breakfast & teens' brains

by Diane Lofshult

Food for Thought:

Want to give your teen a head start to higher grades in school? Bring on the breakfast, say nutrition experts. A study found that skipping breakfast has no negative effect on teens’ attention spans in high school; however, students reported feeling more alert after eating breakfast.

In an article in the August 2008 issue of Pediatrics, researchers tested teens’ ability to remain alert in class when fasting and after eating breakfast. During the study, half of the 104 students (aged 13–20) consumed breakfast, while the other half—the control group—did not; midway through the study, the teens who were the original controls were given breakfast, while the other half were not. The teens were tested and measured for cognitive functioning, attention sustainability and alertness.

Although consuming breakfast did not have any effect
on the teens’ ability to sustain attention, it did make them feel more alert afterward. The boys who ate breakfast fared even better: their moods improved after eating their morning meal, and they scored better on memory tests than they
did after fasting.

“With an increasing number of children and adolescents skipping breakfast, there is a need for scientific studies evaluating whether omission of breakfast affects the cognitive functioning and mood of fasting students,” the researchers concluded.