Does Breakfast Improve Learning - Coursework Example

Breakfast and Learning School For many people the issue of having breakfast or not doesn’t make any problem, because they actually don’t pay attention to their dietary and eating culture. Thus between 20–30% of children and adolescents in Western countries prefer skipping breakfast. However, multiple researches revealed that breakfast is one of the most important meals in a day, because it improves human cognitive functions and gives energy for the entire day and keeps body in tonus. It is very important for parents to provide their children with all the necessary conditions for school learning and as far as good morning nutrition is one of the most important measures of facilitating of children’s learning and its successful outcomes. Breakfast in general has always made scientists curious about whether it is needed for human body or not, because most people don’t even want to eat in the morning and feel sick thinking of food after waking up. This happens either because people don’t have a habit of healthy eating culture, or because their body is not used to eating in the morning; nevertheless it is easy to adapt body to breakfast in order to start getting profits from eating breakfast. The point is that multiple researches on the topic showed significant results of relation between breakfast and its effects on human body (Che 2009). It is proven that breakfast helps people to reduce their body weight; people who skip breakfast are more likely to get weight for multiple reasons. First of all, their dietary culture is not ordered, which is harmful for body, because when body isn’t used to some eating regime, it is difficult for it to accommodate oneself to a random eating regime and turn on all the required physical processes to digest food (Che 2009). Hence, this may cause multiple harmful consequences for human physical condition and health. Furthermore, when body doesn’t get enough energy in the morning, it stops accumulating energy and starts preserving all the incoming energy from the food that a person eats throughout the rest of the day. Also, eating breakfast leads to the increase of eating frequency, which results in losing body weight and intensifies physical activity (Che 2009). The reason for this is that frequent eating increases metabolism, which supplies the inward parts of the body with enough energy. Thus skipping breakfast leads to obesity; in particular, to children’s obesity which is a very problematic issue for modern American society (Crawford, Gosliner & Kayman 2011). When American society started noticing that children obesity has become extreme so far, huge public campaigns for healthy nutrition were forced into application. One of these national companies was the School breakfast program; among others useful effects of the program there is an aim of government to contribute to the nation’s healthy nutrition culture (Hofferth & Curtin 2005). The reason why it was breakfast that kids were supposed to be provided with was the fact that scientists who explored nutritional effects of breakfast had proven that it is crucial and even necessary for children’s health and learning efficacy (Devaney & Fraker). As far as the participants of the school breakfast program were children from the families with low incomes, the program was a motivation for them to attend school; so their performance during classes also rose, because they were more satisfied and had more energy than those children who skipped breakfasts (Crawford, Gosliner & Kayman 2011). Furthermore, provision of healthy nutrition reduces the rates of junk food consumption among school students, which is definitely useful for their eating culture, physical condition and learning outcomes (Crawford, Gosliner & Kayman 2011). Children obesity not only effects children’s health but also influences their mental condition, character, and learning abilities. Thus obesity often reduces children’s learning abilities because their bodies are just not able to handle the horrible overwhelming weighting. So it turns out that, instead of functioning in normal conditions and providing a child with enough energy to learn, the body of an obese child needs to pay attention on maintaining its burden functionality. It is important to mention the fact that along with physical problems obese children frequently gain a lot of traumas and complexes concerning their bodies. Obesity is one of the most popular reasons for school bullying, which is obviously not very helpful for learning success. Children who become victims of bullying might abandon schools and gain some asocial behavioral patterns. Moreover, such childhood traumas might eventually lead an obese child to anorexia which is an opposite problem of body weight and in addition is a kind of mental disease. Concerning the relation between hunger and learning outcomes, it is an obvious fact that children shouldn’t be hungry either, because it has the reverse effect and children with food insecurity have problems with normal functioning. If a body of an obese child cannot process all the preserved energy, the body of a hungry child also has problems with learning and physical functioning because it is lack of energy supply. Thus the school breakfast program is supposed to resolve the problems of hunger and obesity that might influence children’s learning performance (Creigton 2012). However, the program is not the only factor that is supposed to influence on the development of children’s eating culture and construction of a right eating regime. It is very important for them to gain the knowledge of healthy nutrition in family and implement it everywhere. Lack of eating culture not only exhausts human organism but also influences living regime and general condition of an organism, reducing person’s cognitive functions and ability to perceive and process information normally. Thus a person with normalized regime is more concentrated and energetic, so one’s cognitive functions are on a high level. Several scientific studies conducted on children revealed that eating a healthy breakfast improves kids’ memory (Widenhorn-Müller, Hille, Klenk, and Weiland 2008); the research showed that short-term memory is related to human short-memory capabilities, because the kind of memory requires a lot of energy which might be retrieved from nutritious healthy products. Also, not skipping breakfast makes children more attentive, so they are able to perceive more information and accurately memorize it. In particular, the research demonstrated that children who ate breakfast on daily basis were more successful in the subjects that required analytical skills, for instance, in arithmetic and problem-solving cases. Moreover, eating breakfast affects kids’ endurance in classroom activities and improves their creativity. Thus researches showed that kids who usually skip breakfast need more time to get used to class’ studying atmosphere and get involved into activities, so they usually start participating in group work later than those who eat breakfast (Adolphus, Lawton & Dye 2013). Considering the fact that children’s learning outcomes are closely related to functionality of their cognitive functions the impact of breakfast is significant. However, laboratory explorations don’t prove that fact that eating breakfast affects successful academic performance throughout the entire time kids spend in school (Adolphus, Lawton & Dye 2013). Notwithstanding, they claim that indeed breakfast contributes children learning during morning period and work in a short-term way. Although breakfast effect doesn’t last forever, still it forms certain habitual response in children’s minds. If children get used to breakfast eating and are also used to being active in the morning, the habit becomes a conditioned response, so even when they don’t have breakfast one day, they won’t feel devastated and will also participate in activities. From biological perspective, breakfast happened to be obligatory for children’s brain activity and, as the result, for their cognitive functions and academic performance. The point is that they have a higher brain glucose metabolism compared to adults. Positron Emission Tomography studies revealed that in comparison to adults the cerebral metabolic rate of glucose utilization is averagely twice as high in the age of 4-10 years (Adolphus, Lawton & Dye 2013). “This higher rate of glucose utilization gradually declines from age 10 and usually reaches adult levels by the age of 16–18 years. Average cerebral blood flow and cerebral oxygen utilization is 1.8 and 1.3 times higher in children aged 3–11 years compared with adults, respectively. Moreover, the longer overnight fasting period, due to higher sleep demands during childhood and adolescence compared with adults, can deplete glycogen stores overnight” (Adolphus, Lawton & Dye 2013). In order to keep the higher metabolic rate on a normal level and maintain brain activity, children need to be supplied with a lot of energy that has to be retrieved from glucose, so breakfast is crucial for the morning because it is the time when brain activity and metabolism become more intense. Thus experimental researches on relation between eating breakfast and students’ test results revealed that students’ scores for tests increase if students don’t skip breakfast and eat it every morning (Phillips 2005). Explorations of children of a biology class revealed that their scores for an ordinary test were 4 percent better than results of those kids who had skipped breakfast and worked on the same test. Also, as far as breakfast is a good nutrition source it is obvious that it affects not only on academic performance but also on children’s sports results. Physical training subjects are also a part of studying process, because there are many sportive options for students in schools and universities. However, normal physical training requires a lot of energy which might be retrieved from food only, so it is impossible for a student to participate in any training or do any exercises without an adequate nutrition. Breakfast consumption also significantly influences on people’s mood. It has been widely explored in different psychological and physiological researches that nutrition indeed affects people’s perception of the world. It means that in order to perceive things positively people should first have their basic physical needs satisfied. However, many people, including students, working people, and even little kids often wake up in a bad mood and don’t have any willingness to do anything throughout the entire daytime. Scientists claim that it happens because people don’t have enough energy for normal functioning, as they haven’t had any food during the nighttime. Experiments on two groups of young people of the age from 13 to 20 years old revealed that indeed having breakfast affects people’s mood and perception of the world. The first group was getting normal nutritious breakfast every morning throughout the experimental period; the second group didn’t have any food for breakfast (Widenhorn-Müller, Hille, Klenk, and Weiland 2008). The experiment found out that not only cognitive functions of the second group participants were significantly worse than of the first group, but also the relationships between people who ate breakfast on daily basis were more harmonized and benevolent. Thus it turns out that breakfast influences people’s moods and its absence makes them more irritable. Considering the results of the experiment in terms of school and college studying outcomes it is easy to find relation between mood and studying outcomes. When a person has a good mood, one is satisfied and has more willingness to work and perceive new information; thus satiated people are more happy, especially in the morning, when it is rarely happens that students want to go to school. Moreover, if to look at the issue wider, it is obvious that happy people are also more successful in social relations and more likely to find friends and develop their leadership skills. The point is that they have more physical energy and, hence, they are more active and initiative. It is impossible to deny the fact that energetic people are more successful in all the aspects of life general; they attract people and have more positive attitude to the world. Thus simple eating breakfast might influence even a person’s ability to gain success. Although it seems like eating breakfast or not doesn’t make any difference at all, still breakfast indeed influences a lot of things, especially when it concerns children. Breakfast affects on children’s learning outcomes by increasing their cognitive functions; it also gives a lot of energy for physical activity and decreases possibility of obesity appearance, which has a positive effect on the entire lifestyle. References Chau Che MD (2009). Myths and Realities: Is Breakfast the Most Important Meal of the Day? Retrieved from http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=1525 Crawford, Patricia B. DrPH; Gosliner, Wendi MPH, RD; and Kayman, Harvey MD, MPH (2011). The Ethical Basis for Promoting Nutritional Health in Public Schools in the United States Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181198/ Phillips, Gregory (2005). Does Eating Breakfast Affect the Performance of College Students on Biology Exams? Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ876514.pdf Hofferth, S. L. and Curtin, S. (2005). "Poverty, Food Programs, and Childhood Obesity". Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 24(4), 703-726. Devaney, B. and Fraker, T. (1989). "The Dietary Impacts of the School Breakfast Program". American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 71(4), 932-948. Creighton, Lisa S (2012). Stakeholder Engagement for Successful Breakfast in the Classroom Implementation Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1013550 Widenhorn-Müller K, Hille K, Klenk J, Weiland U. (2008). "Influence of having breakfast on cognitive performance and mood in 13- to 20-year-old high school students: results of a crossover trial." Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18676544 Adolphus, K., Lawton, C.L., and Dye, L. (2013). "The effects of breakfast on behavior and academic performance in children and adolescents". Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3737458/ Read More