I love to eat. A few people I’ve met over the years don’t share my enjoyment for food, but I’ve found, overall, I’m in vast company.
With all of the brain research going on nowadays, it’s no surprise that scientists have come up with a list of nutrients kids’ growing, developing brains need to function at their best. An article published in Nutrition Reviews states:
“Spurts of development of the frontal lobes occur from birth to 2 years, 7 to 9 years, and in the mid-teenage years. The frontal lobes are . . . responsible for . . . cognitive activities such as planning, developing strategies, testing hypotheses when problem solving, focusing attention, inhibiting irrelevant stimulation, and collating memories. [Nutrition] effects the developing functions of the frontal lobes throughout childhood.”[1]
Nutrients identified as essential for kids to do their best thinking and maturing include iodine, iron, folate, vitamin B12, zinc, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Iodine, for example, is necessary for cognitive development, and getting enough in childhood may decrease the chance of depression in adolescence and adulthood.[2]
Iron affects the proper myelination, or protective coating, of neurons and participates in making and using the neurotransmitters responsible for mental, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions.[3]
Folate, sometimes referred to as B-9, and vitamin B-12 help in the synthesis of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and to produce red blood cells, and they contribute to overall vascular health. If you have a child who seems to lack energy, he could have a folate deficiency. Fun fact: Vitamin C seems to give these Bs a boost in efficiency. [4]
Zinc plays an important role in gene replication and function, protein synthesis, and is necessary for a healthy immune system. Kids who get enough zinc tend to get sick less often.[5]
Omega-3s help cells communicate properly within the brain and maintain central nervous system efficiency. Studies show omega-3s may help kids focus and process infomation, and they may even improve symptoms associated with ADHD and dyslexia.[6]
Claire McCarthy, MD and contributor to the Harvard Health Blog also advises parents to make sure kids get enough A, C, and D vitamins for antioxidants (flu fighters) and healthy brain function.[7]
Generally, pediatricians agree that kids should get the nutrients they need from eating healthy foods, but if you go through a period of fast foods and mac ‘n cheese, giving your kids a multi-vitamin may be necessary.[8]
5 Nutrition Tips for Ensuring Kids’ Healthy Brain Development
- Offer your kids a variety of vegetables—broccoli, leafy greens, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, asparagus, sweet potatoes, cucumber. You can’t go wrong with any combination of raw or baked veggies, and you can be assured that most of the brain-nutrients listed above will be provided. Picky eater hack: Put out cut vegetables to snack on before dinner, right after school or sports when you’re kids may be hungriest. If veggies are what’s available, they’re likely to grab some to munch on.
2. Give your kids fresh fruits to snack on. Fruits have a lot of vitamins and minerals, and they tend to be more popular with the younger set, given that they’re sweeter than vegetables. And you don’t have to worry about the natural sugar since nature combines the juice with fiber in an orange, apple, raspberry, watermelon, and every other kind of fruit. Fiber in fruit, vegetables, and grains maintains healthy blood sugar, promotes healthy weight, and keeps kids’ digestive systems working properly. Picky eater hack: similar to the suggestion above, leave out a bowl of grapes, berries, or sliced larger fruits, such as apple wedges. If healthy foods are handy, your kids will grab them when they’re hungry.
3. Make sure your kids get enough protein that includes calcium, magnesium, iron, B-vitamins, and omegas for healthy brain development. Lean meats, dairy products, eggs, fish, tree nuts (e.g. almonds and cashews), beans, brown rice, and whole grains (e.g. quinoa, cous cous, wheat berry bread) offer the kind of protein and nutrients brains need optimal function. Picky eater hacks: Invite your child to help you prepare whatever protein is on the menu. Participation in food prep often gives kids enough buy-in to eat it. Try coloring eggs several times throughout the year for an extra incentive to eat them. Make fun healthy snacks, like celery and nut butter with raisins for eyes—or better yet, have your picky eater make them.
- Provide healthy fats. Many of the nutrients mentioned require fat to metabolize—that is, they need fat molecules to aid in the process of preparing them for the body to use. For example, omega-3s are fatty acid chains that aid in brain function and are found in the oils in fish, avocado, and olives. Animal fat in moderation provides health benefits as well. A couple of cooking tips:
Do most of your cooking with avocado oil. Avocado oil has a higher flash point, so it doesn’t create carcinogens the way olive oil and other vegetable oils can when they get too hot.
Mix olive oil with vinegar, salt, pepper, and lemon juice to put on salads. Yum.
Picky eater hacks: Fish wasn’t a favorite when my kids were little. My husband does most of the cooking, and he got good at using things like seasonings with cut tomatoes or cream of mushroom soup as toppings to ease them into mostly white fish at first, then wild-caught salmon. We could get quality fish for reasonable prices at Costco. By the time the girls were in second or third grade, they enjoyed fish as much as a hamburger.
5. Serve lots of WATER. Human brains need to maintain a hydration level of about 73%. Water cools the brain. It plumps the tissue to act as a cushion within the skill and aids in cleaning up dead or damaged cells. Water also helps to keep thinking and functioning processes running smoothly.
If you did nothing but ensure that your child drank enough water every day (6 to 8 glasses), you would likely see fewer colds and flu, improvement in your child’s schoolwork, and an overall sunnier outlook. It’ll take a couple weeks to develop a water habit, and there will be an adjustment period with bathroom visits at first, but once the routine is established, you’ll see a big difference in your child’s health and attitude. Water hacks: Give your child a glass of water first thing in the morning (we all wake up a little dehydrated), send a water bottle to school, have him drink water after school, before dinner, and a couple of hours before bedtime.
Children are notorious for getting dehydrated throughout the day. If your child complains of head or stomach aches or gets grumpy or loopy in the afternoons, these are more likely signs of dehydration than fatigue from a long day. (For more information, join our Brain Stages community and get The 8 Secrets to Raising Successful Kids FREE!)
But what do you do about kids who don’t want to eat foods like veggies and fruits?
Keep making healthy foods available. Sally Kuzemchak, dietician and author of The 101 Healthiest Foods for Kids suggests that parents offer a fruit or veggie at most meals and snacks. She also says, “Stock your kitchen with healthy foods. The outside world is full of soda, chips, and candy. Occasional treats are okay, but make healthy foods the default in your home.”[9]
In her book, Sally has lots of “Try It” tips that offer parents gentle, nonthreatening ways to present new foods to reluctant eaters. For example, her “Try It” tip for encouraging kids wary of celery is to “start with the small ribs at the center of the stalk. They tend to be the most tender and sweet.”
And Sally advises parents to “keep offering vegetables in different ways, serve them at most meals, model good habits by eating plenty of veggies yourself, and be patient.”[10]
In our house, while our girls were growing up, we always had containers of unsalted almonds or mixed nuts on hand that they could grab when they got hungry between meals. Nuts provide healthy fats and a bit of protein that help tide kids over until dinner.
We also bought bags of raw, chopped stir-fry veggies that our kids liked to munch on. A fruit bowl always sat on the dining table with easy-peel oranges, apples, bananas, and seasonal fruit such as plums and grapes.
Don’t get me wrong, we had dessert after dinner most nights, but the girls knew whatever goodies were in the house were reserved for us to have an evening treat together.
We ate dinner together most nights. Some of our best memories are laughing at Chuck’s silly dad-puns, telling stories about what happened at school or work that day, and sometimes discussing philosophical questions the kids would bring up.
If we hadn’t eaten most evening meals together, once the girls hit adolescence, I’m not sure we would have ever known what was going on in their lives.
We didn’t deal with drama over food at the table. Our kids were particular about many things, but they understood the rule that an unfinished dinner meant no dessert.
The experts say not to bribe kids to eat healthy food by withholding dessert. And I wholeheartedly agree. It wasn’t like that in our house.
We made sure not to overfeed our children and explained early that their brains and bodies needed the food we served for dinner so they could grow big and strong. We discussed the reasons they could easily live without ice cream or cookies and how their bodies used the vitamins in foods like vegetables to stay healthy.
Sometimes one of the girls would ask something like: “If I don’t eat my green beans, will I still get dessert?”
“You know the rule,” my husband or I would say, and then, because we’re all talkers, the subject would change without incident.
Occasionally, one of the kids wouldn’t finish dinner, and we’d all skip dessert that night. Usually, we’d be doing something fun and no one would mention it.
We only had to prevail through a tantrum once with each child, both times when they were in kindergarten. Since then, both girls have told us many times that they’re grateful to have learned to eat all kinds of foods and that they know how to eat healthy.
I must add, though, that we often declared events as “special occasions” where the eat-your-whole-dinner rule could be ignored. At parties, for example, the main course was often pizza or something equally lacking in nutrition anyway. We felt like the kids came out ahead if they skipped a few bites of dinner and still ate birthday cake.
(If you want to know more, you can find the whole “Real Deal” story in Brain Stages in Chapter 2: Useful Stuff About Brains on pages 14-15. There are also multiple sections throughout Brain Stages with helpful suggestions to help you provide optimal nutrition for your children’s brain function and development.)
6 Foods to Avoid for Healthy Brain Development and Function
Besides the obvious things like soda, chips, cookies, and candy to allow your children to eat in moderation on special occasions, which happen a lot throughout elementary school—sports team, scouting, and church events, birthday parties and holidays—these 7 stealth foods look somewhat healthy, but they aren’t.
The foods that follow are FULL of sugar, which studies show decreases our ability to think. Sugar pumps up our energy for about 20 minutes and then completely saps our brainpower. Too much sugar impairs memory, can become addictive, and can even lead to depression—which is at an all-time high in school-age children.[11]
- Steer clear of processed grains as much as possible when you’re at home.
Oh boy, you might hate me for saying this, but processed grains like pizza crust, pasta, and bagels are high in carbohydrates that metabolize in our bodies as sugar.
Although delicious and easy to get kids to eat, don’t fool yourself into believing pizza, spaghetti, or mac ‘n cheese are healthy meals. They’re only slightly healthier than cupcakes or cookies.
I’m not saying kids should never eat these things, especially when these menu items are often served at parties and other events. I’m just pointing out that if you serve whole grains, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and protein at home, you and your family will feel better, get sick less often, and function better overall.
- Avoid giving your kids fruit juice—even 100 percent juice.
A glass of juice has as much or more sugar than soda. A serving of orange juice, for example, has all the juice of 2 to 3 oranges, depending on the size of the container, and none of the fiber. Not only does your child get double to triple the amount of sugar in a table orange, but instead of the sugar being time-released into the body as a result of the fiber that accompanies a whole piece of fruit, the fructose (fruit sugar) immediately bombards kids’ bodies and brains.
That’s why if a diabetic goes into insulin shock, the first choice to restore his sugar level is to give him fruit juice—the quickest way for him to get a sugar dump to revive him.
The benefit of vitamin C in juice is insignificant compared to the negative effects of such a large dose of sugar at once.
- Don’t give your child energy drinks.
Energy drinks have too much caffeine and many have chemicals that are harmful for school-age children. They can cause nervousness, headache, upset stomach, difficulty sleeping, and dehydration (especially after a workout).[12]
If your child gets exhausted, rather than handing over an energy drink, give your child a bottle of water. The energy and mental acuity that will follow from rehydration will be longer lasting and healthier.
If a good dose of water doesn’t revive your child, that may be an indication of too many activities in the family schedule. Consider letting go of one or two to accommodate your child’s natural energy level.
- Forget sports drinks unless your child has been engaged in at least an hour of rigorous exercise and is covered in sweat.
Gatorade was invented for the Florida Gators’ football team to get players through training in blistering hot summers without suffering from heat stroke. Since then, other companies have come up with sports drinks designed to replace electrolytes—salts and sugar lost during rigorous exercise.
In most cases, kids do better with a water bottle during and after soccer games, or whatever sports they participate in. Another excellent recovery drink is chocolate milk, which has a moderate amount of sugar, natural electrolytes, a bit of fat, protein, and calcium.
The moral of the story: You can’t go wrong if you serve WATER or MILK.
If your child is sensitive to dairy, there are lots of non-dairy alternatives such as almond, cashew, or hemp milk—all rehydrate, have calcium, protein, and vitamins A and D.
- Don’t be fooled by most “fruit” chews and “fruit” roll-ups.
Some fruit leathers are made with real fruit and without added sugar, but most aren’t. Be aware that most of fruit chews and roll-ups are about as nutritious as a bag of Skittles.
PLEASE refrain from packing desserts in your kids’ lunches. Remember, a sugar boost turns into a sugar bust within about 20 minutes. Children need water to hydrate, and they need healthy fat, carbs, and protein to recharge for the rest of the day.
- Be wary of flavored yogurt.
Most yogurt cups have as much or more added sugar than a candy bar! Check the nutrition facts on the label.
Nutritionists recommend plain Greek yogurt with fresh fruit. My kids used to like to add their own strawberries and blueberries.
Once I realized how much sugar companies add to yogurt, it took a while for our family to get used to the tanginess of plain yogurt, so we added a bit a granola until we got more used to it. Most granola is also full of sugar, but a couple of tablespoons adds a moderate amount as well as some crunch that we all enjoyed.
If your kids can’t get used to plain yogurt, try Greek yogurt sweetened with Stevia. Stevia is a sweetener derived from plants and can be used in smaller amounts than cane sugar.
For example, Dannon Light and Fit Greek yogurt has 8 grams of sugar as compared to most yogurts that have anywhere between 10 and 23 grams of sugar.
In summary, provide lots of table fruits, vegetables, some whole grains, proteins, healthy fats, and plenty of water to ensure kids’ brains function at their best for happier, more confident, alert, intelligent children.
And you’ll think sharper and have more energy too.
Stay tuned for “Food Prep Hacks and How to Teach Kids to Make Their Own Lunches” in two weeks.
Feel free to ask a question, leave a comment, or offer a suggestion that has worked well in creating healthy eating habits in your family.
And please share this post with your friends by using the “share” buttons below.
Best wishes for a happy parenting journey,
Trish Wilkinson
Co-author Brain Stages: How to Raise Smart, Confident Kids and Have Fun Doing It, K-5
References
[1] Bryan, Janet Bryan Ph.D., Saskia Osendarp, Ph.D., Donna Hughes, MPsych, Eva Calvaresi, MPsych, Katrine Baghurst, Ph.D., and Jan-Willem van Klinken, Ph.D. “Nutrients for Cognitive Development in School-aged Children.” Nutrition Reviews, Vol. 62, No. 8. August 2004, pp. 295-306. Online pdf accessed February 18, 2019. https://tinyurl.com/y36yoca9
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Folate Fact Sheet for Professionals. National Institute of Health (NIH), October 4, 2018, accessed February 20, 2019. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Folate-HealthProfessional/
[5] Nordqvist, Joseph. “What are the Health Benefits of Zinc?” Medical News Today, December 5, 2017, accessed February 20, 2019. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263176.php
[6] Zelcer M, Goldman RD. Omega-3 and dyslexia: Uncertain connection. Can Fam Physician. 2015;61(9):768-70. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4569108/
[7] Claire McCarthy, MD. “The crucial brain foods all children need” Harvard Health Publishing, Medical School blog, January 23, 2018 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/brain-food-children-nutrition-2018012313168
[8] Reviewed by Brennan, Dan, MD. 2018. “Vitamins for Kids: Do Healthy Kids Need Supplements?” WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/vitamins-for-kids-do-healthy-kids-need-vitamins#1
[9] Kuzemchak, Sally. The 101 Healthiest Foods for Kids: Eat the Best, Feel the Greatest—Healthy Foods for Kids and Recipes too. Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. 2019
[10] Ibid. p. 35
[11] “6 Negative Effects of Sugar on Your Brain.” Holtz Health and Wellness Center, Intl. staff. June 28, 2018. Accessed February 21, 2019. https://www.hotzehwc.com/2018/06/6-negative-effects-of-sugar-on-your-brain/
[12] “What About Energy Drinks for Kids?” Stanford Children’s Health
Hi Trish, thanks for sharing this great post. I love the picky eater hacks, we need all the help we can get to make sure our kids consume all those healthy brain foods they need to thrive!
I’m glad you found the hacks helpful! 🙂
@#@#$%^^$%#@##%%&^&^ this is fucking perfect its full of good god damn crap