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Breakfast affects behaviour and academic performance in children!

· health,Behaviour,Performance

A group of researchers wanted to answer the question:

Does eating breakfast every morning, affect children's school performance in terms of behaviour and cognitive ability?

This team of researchers looked at 22 studies involving over 85,000 children and adolescents, throughout the world (including Australia).

The results revealed that children who ate breakfast were...

  • better at staying on-task in the classroom, which may indicate that they were more able to concentrate, pay attention and were more alert at school,
  • better at academic performance in reading, science and arithmetic,
  • the clearest effects were for improved mathematic and arithmetic grades in undernourished children.

The review of the 22 studies, revealed that children who ate breakfast every morning, had a greater variety of food groups in their diet and as a result, adequate energy.

The conclusions drawn were that eating breakfast was positively related to school performance.

In case we as parents didn’t know this already… children who eat breakfast in the morning do better at school.