.Nevertheless, the scientific soundness of this belief is still questionable. Researchers have been attempting to identify the importance of eating breakfast for children in relation to physical and cognitive performance for centuries. Researches have been carried out temporarily, exploring the effect of skipping a meal, and over the continuing term, analyzing the effect of recurrent missing of breakfast on learning. Both empirical researches carried out under simulated and controlled laboratory conditions and field research exploring factual world circumstances have been embarked on. Effects in undernourished and healthy children have been investigated. Currently, an apparent, definitive empirical conclusion obtained from inclusive recurrent clinical examination and field researches may not have been attained. However, the research agreement among specialists in the discipline and those accountable for education is that the importance of breakfast in the physical and cognitive capacity of children cannot be taken for granted or undervalued. Moreover, the usefulness of thoroughly gathered observations of teachers and parents alike, perceived as qualitative science, is at present being acknowledged (Kopelman, 2001). This paper will attempt to review evidences from relevant references so as to determine the effects of nutritional supplementation through regular breakfast consumption on children’s physical and cognitive development particularly those suffering from more serious nutrient deficiencies. II. The Importance of Consuming Breakfast among Children The practice of missing breakfast has turned out to be widespread among children and adolescents alike. Experimental studies have discovered that breakfast is a vital meal since it is favorable to physical growth, cognitive development and weight. Childhood is a very important period that demands proper and adequate nutrition. Breakfast is believed by many to be the most essential meal of the day; it gives individuals with energy to accomplish and fulfill their daily task and responsibilities. As an individual sleeps the body transforms from the sated to the fasted state which makes the serum glucagon absorptions to increase. Consequently, the liver generates glucose through converting glycogen to glucose. This takes place until a small portion of the glycogen reserves are used up. When food is taken in fuel homeostasis is sustained. Breakfast as well gives sufficient nutrient ingestion which facilitates the growth and development requirements of children. For instance, the daily ingestion of a nutrient such as protein is higher for those who regularly eat breakfast. Protein is particularly important for very young individuals as it is the phase when the body and brain necessitate protein accumulation (Mitchell, 2001). Breakfast consumption for children may have a beneficial impact on cognitive development. Breakfast consumption lessens hunger, which can produce much more attentive and receptive students. It has also been made public that breakfast confers various features of memory function. A research with 569 students ranging from the ages 11 to 13 years discovered that breakfast eaten 30 minutes prior to the test upgraded their recall memory function. Breakfast has as well played a decisive role in the increase in school attendance and a reduction in lateness or tardiness rates. In contrast to physiologically satiated children, starving children endure feelings such as drowsiness, dizziness, exasperation, trembling, and are less capable to concentrate and recall new information (ibid, 128). On the other hand, a great deal of breakfast researches has discovered that breakfast skippers are more probable to be obese. This is brought about by frequent snacking and an increase in intake of fatty foods during the day. It has also been linked to infrequent physical activity. A research disclosed lower chances of being obese or overweight for children who regularly eat breakfast. At some stage in adolescence body weight and figure becomes a concern. Teenage girls specifically consider their body weight to be very high which can result to skipping breakfast as a way of losing weight (Miley, 1999). With the increasing concern of obesity and weight at present, the essentiality of breakfast should be highlighted. The growing incidence of breakfast skipping in children has increased public interests and concerns currently. Several studies have demonstrated that skipping breakfast was associated not merely to overweight and obese youngsters but as well to a bunching or other less hale and hearty lifestyle aspects involving smoking and unhealthy food preferences from nibbling and lower consumptions of micronutrients but greater intakes of sugar such as sucrose and alcohol even in later life. Excluding breakfast may hinder cognition, particularly for work founded on memory and learning, intervened by alterations in plasma glucose parameter in the brain. Children who eat breakfast have been demonstrated to have important developments in nutritional condition, physical routine, academic performance, school attendance and functioning on average assessments of depression and fretfulness. The extent of breakfast skipping in female learners was disclosed triply as high as that of their male counterparts, which was regarded considerably linked to a lower socioeconomic standing of female learners. Breakfast skipping may be related to young girls who are fixated to be slim. Though, skipping breakfast has been discovered to be a useless means of controlling weight, and an on-the-run eating manner or high-fat diet may as well result in to less vigorous weight management. A great deal of the study exploring the effects of breakfast on cognitive performance has been accomplished through evaluating the effects on sufficiently nourished as opposed to malnourished children. The assumption is that negotiated children will be more susceptible to more insult through breakfast exclusion. The president of The American Dietetic Association, Doris Derelian says, “It’s time for a breakfast revival” (Fenton, 2000, 94). She maintains that it is the simplest first step to upgrading the nutritional condition of school children in America. Early morning meal is as well a channel of opportunity for involved individuals such as parents to foster the physical and cognitive development of their child. Children who consume breakfast have better academic performance in school. Breakfast is rising as the latest family mealtime as dinner has submitted to lengthy work hours and hectic after-school to-do lists (ibid, 95). Business seminars, sports preparation, and exercise programs are taking up progressively more time on people, appointments, but parents who are seeking means to reclaim management of their family life can take advantage of breakfast as a time to get together with their children. In the breakfast table, the members of the family can give words of wisdom and advice and support to one another for the upcoming undertaking such as an examination, an unsettled conflict with a friend, a sports event. Children gain knowledge of the facts of adulthood when they are informed how their mother is struggling with a new job. Breakfast activates the brain and sustains the attentiveness and receptiveness of children throughout the day. After eight hours with no food, the body basically is a fasted entity, waiting to be satiated again. Children, who have a little physiological system than adults, are particularly susceptible to the evening fast. Behavior and performance in school are not the mere justifications to put emphasis on the morning meal. Serving breakfast creates a consistent eating habit that is the primary answer to weight management throughout an individual’s life. As Derelian says, “Set mealtimes help regulate appetite and discourage snacking and overeating.” This is crucial since, according to figures of the National Center for Health Statistics, the population of obese children ranging from ages six to 17 in the United States has doubled since the sixties. Several of these children are more probable to become obese adults (Fenton, 2000, 97). Furthermore, children who obtain sufficient nutrients from foods are less probable to have serious illnesses in adulthood. With no breakfast consumption, it is hard to follow the recommendations of the Food Guide Pyramid. Those who frequently miss breakfast have a difficult time obtaining sufficient fiber and some essential minerals. Ordinary foods for breakfast such as cereal, dairy products, bread and fruit juice are good sources of protein and carbohydrates (Mitchell, 2001). Children are continuously developing, growing and transforming on a daily basis, and a proper breakfast gives them the essential nutrients they need such as sugar, protein and fat, which are also indispensable for children to guarantee a constant supply of energy and infrequent feelings of hunger throughout the day. Researches have demonstrated that breakfast consumption provides children the nutritional advancement they require to improve the learning process, to positively affect learning, and other beneficial effects as well. Children who regularly eat breakfast as compared to those who do not, gain knowledge or learn better, perform better academically particularly in math and reading, cooperate and participate in classroom activities and discussion more often, conduct their selves better, attend school more often, and frequents the school clinic for regular checkups (Kopelman, 2001). On the other hand, children who skip breakfast can be droopy, lethargic, and exasperated when faced with difficult tasks. Physical growth, the nonverbal feature of development, cognitive capacity and social capabilities of underfed children are decisively affected (ibid, 112). However, when the physical requirement of hunger is addressed and met, these children can concentrate on their daily tasks and school activities, not merely academically but also socially and affectively. III. Nutrition Development: Preschool and School Years Childhood is the interlude between infancy and puberty includes immense diversity in age, size, growth rates, and most importantly developmental capacities. The timing and nature of both growth and development are affected by genetics, hormones and upbringing or the environment, comprising nutrition. Growth patterns are extremely specific to an individual, unpredictable at times, with sudden increase in height and weight then periods of negligible or no growth. In healthy children these nature of growth and development typically match up to identical changes in desire for food and food consumption (Mitchell, 1997). A sufficient intake of nutrients and energy is very important to sustain physical wellbeing and sustain healthy growth. Moreover, childhood is a formative period for growth and development of the behaviors and attitudes that can affect ways of living and health habits through puberty into later life. During this period, there are sudden adjustments in physiologic, cognitive and social development, which may put a number of children at nutritional hazard (Mitchell,1997, 82). Nutritional requirements of children are determined by the size and rate of growth of particular children. Since children have distinctive sizes and since growth rate change on a daily basis, nutritional requirements and dietary intakes differ extensively. The Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for youngsters aged 1 to 10 years create no division between boys and girls. A great deal of the information employed to identify these recommendations was inferred from findings from researches of adults. As for every RDA excluding energy, an adequacy over prerequisites is integrated, which implies that recommended levels surpass the physiologic needs for majority of children (Mitchell, 1997, 82). In the preschool years, children are developing independent feeding capabilities using developing motor skills, a mechanism that includes repeated spills and the use of hands. These quite messy and disorganized behaviors are an ordinary component of the growth and development of young children. The transition from large motor to defined motor skills gives out a greater exactness in food consumption and marks a period when preschoolers can be involve in food preparation. The preschool period is essential in the development of constructive and encouraging attitudes toward food and gaining skills to make food preferences. This mechanism is encouraged by a food intake environment that is satisfying, physically and emotionally alike. It involves a positive mood with friendship and tender guidance in cultivating food-associated behaviors. (Miley, 1999). Parents are frequently worried when a child exhibits diminished interest in food consumption and rejects a number of favorite foods. Desire to eat may become unpredictable and irregular. Refusal of meats and vegetables is frequent. Children may reject milk or may prefer to have it to the omission of other foods. Frequently the preschool years are distinguished by food jags at some point which the youngster may consume less food or may desire the same food for every meal; majority of these jags such as peanut butter last only days or weeks. When they are addressed carelessly, they turn out to be passing food intake patterns that are eventually forgotten. Nevertheless, giving higher importance on them can enhance rather than weaken such behavior, which may affect enduring food habits, such as eating breakfast regularly (Hiatt & Klerman, 2002). IV. School Breakfast Program for Preschool Children and Pre-Academic Performance Even though malnutrition is most widespread in developing nations, even subtler types of undernourishment, in which abrupt weight loss, retarded growth and development, and vulnerability to different kinds of disease can result, are directly evident in developed countries, such as the United States. Mild undernourishment has as well related to inferior cognition and poorer behavioral functioning. Researches that have investigated the effects of skipping even one meal, such as skipping breakfast, demonstrate that even a short fast of this type may lead to harmful effects that can harmfully affect academic performance of children (Hiatt & Klerman, 2002, 71). Breakfast is very important to nutritional wellbeing of children and has a prominent outcome on guaranteeing daily dietary sufficiency. Apart from ensuring best possible physical growth and development, positive outcomes on attentiveness, awareness, and other capabilities essential for academic success are improved. In several researches, for instance, Pollitt et al. (1981) have established that children deprived of breakfast show less precision on a number of tasks that assess problem solving. The most extensive interval for the duration of which a child goes with no external reserve of energy and nutrients is normally between supper and the morning breakfast. The very term breakfast suggests an intermission of the fasting period. If this everyday fasting break is prolonged because of the child’s skipping breakfast, the little by little collapse in glucose levels, in addition to other metabolic adjustments, may get in the way of the child’s cognitive functioning (p. 1528). On the other hand, children’s involvement in school breakfast activities, where their everyday dietary intake is better than that of children skip breakfast, has been recognized to enhance performance on standardized achievement tests and other assessments of cognition. Whereas a few researches account to negative effects from missing breakfast, the findings of most researchers in general conclude that a sufficient breakfast encourages child functioning. However, current research indicates that majority of children, middle-class taken account of, fails to consume a sufficient breakfast on daily basis. For instance, Worobey and Worobey (1996) discovered that “while 95% of mothers reported that their preschoolers eat breakfast on a daily basis, only 15% of their breakfast satisfied the criteria recommended in the government’s School Breakfast Program Guidelines” (p. 48). However, this line of investigation is frequently puzzled by the involvement of children, who are critically undernourished from constantly having had breakfast withdrawn, or by choosing as samples low-income households in which the full diet is of a mediocre quality. An additional constraint rests in the nearly restricted dependence on children of age eight and older (Worobey & Worobey, 1996). In relation to this, the researches aforementioned were intended at investigating two correlated research questions. The first is to examine if pre-school aged children belonging from the middle class would consume a more nutritious breakfast at school than they would eat at home. The second was to identify if such form of breakfast would wield a considerable effect on the children’s achievement with a range of cognitive tasks. In order to answer these questions, the research that will be discussed here, in a school breakfast program for a group of youngsters enrolled in the study’s simulated preschool, observed their breakfast consumption both at home and at school concurrently assessed their performance on examinations that were given on the morning that breakfast documentations were acquired. The objectives of the research were dual, which are, to identify if children would consume more nutritious breakfast at school than at home, or if ever, would their accomplishment on a series of pre-academic tests exhibit improvement. The findings from their Study 1 demonstrates that preparing breakfast to preschoolers in conformity with the School Breakfast Program (SBP) Guidelines does lead to a qualitative alterations in the breakfast taken by the program partakers. Calories coming from a complex form of carbohydrates confirm a boost from home (groundwork) to school (management), whereas calories from developed sugar show the contrary pattern, diminishing in the school breakfast situation. An excess of developed sucrose is a basis for some health-related concerns in childhood, hence its drop with the SBP breakfast embodies a nutritional advantage (Blom-Hoofman & Dupaul, 2003, 264). The findings for Study 2 as well validate the argument that consuming a nutritionally-balanced breakfast may be further probable in the school context, wherein peers are there, additional time can be in use, and healthy options are provided. Once more, amount of carbohydrates ingested enlarges while amount of developed sugar diminishes, with the contrary trend for the children who take breakfast at home (Blom-Hoofman & Dupaul, 2003). Fascinatingly enough, the portion of calories coming from fat does not seem to be dilemma for children in the SBP either prior or following enrollment, as every child is in the 20-30% range as suggested by the American Academy of Pediatrics (1993, 26). Even though breakfast for these children attributes for just one meal everyday, the intake of less fat by the control group may be an indicative reason for concern. In relation to the performance assessments a quite evident picture surfaces; in Study 1, almost every activity displays progress when evaluated for the second time, subsequent to the SBP involvement. Due to the fact that performance on even substitute types of such tasks could have demonstrated progress through just being given out again, the employment of the control group in Study 2 is very important. To this objective, the common trend of progress by both groups on the administered tasks does indicate an application effect, though it should be remembered that the progresses are of a higher dimension in the SBP group (Blom-Hoofman & Dupaul, 2003, 264-265). More outstanding, nevertheless, are the scores attained by the SBP group on the computer tests, over both investigations. The considerable improvements for Study 1 indicate that performance on such tests could be specifically receptive to the SBP breakfast. As was anticipated for Study 2 afterwards, the SBP group does display a better performance on the computer task, whereas the control group does not. More suggestive, possibly, are the findings for the computer task, in which performance is sustained in the SBP group, but goes down substantially in the control group. The findings that the computer tasks are particularly responsive to the breakfast intervention indicates that a computer-layout for testing differentiation may be highly stimulating than the traditional approach. Since earlier breakfast researches have not demonstrated a prominent effect when making use of computer examinations of attention, the amusing way of the present tests, in which visual and auditory response are mechanically given in a dynamic layout, may have created the difference in evaluating differentiation as a purpose of breakfast (Blom-Hoofman & Dupaul, 2003, 266). While hardly any would assume the matter with the encouraging contribution that a nutritious breakfast is anticipated to provide throughout formative development, an analysis of available literature does not confirm that breakfast consistently enhances child outcomes. Fraction of the dilemma, certainly, lies with the kinds of researches that have previously been carried out, in which children are either withheld of breakfast on an examination day, or they are withdrawn generally through poverty and undernourishment. In the case of undernourishment, it is not fascinating that a one-shot breakfast involvement would be pushed to elicit an encouraging outcome (Antoine, 2003). Too much may be functioning against the encouragement of the child to cooperate, or even perform better in school. For such explanations, the research was intentionally designed to examine children who were free from risk, so as to identify if the requirements of a nutritious breakfast could foster child behavior further than what their home contexts could anticipate. V. Conclusions There are numerous causes of poor nutrition; included is the unending starvation and consequent malnourishment linked to poverty. Nevertheless, children from all socioeconomic statuses are susceptible to poor nutrition. Numerous children intake sufficient calories but have diets exceeding in sugar, fat and sodium, which place them at risk for turning overweight or obese and for developing fatal diseases later in life. Moreover, as parents are becoming more involved in the workforce in growing numbers in the twenty first century several children are independent for their meals and snacks. A number of children may consequently miss meals on the whole. Others prefer their personal meals from just one or two food categories, which could for the time being satisfy their hunger yet does not meet their nutritional requirements. Since learning-associated impacts of poor nutrition take place prior to the surfacing of evident indications of weight loss or retardation in growth and development, we cannot conclude that a child of average weight, or a child that looks stocky, is healthy or well-nourished. Everyone of us have heard this, and at present there is a study, the one discussed previously, advocating the principle that breakfast in indeed the most important meal of the day. A wholesome breakfast gives out roughly one-fourth of the RDA for primary nutrients such as calories, protein, vitamins, calcium, iron and zinc. Furthermore, educators concur that starving or undernourished youngsters are more prone to irritability, laziness, and other negative conditions that get in the way of learning. The hunger of children has both physiological and psychosocial indications. Physical outcomes of hunger involve stomach ache, headache, dizziness, and muscle strain. Psychosocial grumbles such as fear, anxiety, irritation, restlessness, antagonism, uncertainties, perplexity, and unhappiness are as well common. In a number of studies it was discovered that children who take their breakfast at school, nearer to class and taking of exams, score higher on standardized examinations than those who miss breakfast or take their breakfast at home in a much earlier time. Other researches have demonstrated that eating of a wholesome breakfast results in enhanced attentiveness in early and late morning performance of school tasks, faster and more exact retrieval of information, negligible mistakes committed in problem solving tasks, and better attention, focus and skill to perform difficult tasks. Nutritionally speaking, children who never skip their breakfast are a lot better off than those who regularly miss breakfast. Researches have confirmed that children who eat their breakfast regularly have higher daily nutrient consumption as compared to those children who skip breakfast. Skipping breakfast does not fill in the lost nutrients at the latter part of the day, and normally below 2/3 of the RDA for several nutrients (Mitchell, 1997, 93). The most effective means of integrating a wholesome breakfast back into the lifestyles of children will differ depending on the learners and their families’ requirements and way of life, in addition to the school. A number of possibilities to take into account involve motivating learners and their families to provide quality time for a wholesome breakfast at home, or at school with the help of a school breakfast program. References American Academy of Pediatrics (1993). Pediatric nutrition handbook. Elk Grove, IL: AAP. Antoine, M. et al. (2003). Are Students Throwing Away Nutrition? Journal of Research in Childhood Education , 230+. Bettelheim, B. (1950). Love is not Enough: The Treatment of Emotionally Disturbed Children. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Blom-Hoofman, J. & Dupaul, G.J. (2003). 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L., & Greenfield, D. (1981). Brief fasting, stress, and cognition in children. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 34 (8), 1526-1533. Smith, J. C. (1999). Understanding Childhood Obesity. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Worobey, J. & Worobey, H. S. (1996). Nutritional risk in early childhood. Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, 10 (2), 47-49. Read More