Starting a new school year can be simultaneously exciting and petrifying for both children and their parents. I can still remember watching my little brother proudly walking up the school drive in his new uniform, and as I see my nephews growing up, my appreciation that starting at a new school is a major life event is being reinforced.
My siblings and I always began the day with a good breakfast, my parents being of the belief that going to school on an egg, cereal or toast was one of the best ways of setting us on the right road to both enjoying school and succeeding there.
They were right: studies have long shown that having breakfast helps to boost children's concentration, mental-arithmetic skills and moods. Going to school with an empty stomach, by contrast, can make children feel weak and crotchety, and if they then obtain a chocolate bar or fizzy drink from a snack machine at school, they'll receive a sugar, caffeine and additive hit that can worsen their moods, cause dental cavities and headaches and compromise their bone growth.
So encourage your child to start the day with some wholegrain toast spread with butter and a pure-fruit jam, a bowl of wholegrain cereal, a banana and yoghurt, fresh fruit or a fruit smoothie that is bursting with vitamins and minerals.
Kids and supplementsThe interest surrounding the issue of whether children should take vitamin and mineral supplements has sharpened recently, partly as a result of a number of articles suggesting that such supplements can increase children's brain power and performance.
Although you may think that it follows that the more vitamin and minerals you ingest, the brainier you'll become, the evidence doesn't stack up. A pill can't boost your child's intelligence or health unless he or she is suffering from a medical condition that goes hand in hand with a vitamin or mineral deficiency, such as scurvy (caused by lack of vitamin C), which would be revealed by obvious clinical signs that your doctor should have detected.
If you give your child a varied diet, including five small portions of fresh fruits or vegetables spread throughout the course of a day (as a guide, a couple of pieces of apple, a few dried apricots or cherry tomatoes or a small helping of my strawberry and passionfruit fool all constitute a portion), he or she should receive a sufficient dose of vitamins and minerals to support healthy growth.
In accordance with a Department of Health recommendation, however, children aged between six months and five years of age should be given vitamins A, D and C in liquid form (vitamins A and C promote growth and bone development and vitamin D aids the body's absorption of calcium, which builds healthy bones and teeth) as a safety net.
While children rarely need to take vitamin and mineral supplements to help them to succeed in class, some interesting research is focusing on omega oils (essential for brain development), the concentration and learning abilities of children whose diets were lacking omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids having been shown to have improved once the deficiency was corrected.
I must stress that the evidence indicates that only children whose diets largely consist of highly processed foods will benefit from this correction, so there's no point in trying to force-feed children omega oils unless their diets are relatively poor.
Although there's evidence to suggest that ingesting more omega oils may lessen the negative effects of such conditions as dyslexia and dyspraxia, taking an omega-oil supplement is similarly only likely to have a dramatic effect in children who are poorly nourished to start with.
I would therefore recommend simply ensuring that your child's diet includes more oily fish, perhaps in the form of tuna sandwiches or salmon fishcakes, and nuts (but keep a vigilant eye open for nut allergies and choking and don¿t give nuts to children under the age of eight months), which you could throw into salads and casseroles or combine with dried fruits and seeds to provide a potent, brain-boosting snack.
sourse:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/
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