Press Release - Brain Food
Reproduced with permission from The Times Educational Supplement
This article first appeared in the TES Special Supplement 'School Food' - January 16th 2004
Brain food
You need oily fish to boost your brain most effectively. Sean Coughlan looks at what not to eat and what should be on your plate.
During my schooldays, you'd hear people taIking about "brain food" as if it were common knowledge that certain types of food made you clever. It was usually fish - although fish fingers didn't qualify - but sometimes it extended to "innards", things like heart, kidneys and yes, probably brain too. Of course, the talk about increasing brain was a sauce to disguise food that no self-respecting youngster wanted to eat. It was a selling job like being told that carrots helped you see in the dark and greens made you grow tall. So are there any proven links between what children eat and their ability to learn?
The Schools Health Education Unit, based in Exeter, is looking for such evidence. Angela Balding, who manages the unit's surveys of children's eating habits, believes that a definite link between diet and pupils' performance will eventually be established.
But it's far from simple. Because how a child eats is part of the wider social picture of how a child lives. Isolating the influence of food is difficult. If a high-achieving, middleclass child, with lots of parental support, eats muesli for breakfast every morning, does this mean that eating muesli makes you clever? And if a child who struggles with their reading has a fizzy drink for breakfast, does that mean that fizzy drinks inhibit your learning capability? Or are the parents who can't organise breakfast the same people who aren't going to help their child to read?
It's not easy to detach food habits from all the other factors that mark out social advantage. Angela Balding says that the clearest objective information so far has come from a continuing survey of what children eat for breakfast, which has been matched against SATs results. And this seems to show a connection between eating a healthy breakfast and achieving a higher result.
These findings, which also apply to less well-off families, show that pupils who eat cereals for breakfast are more likely to do well; specifically, it is the muesli-style cereals, rather than the sugary variety, that are linked to the best results.
"You couldn't put your hand on your heart and say that the high results are definitely because of eating cereal," says Ms Balding. But she believes there is evidence of a connection. The boys' test results, in particular, suggest a link with eating habits.
Such a connection lies behind the Welsh Assembly's recent decision to offer free breakfasts to all primary pupils. The theory is that healthier cereals provide the most useful and long-lasting energy, unlike the sudden and short-lived rush from sugar- packed food, which is usually followed by sluggishness.
Supporting this, the impact of a chocolate and sugary drink breakfast on the mental alertness of teenagers has been tested by researchers at the University of Reading, who concluded that such a junk breakfast left l6-year-olds with the mental reaction times of a 70-year-old.
Their findings were backed up late last year at Oxford Brookes University Researchers looking into breakfast and obesity measured meals eaten by nine to l2-year- olds using the glycaemic index (GI), which charts the rise in blood sugar levels after eating different foods.
They found that the children who had a low-GI or less sugary breakfast such as bran, muesli, porridge or soya had a "significantly lower lunch intake", compared with those on a high-GI meal such as cornflakes, chocolate-flavoured cereal or white bread. The high-GI group were also more likely to feel hungry between meals and they ate more for lunch. The Schools Health Education Unit has been asking children questions about their breakfast habits for the past 20 years and the findings cast an interesting sidelight on the wider question of diet and achievement. About one in 20 primary schoolchildren leaves home without any breakfast so for them it's not a question of good or bad diet, but none at all. And there are others who only have chocolate for breakfast who are among the most likely to report feeling too tired to learn.
More recently. says Angela Balding, there has been a big increase in the number of secondary schoolgirls missing breakfast - with the latest figures suggesting that 40 per cent of older schoolgirls do not have any breakfast, usually because of worries about putting on weight. If only the smell of grilled kippers were enough to persuade them to change their habits. For then they would be eating some of the healthiest food available for a hungry mind. Top of the list of food for learning is oily fish, such as mackerel, herring, salmon or sardines, which provide the fatty acids that are meant to help children's brain development. The Food Standards Agency, the official government watchdog, says that the importance of fatty acids in brain development is now the "prevailing opinion". Research appears to back this up.
Scientists at the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition at London Metropolitan University, have highlighted the lack of these types of oily fish in the diets of many young people - and linked this deficiency to problems with depression and mental illness.
Perhaps the Government should organise to give every pupil a piece of oily fish once a week in a follow-up to its school fruit scheme, which goes national this year. Kath Dalmeny of the Food Commission, which campaigns for healthier eating, commends the scheme which gives four to six-year-old pupils a daily piece of fruit. It could have "an enormous impact on public health in the longer term", she says. And, in the short term, it sets a pattern for healthier eating which will lead to healthier children who are more receptive to learning.
There are also researchers who want to take the link between "intelligence" and diet back even further - to before birth. A large scale, long-term study in the United States: established that babies with a heavy birth weight were more likely to have "higher" IQs when they grew up than low birth weight babies.
These bigger babies, with a head start even before they are born, owe their advantages to the diet and nutritional intake of their mothers, and once again the question of "brain food" is tangled up with lifestyles and social class. In an attempt to level the playing field, the Department of Health is proposing to launch Healthy Start this year. The initiative, an update of the 60-year-old Welfare Food scheme, aims to give pregnant women, mothers and young children in low-income groups better access to healthy food. Maybe we should all be changing to a diet of muesli, mackerel and water, so that we can feed our minds as well as our bodies. But is it still really the case that fish fingers don't count?
We provide below, further information referred to in the article:
Free breakfasts for all primary school children
Every primary school pupil in Wales will have the chance to start their school day with a flying start after having a free healthy breakfast, the Minister for Education and Lifelong, Jane Davidson, told the Assembly today (Tuesday 11 November). The Minister said: "The Welsh Assembly Government recognises that a healthy breakfast is linked to better health, concentration and behaviour in schools. We want to give every child in Wales a flying start — this exciting initiative is doing just that."Nutrition has a major influence on people’s health. Children have high nutritional requirements and breakfast has an important role in supplying these vital nutrients. Missing breakfast may lead to an unhealthy pattern of snacking on high fat, high sugar foods throughout the morning. Undernourished children suffer not only poor growth but they are also more susceptible to illness and therefore more likely to be absent from school. Their education is therefore doubly compromised."The overall aim of this initiative will be to provide during the lifetime of this Assembly all pupils registered in primary schools in Wales, including those of primary age in special schools, with the opportunity of receiving a free healthy breakfast at school each day during the school week. The school breakfasts are optional, their principal focus is for those children who, for whatever reason, do not have this opportunity to have breakfast. "Up to £1.5 million will be available in 2004-05 from End Year Flexibility to cover the anticipated costs. Detailed costings will be developed for the entire programme. These figures will feed into our spending review regarding future provision to deliver our commitments in A Better Country. "Some schools already provide and support school breakfasts, although no authority in Wales has a policy to provide them free. I propose to introduce these breakfasts incrementally on a pilot basis starting in the Community First areas in the first year. We will be working with the Welsh Local Government Association to select the pilots, which will embrace a broad cross section of schools and to develop the subsequent staged roll out of the programme to all primary schools across Wales by September 2006. "We will also work in partnership with the Farming Unions and food producers to ensure that the food served is, wherever possible, locally sourced and is of high nutritional value. We will ensure that a comprehensive and rigorous monitoring and evaluation programme, including an analysis of "take up rates" is put in place. "This is an exciting project. It will have a major impact on the health and well being of children in Wales. It complements the excellent work already being done on health eating and nutrition by the Assembly Government including work by the welsh Network of Healthy School Schemes, the Community Food Initiative, the Children and Young People’s framework, Farming for the Future, the nutritional strategy for Wales "Food and Well Being" and the action plan for Health and Well Being for Children and Young People."It may take some considerable time to educate pupils about the benefits of making a healthy choice at school meal times. My proposals for breakfasts will seek to reinforce this educative process. With the co-operation of LEAs and school caterers and through increased pupil awareness and a whole school approach to healthy eating I believe we will see a marked improvement in the number of pupils accessing free school meals, whether lunch or breakfast. It will enable children to derive greater benefit from school and give children a healthier start in life."
From the Welsh Assembly's Press Release website 11 Nov. 2003 www.wales.gov.uk
Breakthrough research proves that breakfast intake affects appetite
Scientists at Oxford Brookes University have made a ground breaking discovery potentially effecting the future eating habits of British school children. They have concluded from their study, titled "Low Glycemic Index Breakfasts and Reduced Food Intake in Preadolescent Children," published in the US journal Pediatrics that the type of breakfast a child has will effect their subsequent food intake at lunchtime. This is the first time a study of this kind has been carried out on normal weight, and overweight, children. Professor Jeya Henry PhD, research fellow and senior dietician Janet M. Warren and statistician Vanessa Simonite, all from Oxford Brookes University, spent several days monitoring the eating patterns of 37 British school children aged nine to 12 who were both normal weights and overweight in a study that lasted nearly eight months. Dr Henry and his colleagues concluded that: "The study is remarkable for two reasons, firstly that by selecting the type of breakfast we feed our children we can alter their subsequent food intake; secondly, we now know that feeding children a low glycemic breakfast will reduce their food intake at lunch. And feeding a high- glycemic index breakfast will mean they will eat more." The Glycemic index is a way of ranking foods based on their immediate effect on blood glucose levels, and how much these levels increase after a meal. It is hoped that this may help dieticians in prescribing the most effective diet to help childhood obesity. Foods that are considered to have a high glycemic index are cornflakes, chocolate-coated cereals, rice-based cereals, white bread and white rolls. Those with a low glycemic index are muesli, non-Swiss style muesli, oat porridge, all-bran and bread containing Soy.
From the Oxford Brookes University website www.brookes.ac.uk/news/2003/november/nr_113_03/initial
Fish deficiency 'could harm mental health'
Oily fish is increasingly missing from the diets of young people - and a leading nutritionist says this could harm their mental health. The rates of mental illness and depression are increasing globally. There is evidence that a chemical, Omega-3, found particularly in oily fish such as mackerel, herring, salmon and sardines has some effect on brain development. And some believe that removing it from the diet could be partly contributing to the rise in mental problems. Professor Michael Crawford, director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition at North London University, said: "We need to get back to feeding our minds as well as our bodies, otherwise the future of the nation is grim. "We should all be eating oily fish at least once a week." An NOP poll showed a particular decrease in fish consumption among the young. Fish free Three-quarters of 15 to 24-year-olds in the UK eat oily fish less than once a week. Looking at all ages, almost a quarter never eat oily fish. The average amount of fish eaten per person per week in the UK is thought to have halved over the past five decades. Professor Crawford said: "A diet of fish containing Omega-3 was essential for the necessary cerebral expansion which transformed our predecessors into homo sapiens. "Brain capacity expanded rapidly in our prehistoric ancestors living in east Africa near large freshwater lakes. "Medical experts have long known of the benefits of oily fish in the fight against heart disease, but it is just as vital as brain food." The National Institute of Medical Health in the US is currently sponsoring a study to examine the effectiveness of Omega-3 in treating a mental illness called bipolar disorder. In the UK, attempted suicide has shown a sharp increase over the last decade. Vegans and vegetarians get their Omega-3 from other sources, such as nuts and certain oils.
From the BBC's website news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/760382.stm
Brain food
You need oily fish to boost your brain most effectively. Sean Coughlan looks at what not to eat and what should be on your plate.
During my schooldays, you'd hear people taIking about "brain food" as if it were common knowledge that certain types of food made you clever. It was usually fish - although fish fingers didn't qualify - but sometimes it extended to "innards", things like heart, kidneys and yes, probably brain too. Of course, the talk about increasing brain was a sauce to disguise food that no self-respecting youngster wanted to eat. It was a selling job like being told that carrots helped you see in the dark and greens made you grow tall. So are there any proven links between what children eat and their ability to learn?
The Schools Health Education Unit, based in Exeter, is looking for such evidence. Angela Balding, who manages the unit's surveys of children's eating habits, believes that a definite link between diet and pupils' performance will eventually be established.
But it's far from simple. Because how a child eats is part of the wider social picture of how a child lives. Isolating the influence of food is difficult. If a high-achieving, middleclass child, with lots of parental support, eats muesli for breakfast every morning, does this mean that eating muesli makes you clever? And if a child who struggles with their reading has a fizzy drink for breakfast, does that mean that fizzy drinks inhibit your learning capability? Or are the parents who can't organise breakfast the same people who aren't going to help their child to read?
It's not easy to detach food habits from all the other factors that mark out social advantage. Angela Balding says that the clearest objective information so far has come from a continuing survey of what children eat for breakfast, which has been matched against SATs results. And this seems to show a connection between eating a healthy breakfast and achieving a higher result.
These findings, which also apply to less well-off families, show that pupils who eat cereals for breakfast are more likely to do well; specifically, it is the muesli-style cereals, rather than the sugary variety, that are linked to the best results.
"You couldn't put your hand on your heart and say that the high results are definitely because of eating cereal," says Ms Balding. But she believes there is evidence of a connection. The boys' test results, in particular, suggest a link with eating habits.
Such a connection lies behind the Welsh Assembly's recent decision to offer free breakfasts to all primary pupils. The theory is that healthier cereals provide the most useful and long-lasting energy, unlike the sudden and short-lived rush from sugar- packed food, which is usually followed by sluggishness.
Supporting this, the impact of a chocolate and sugary drink breakfast on the mental alertness of teenagers has been tested by researchers at the University of Reading, who concluded that such a junk breakfast left l6-year-olds with the mental reaction times of a 70-year-old.
Their findings were backed up late last year at Oxford Brookes University Researchers looking into breakfast and obesity measured meals eaten by nine to l2-year- olds using the glycaemic index (GI), which charts the rise in blood sugar levels after eating different foods.
They found that the children who had a low-GI or less sugary breakfast such as bran, muesli, porridge or soya had a "significantly lower lunch intake", compared with those on a high-GI meal such as cornflakes, chocolate-flavoured cereal or white bread. The high-GI group were also more likely to feel hungry between meals and they ate more for lunch. The Schools Health Education Unit has been asking children questions about their breakfast habits for the past 20 years and the findings cast an interesting sidelight on the wider question of diet and achievement. About one in 20 primary schoolchildren leaves home without any breakfast so for them it's not a question of good or bad diet, but none at all. And there are others who only have chocolate for breakfast who are among the most likely to report feeling too tired to learn.
More recently. says Angela Balding, there has been a big increase in the number of secondary schoolgirls missing breakfast - with the latest figures suggesting that 40 per cent of older schoolgirls do not have any breakfast, usually because of worries about putting on weight. If only the smell of grilled kippers were enough to persuade them to change their habits. For then they would be eating some of the healthiest food available for a hungry mind. Top of the list of food for learning is oily fish, such as mackerel, herring, salmon or sardines, which provide the fatty acids that are meant to help children's brain development. The Food Standards Agency, the official government watchdog, says that the importance of fatty acids in brain development is now the "prevailing opinion". Research appears to back this up.
Scientists at the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition at London Metropolitan University, have highlighted the lack of these types of oily fish in the diets of many young people - and linked this deficiency to problems with depression and mental illness.
Perhaps the Government should organise to give every pupil a piece of oily fish once a week in a follow-up to its school fruit scheme, which goes national this year. Kath Dalmeny of the Food Commission, which campaigns for healthier eating, commends the scheme which gives four to six-year-old pupils a daily piece of fruit. It could have "an enormous impact on public health in the longer term", she says. And, in the short term, it sets a pattern for healthier eating which will lead to healthier children who are more receptive to learning.
There are also researchers who want to take the link between "intelligence" and diet back even further - to before birth. A large scale, long-term study in the United States: established that babies with a heavy birth weight were more likely to have "higher" IQs when they grew up than low birth weight babies.
These bigger babies, with a head start even before they are born, owe their advantages to the diet and nutritional intake of their mothers, and once again the question of "brain food" is tangled up with lifestyles and social class. In an attempt to level the playing field, the Department of Health is proposing to launch Healthy Start this year. The initiative, an update of the 60-year-old Welfare Food scheme, aims to give pregnant women, mothers and young children in low-income groups better access to healthy food. Maybe we should all be changing to a diet of muesli, mackerel and water, so that we can feed our minds as well as our bodies. But is it still really the case that fish fingers don't count?
We provide below, further information referred to in the article:
Free breakfasts for all primary school children
Every primary school pupil in Wales will have the chance to start their school day with a flying start after having a free healthy breakfast, the Minister for Education and Lifelong, Jane Davidson, told the Assembly today (Tuesday 11 November). The Minister said: "The Welsh Assembly Government recognises that a healthy breakfast is linked to better health, concentration and behaviour in schools. We want to give every child in Wales a flying start — this exciting initiative is doing just that."Nutrition has a major influence on people’s health. Children have high nutritional requirements and breakfast has an important role in supplying these vital nutrients. Missing breakfast may lead to an unhealthy pattern of snacking on high fat, high sugar foods throughout the morning. Undernourished children suffer not only poor growth but they are also more susceptible to illness and therefore more likely to be absent from school. Their education is therefore doubly compromised."The overall aim of this initiative will be to provide during the lifetime of this Assembly all pupils registered in primary schools in Wales, including those of primary age in special schools, with the opportunity of receiving a free healthy breakfast at school each day during the school week. The school breakfasts are optional, their principal focus is for those children who, for whatever reason, do not have this opportunity to have breakfast. "Up to £1.5 million will be available in 2004-05 from End Year Flexibility to cover the anticipated costs. Detailed costings will be developed for the entire programme. These figures will feed into our spending review regarding future provision to deliver our commitments in A Better Country. "Some schools already provide and support school breakfasts, although no authority in Wales has a policy to provide them free. I propose to introduce these breakfasts incrementally on a pilot basis starting in the Community First areas in the first year. We will be working with the Welsh Local Government Association to select the pilots, which will embrace a broad cross section of schools and to develop the subsequent staged roll out of the programme to all primary schools across Wales by September 2006. "We will also work in partnership with the Farming Unions and food producers to ensure that the food served is, wherever possible, locally sourced and is of high nutritional value. We will ensure that a comprehensive and rigorous monitoring and evaluation programme, including an analysis of "take up rates" is put in place. "This is an exciting project. It will have a major impact on the health and well being of children in Wales. It complements the excellent work already being done on health eating and nutrition by the Assembly Government including work by the welsh Network of Healthy School Schemes, the Community Food Initiative, the Children and Young People’s framework, Farming for the Future, the nutritional strategy for Wales "Food and Well Being" and the action plan for Health and Well Being for Children and Young People."It may take some considerable time to educate pupils about the benefits of making a healthy choice at school meal times. My proposals for breakfasts will seek to reinforce this educative process. With the co-operation of LEAs and school caterers and through increased pupil awareness and a whole school approach to healthy eating I believe we will see a marked improvement in the number of pupils accessing free school meals, whether lunch or breakfast. It will enable children to derive greater benefit from school and give children a healthier start in life."
From the Welsh Assembly's Press Release website 11 Nov. 2003 www.wales.gov.uk
Breakthrough research proves that breakfast intake affects appetite
Scientists at Oxford Brookes University have made a ground breaking discovery potentially effecting the future eating habits of British school children. They have concluded from their study, titled "Low Glycemic Index Breakfasts and Reduced Food Intake in Preadolescent Children," published in the US journal Pediatrics that the type of breakfast a child has will effect their subsequent food intake at lunchtime. This is the first time a study of this kind has been carried out on normal weight, and overweight, children. Professor Jeya Henry PhD, research fellow and senior dietician Janet M. Warren and statistician Vanessa Simonite, all from Oxford Brookes University, spent several days monitoring the eating patterns of 37 British school children aged nine to 12 who were both normal weights and overweight in a study that lasted nearly eight months. Dr Henry and his colleagues concluded that: "The study is remarkable for two reasons, firstly that by selecting the type of breakfast we feed our children we can alter their subsequent food intake; secondly, we now know that feeding children a low glycemic breakfast will reduce their food intake at lunch. And feeding a high- glycemic index breakfast will mean they will eat more." The Glycemic index is a way of ranking foods based on their immediate effect on blood glucose levels, and how much these levels increase after a meal. It is hoped that this may help dieticians in prescribing the most effective diet to help childhood obesity. Foods that are considered to have a high glycemic index are cornflakes, chocolate-coated cereals, rice-based cereals, white bread and white rolls. Those with a low glycemic index are muesli, non-Swiss style muesli, oat porridge, all-bran and bread containing Soy.
From the Oxford Brookes University website www.brookes.ac.uk/news/2003/november/nr_113_03/initial
Fish deficiency 'could harm mental health'
Oily fish is increasingly missing from the diets of young people - and a leading nutritionist says this could harm their mental health. The rates of mental illness and depression are increasing globally. There is evidence that a chemical, Omega-3, found particularly in oily fish such as mackerel, herring, salmon and sardines has some effect on brain development. And some believe that removing it from the diet could be partly contributing to the rise in mental problems. Professor Michael Crawford, director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition at North London University, said: "We need to get back to feeding our minds as well as our bodies, otherwise the future of the nation is grim. "We should all be eating oily fish at least once a week." An NOP poll showed a particular decrease in fish consumption among the young. Fish free Three-quarters of 15 to 24-year-olds in the UK eat oily fish less than once a week. Looking at all ages, almost a quarter never eat oily fish. The average amount of fish eaten per person per week in the UK is thought to have halved over the past five decades. Professor Crawford said: "A diet of fish containing Omega-3 was essential for the necessary cerebral expansion which transformed our predecessors into homo sapiens. "Brain capacity expanded rapidly in our prehistoric ancestors living in east Africa near large freshwater lakes. "Medical experts have long known of the benefits of oily fish in the fight against heart disease, but it is just as vital as brain food." The National Institute of Medical Health in the US is currently sponsoring a study to examine the effectiveness of Omega-3 in treating a mental illness called bipolar disorder. In the UK, attempted suicide has shown a sharp increase over the last decade. Vegans and vegetarians get their Omega-3 from other sources, such as nuts and certain oils.
From the BBC's website news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/760382.stm