Studies have already shown that skipping breakfast is bad for the body. Children who do not obfuscate it would also perform better in school.
Children who eat a healthy breakfast before starting their school day perform better in school than others. This is what researchers at Cardiff University (Wales) have shown in a study which has just been published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.
In this work, scientists followed 5,000 children aged 9 to 11 from more than 100 primary schools in Wales. Their findings suggest that the odds of getting an above average mark are twice as high among 11-year-olds who ate breakfast.
This team points out that there is already significant research proving this link, but this is the first to show a “significant” link between having breakfast and academic success.
In the past, work has shown that students who skip breakfast lose two hours per day of learning compared to those who eat when they wake up. Skipping it would also have the effect of disrupting the body (type 2 diabetes, etc.)
The importance of eating healthy products
For Hannah Littlecott, lead author of the study, “This study offers the best evidence that links exist between what students eat and how they perform in school. These findings will, I hope, have important implications for education and public health policy in our country ”.
In this research, the researcher also asked the students for the list of foods and drinks they had consumed during the last 24 hours. The results show that eating a healthy breakfast – consisting of dairy products, cereals, fruit and bread – is believed to improve academic performance. Because conversely, eating products such as candy and crisps (the case of one in five children in the study) had no positive impact on the marks of these children.
Breakfast at school widespread?
Faced with results of this nature, Chris Bonell, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Institute of London College of Education, calls for a continuation, “the experiment carried out in many schools across the UK which now offer students have breakfast ”.
According to figures from 2012 cited in the report, almost half of schools in England already provide breakfasts for pupils, especially in disadvantaged areas, and in Wales where there is a free breakfast policy in primary schools ”.
And the researcher concludes: “We now know that it works, and with more than half a million children arriving at school too hungry to learn, we must now act quickly to finance this simple measure. and profitable. It would have the effect of helping to reduce the differences in level between schools ”.
According to a recent study by the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions (Credoc), children who arrive at school hungry are a phenomenon identified by nearly 47% of teachers in France. . On average, 3, 4 pupils per class arrive without having breakfast. Worse still, in reinforced priority education networks, 5.2 students per class skip the morning meal.
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