Brain Food For Your Kids
How Our Food Is Grown
We've established that kids develop differently depending on how they are nourished. Now let's return to how the food they eat is, in turn, affected by what materials are available to grow it.
For instance, cheese, milk, and meat can provide high levels of DHA and other of omega 3's (as well as providing high levels vitamin E and beta carotene) if it's produced from pasture-fed organic cows, but not from grain-fed confinement cows.4Simply put, fresh grass provides the building blocks for a different quality of product.
Iron
Iron is another nutrient that is essential to optimal brain function. Here's a very interesting study reported in the December 2004 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine—the first to connect children's iron levels and ADHD.5
ADHD has increasingly affected school classrooms in recent years. Between March 2002 and June 2003, 110 children from a school district in Paris, France were referred to a university hospital to be evaluated for school-related problems. Researchers analyzed blood samples from the 53 of these children who met the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, and from 27 of the children who did not. The average ferritin (iron) level in the non-ADHD kids was normal, but the average level in the children with ADHD was about half that of the other children. Fully 84% of the children with ADHD were iron deficient. And the lower the iron levels, the worse the ADHD symptoms—worse hyperactivity, worse oppositional behavior, and worse cognitive scores.
The stunning part of this study was that none of the children had iron levels low enough to indicate anemia. The iron deficiency was subtle enough that all tested normal on the hemoglobin or hematocrit blood tests used in doctors' offices to screen for iron problems. I suspect that inadequate iron in the diet is also affecting the attention, focus, and activity of many children who don't meet the full definition of ADHD.
When other researchers fed appropriate iron to children with ADHD, their test scores and ADHD symptoms improved.
We know from a large body of previous research that school-aged children who are iron deficient don't learn as well. School performance is worse; memory is weakened. ADHD is more often seen in boys, but girls are also seriously affected by low iron. Today in the U.S., we are seeing that iron deficiency impacts intellectual growth in as many as 1 in 6 girls sometime in their school careers. Other studies have shown that teen girls with low iron are more than twice as likely to score below average in math achievement tests as are similar girls with normal iron status—even if they have no signs of anemia6
The amount of iron children get from foods depends not just on what types of food they choose, but on how that food is grown. Recent evidence has shown that conventional, chemical farming has resulted in depleted nutrients in common food crops. Levels of vitamins and minerals (including iron) have fallen over the last fifty years, as this type of agriculture prevailed.7
Antioxidants
Kids need more than isolated, individual nutrients to boost their brains and school performance. There are big-picture benefits to eating a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and fiber. Antioxidants include a large variety of compounds found in a large variety of whole foods. Antioxidants in foods have been linked to improved memory and brain function.8
Even in the same food, antioxidant levels can vary depending on how the food is grown. Organic foods, on average, are about 30% higher in antioxidants than are their non-organic counterparts.9 That means each organic serving may be packed with more valuable nutrients. Talk about extra credit!
Avoid Organophosphates
Organophosphates are the most commonly used insecticides in conventional, chemical agriculture. These chemicals act as nerve agents, and have been linked to neurodevelopmental problems.10 Organically-grown foods are produced without the use of toxic pesticides such as organophosphates. Choosing organic foods for children can immediately and significantly decrease their exposure to organophosphate pesticides.11 That's good protection for the developing brain—it's elementary.
Some are afraid that school children would have to eat unfamiliar or unappetizing foods in order to make a difference. Not so! A February 2006 study12 conducted by Dr. Chensheng Lu and colleagues demonstrated an immediate and dramatic ability to reduce organophosphate pesticide exposure by making simple diet changes in elementary school children.
The researchers conducted this study with typical suburban children. They collected morning and evening urine samples daily from each child. Pesticide breakdown products appeared routinely in the urine samples.
Then the researchers made a simple change: the elementary school kids began eating organic versions of whatever they were eating before. For example, if they typically ate apples, now they got organic apples. Only if there was a simple organic substitution available for what the kids were already eating, did they make a switch. The kids didn't have to learn to like any new foods.
Within 24 hours, pesticide breakdown products found in the urine plummeted! They continued this way for five days, with clean urine samples morning and night. Then the kids went back to their typical diets. The organic foods were taken away. And immediately the pesticides returned. These elementary school children went back to a chronic low-level exposure to organophosphate pesticides from the diet.
