Breakfast is brain food

Muscat, Sept 13

As children return to school, eating breakfast at a consistent time and ensuring it includes healthy, nutritious foods can boost their energy, improve academic performance and help cultivate life-long healthy eating habits

Breakfast is one of the most important meals, especially for students who need energy and focus to perform at their best. By providing the necessary nutrients, breakfast helps the body start the day well, enhancing concentration, improving memory and maintaining energy levels throughout the day. Therefore, parents are advised to ensure a healthy breakfast is served daily, avoiding items rich in sugar or unhealthy fats.

Breakfast is not just a passing meal; it is the foundation of a successful school day and a healthy lifestyle. Studies show that breakfast significantly improves students' ability to concentrate during class. Eating breakfast helps improve blood flow to the brain, which enhances focus and attention. Furthermore, breakfast helps reduce feelings of hunger throughout the day, which contributes to improving mood and avoiding feelings of fatigue or discomfort that can negatively impact concentration.

By providing the body with essential nutrients such as proteins and complex carbohydrates, the brain becomes better able to process and store information. For this reason, a healthy breakfast is considered the foundation for better academic performance.

A balanced and varied meal is an essential nutrient for starting the day well. Breakfast should contain a combination of proteins, healthy carbohydrates, fibre, vitamins and minerals.

A healthy breakfast not only enhances academic performance and concentration, but also has a positive impact on students' overall health. Eating it helps stimulate metabolism and balance blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of obesity and heart diseases. Eating it daily also contributes to bone health through calcium-rich foods, such as milk and yoghurt, which help strengthen bones and teeth.

In addition, eating breakfast can promote digestive health, as fibre-rich foods help improve bowel movements and protect the body from digestive problems.

In 2020, a scientific review was conducted on the increasing phenomenon of most children around the world skipping breakfast. The reasons include time constraints, family lifestyles and not feeling hungry in the morning. The report pointed to the negative impact of this on health.

The researchers stated that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, in terms of its impact on children's memory, mood, performance and physical fitness; and that eating it regularly is one of the most important indicators of a healthy lifestyle.

A study also indicated that children's refusal to eat breakfast has several factors and causes that parents should consider to encourage their children to eat well before leaving for school. One of the main reasons for this is drowsiness. Most children do not get enough sleep, so they feel tired when they wake up, their stomachs are sluggish and they do not have an appetite for food.