Brain Food For Your Kids: How Do You Score?
by Dr. Alan Greene, M.D.
Each day at school, millions of children are faced with a lunch that works against them. Unhealthy versions of French fries, chips, hot dogs, burgers, and pizza fill school cafeterias; high-fat, over-sweetened snacks fill lunch bags brought from home. The crusts and buns of the more popular menu items are likely to be made from over-processed white flour. The vegetables are likely to be over-cooked and under-appetizing. The beverages are even worse.
Each day, a growing number of other schoolchildren enjoy delicious lunches that help put them ahead. Their school cafeterias may feature healthy items they will actually choose to eat, while keeping junk foods and beverages out of arm's reach. Or, their parents might send them to school with a tasty, healthy lunch that nourishes their bodies and their brains.
What's on your child's plate today?
It is my strong conviction that children deserve a healthy breakfast to start the school morning right and a healthy school lunch to fuel their growing and their learning. I have come to believe that nutrition plays a key role, by providing them with a critical physiological foundation to help them succeed in school. Behavior and academic performance are affected by the quantity and quality of the foods we provide children during the school years.
From Backyard Gardens to Kindergartens
When I was growing up, my father grew tomatoes in our backyard. These carefully tended, vine-ripened tomatoes were the tastiest I can remember—and it was all thanks to the rich, organically managed soil. All of a tomato plant's growth is made from materials that are available in the soil. This is why plants grown in depleted soils are just not the same. Commercial fertilizers may add back nitrogen and basic minerals, but they cannot replicate the rich spectrum of nourishment in soil that is organically maintained. The plant will just do the best it can with whatever materials are available.
When my daughter Claire was born, she weighed 7 pounds 6 ounces. Today, she is 15 years old and weighs over 100 pounds. All of the materials for Claire's dramatic growth have come from the food she has eaten. Like the tomato plant, my daughter's body does the best it can with what's available.
Food is the building block for every part of a child's body, from bones and skin and muscles to organs, including the brain and its complex, ever growing network of neural connections. Children's bodies are very forgiving—but why not offer them the best building blocks during the school years? And why not protect them from chemicals and junk ingredients in what they eat and drink, or from foods that have the nourishment processed out of them?
Brain Building
Today in the United States, 1 in 6 children suffers from a disability that affects their behavior, memory, or ability to learn. More than $80 billion dollars are spent each year to treat neurodevelopmental disorders. Diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) alone up are up 250% since 1990.1 How much of a role does modern food play in this increase?
Children's brains are built differently depending on what they are fed when they are rapidly growing. Healthy brains are about 60% structural fat (not like the flabby fat found elsewhere in the body). As the brain grows, it selects building blocks from among the fatty acids available in what the child eats. The most prevalent structural fat in the brain is DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), one of the omega 3 fatty acids. DHA is also a major structural component of the retina of the eye. A large number of studies have suggested that low DHA levels are associated with problems with intelligence, vision, and behavior.2
DHA is the most prevalent long chain fatty acid in human breast milk, which suggests that it's intended for babies to consume a lot of it. Studies have shown that babies who have not gotten DHA in their diets have significantly less of it in their brains than those who have.3
My point here is not about the superiority of breast milk, but that growing children quite literally are what they eat. When you think about this, you begin to feel differently about "cheap" food.
