here - Healthy Cities Illawarra

Chapter
1
The Importance of Breakfast for Children
Breakfast is universally recognised as
important to the health and wellbeing
of children for many reasons, with
strong links to the incidence
of chronic disease and the
promotion of healthy lifestyles.
Eating breakfast provides
essential nutrients for growth
and development, increases
metabolism, is beneficial to
learning and concentration,
and establishes lasting
healthy eating habits.
Children who eat breakfast
consume more vitamins, minerals
and dietary fibre, and less cholesterol and
fat, than those who miss the morning meal.
Breakfast optimises a child’s nutritional intake,
and those who miss breakfast are often unable
to catch up on missed nutrients during the day.
Moreover, in response to hunger, they are more
likely to consume high fat, ‘fast’ snack foods later
in the day. Breakfast eaters consume more daily
calories, yet are less likely to be overweight.
so that teachers are often the first
to notice when a child in their
class has not had breakfast
(For more information
see Appendix 1, Ten
Great Reasons to Eat
a Healthy Breakfast
Every Day).
So why do children
go to school without
having had breakfast?
Parents often struggle
to get their child to eat
breakfast, and working
parents can lack the time to
ensure it is eaten before they leave
for work. Children being too sleepy or having no
appetite early in the morning, an early commute
to school, financial hardship, parental neglect,
and misguided ‘weight control’ efforts and peer
pressure, are some of the other reasons children
skip breakfast.
In addition to these more obvious effects on
health, research finds repeatedly that hungry
school children have higher levels of aggression
and hyperactivity, and reduced capacity to
concentrate and learn. Eating breakfast has
an immediate effect on improved alertness and
educational outcomes of children; so much
8