What a question! Of course, they do. Why, then, do most kids not get it? And what are the consequences for them? In this post, I take a more detailed look at these questions that are so important for the future of our children. It complements Part 1 of my report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”
Children Definitely Need Proper Breakfast.
Adults need a proper, healthy breakfast to get their day off to a great start. Children are growing, so they ought to need it even more urgently. And they do. Let’s first look at why.
Children have an extremely important job to do, at least my daughter does. They have to grow up. They have to go to school and learn the skills that allow them to grow into happy, healthy and productive adults. That’s a bigger job than any of us adults do.
It stands to reason that they need the right fuel to be able to do their job. As far as the physiological aspect is concerned, it’s obvious that a growing body needs highest quality nutrients in the right proportions at the required time. If their young bodies don’t get it, their growth will slow down; they’ll be prone to illnesses and never be able to perform as well as they could at whatever they choose.
This is true not just for breakfast but also for the other meals throughout the day. Breakfast has a special importance, though.
Children have dinner early, normally at about 6pm. Breakfast is the first refuelling opportunity their growing bodies are given after a break of 12 to 14 hours when they did run mostly on empty. It allows them to catch up and set the tone for the day.
Skipping breakfast, therefore, is simply not an option whatever the age of your child. It’s not even an option for you. If they skip breakfast, their first proper meal would be at lunchtime. This means that they would be running on empty for 18 hours! You couldn’t do it to your car, so why should you want to do it to your child?
There are some pretty hefty advantages of starting the day with a healthy breakfast as opposed to skipping it. Research has shown that a healthy breakfast eaten regularly first of all
- - improves their mood and reduces irritability, and therefore
- - improves their behaviour.
- - It also reduces hyperactivity.
This naturally makes for happier children at school. At a more academic level, a proper breakfast helps our children learn better and with less effort because it
- - helps improve attention span and concentration,
- - helps improve their mental performance, their ability to solve problems, and
- - helps improve their memory.
Getting started regularly on a healthy balanced meal in the morning has also shown to reduce
- - lateness
- - absence, and
- - visits to the school nurse.
All this will obviously help our children perform better at tests, make school a more pleasant, happier experience for them, and set them up for life with good eating and work habits. In my book, this is a pretty good return for making sure they have a properly balanced breakfast every morning.
What Is A Healthy Breakfast?
A healthy breakfast, for our children and for us, does not have to be anything extraordinary. It’s a nutritionally balanced start of the day:
- - Make them drink a glass of water as soon as they get up, and then
- - give them wholegrain (not just wholemeal) bread and butter,
- - an egg,
- - a glass of milk,
- - some fruit or
- - a glass of freshly pressed orange juice, preferably both.
Or cook some porridge with a twist. You’ll find more details in Part 7 of my free report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”
This combination will provide them with the vitamins, minerals, protein and slow release carbohydrates they need. Children who have such a start of their day will be well on their way to achieve 3 important goals:
1. Meeting Their Daily Nutritional Needs
It will provide them with significant amounts of important micro-nutrients as well as macro-nutrients: vitamins C and D, calcium, iron, fibre, carbohydrates, protein and fat. This is of great importance also for older children moving into puberty and adolescence. Their nutritional needs explode as they swap their children’s bodies for adult ones.
2. Not Suffering From Overweight
Research among 9 to 12 year olds has shown that a breakfast with a low glycemic index (low GI) – that is, wholegrain bread – combined with protein keeps them satisfied much longer. Children eating a more standard breakfast that has a high GI (white bread / toast, sugary cereals, etc.), get hungry much more quickly, snack more frequently and have greater problems controlling their weight now and as adults.
3. Creating A Good Store Of Energy For The Day
This takes us back to the advantages that we’ve already seen of a healthy breakfast over skipping breakfast. These advantages are short term (for the day at school), medium term (helping them perform better and get better grades) and long term (creating good eating and work habits for life).
For more details about what the body needs and where you find the nutrients, download my free report on how to “Get Your Day Off To A Great Start.”
Comments on this entry are closed.