Feeding your child's brain.
April 2nd 2008 20:48
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Brain food
By: Dan Eaton
We always hear about how important our diet is to our overall health and well being, but what we don’t hear about is how important it is for brain power. That’s especially important for school age kids for increased concentration and enhanced memory, so it’s important to build our kids’ meals around foods that’ll keep their brains going strong all day long.
Breakfast eaters do better academically than non-breakfast eaters and breakfasts with complex carbohydrates, like oatmeal or other healthy cereals or whole grain breads with natural peanut butter are a great start to the day, especially with a glass of milk or orange juice or dried or fresh fruits added to the cereal.
Brain food
Dan Eaton gives us some tips on how to create healthy meals for your children, full of “brain food.”
Complex carbohydrates take longer to digest so they’ll keep your kids’ brains going all throughout their morning classes. Stay away from breakfasts that are loaded with lots of sugar because they’ll actually give your kids a mid-morning energy crash. Eggs are also a great start because they contain something called “choline,” which is important for the creation of brain memory cells and even kids that hate eggs will probably like something like whole grain French toast.
And as far as lunches go, stick with the whole grain breads with lean meats or low fat cheeses or things like hummus. Offer plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and dairy products, like low fat yogurt and skim milk. Remember, ideally, kids’ lunches should supply one third of their daily calories, vitamins and minerals.
Nuts and dried or fresh fruit with a bowl of healthy, fortified cereal, or especially wheat germ with milk, is a good after school snack because they have plenty of B vitamins, which are good for the memory needed for homework.
We’ve all heard that fish is brain food, but sometimes it’s hard to get kids to eat fish, so try something for dinner, like a simple tuna melt with low fat cheese on whole grain bread served with a simple side salad. Lean beef, beans, soy products, leafy greens and broccoli, bananas, oranges and avocadoes are also considered brain foods and, although water is not necessarily considered a brain food, keeping your kid well hydrated, as well as making sure there is plenty of fiber in their diet, will help keep your kid regular so they can stay focused on the task at hand.
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