Have you ever felt like some days at school you can comprehend subjects easier than other days? Although, we often hear about a good diet giving a person a physical benefit when exercising, your diet can also directly impact your ability to perform well in mentally, especially on tasks we’re given in school.
A research paper uploaded to the National Library of Medicine’s Website, titled, Associations between Dietary Intake and Academic Achievement in College Students: A Systematic Review, analyzes and discusses experiments done with college students on the quality of food given to students and their results when tested on a subject. Their conclusion is as follows; “results suggest that diet may be associated with academic achievement, with the majority of studies associating more favorable dietary intake with higher academic achievement. Therefore, health promotion practitioners in the university setting should consider the positive role diet may play in students’ academic achievement when developing initiatives to promote healthy eating to students. Furthermore, health promotion practitioners may utilize the findings from the review to advocate within the university setting for the need to better support students to improve their eating habits, due to the potential impact on their academic performance.” School cafeterias often make it an easy choice to pick unhealthy cheap foods but putting in an effort, whether it be taking fruit as a side or choosing a meal with vegetables, will make a difference not just your academic performance, but self wellness.
This correlation of food and personal performance can be applied in an extreme sense too. Students with little to no food lack in areas even outside of learning. Looking at the results on children and the developing brain can help us understand its effect on everyone. Grace Chen discusses exactly this in her article How Diet and Nutrition Impact a Child’s Learning Ability from May 20, 2022. Chen states, “Children with insufficient diets are reported to have more problems with health, academic learning, and psychosocial behavior. Malnutrition can result in long-term neural issues in the brain, which can impact a child’s emotional responses, reactions to stress, learning disabilities, and other medical
complications.”
In conclusion, it’s important to consider what we put into our bodies, not just for academic benefit, but a healthier brain that allows us to live a more well rounded life, physically and emotionally. Although most of us are not necessarily in such a critical position, the extreme effects allow us to see the extent of its effect on everyone.
https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/how-diet-and-nutrition-impact-a-childs-l earning-ability#:~:text=Children%20with%20insufficient%20diets%20are,disabilities%2C%20and%20other%20medical%20complications.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5746694/