Healthy diet means better school performance



Kids who eat better perform better in school, a new study of Nova Scotia fifth-graders confirms.



Kids who eat better perform better in school, a new study of Nova Scotia fifth-graders confirms.

Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit, vegetables, protein, fiber and other components of a healthy diet were significantly less likely to fail a literacy test, Dr. Paul J. Veugelers of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and colleagues found.

While a healthy diet is generally assumed to be important for good school performance, there has actually been little research on this topic, Veugelers and his colleagues note. To investigate, they looked at 4,589 fifth-graders participating in the Children's Lifestyle and School-performance Study, 875 (19.1 percent) of whom had failed an elementary literacy assessment.

The better a student's eating habits based on several measures of diet quality, including adequacy and variety, the less likely he or she was to have failed the test, the researchers found, even after they adjusted the data for the effects of parental income and education, school, and sex. Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, and getting fewer calories from fat, was also associated with a lower risk of failing the test.

To date, Veugelers and his team say, most research on diet and school performance has focused on the importance of eating breakfast, as well as the ill effects of hunger and malnutrition.

"This study extends current knowledge in this area by demonstrating the independent importance of overall diet quality to academic performance," the researchers conclude.

（加拿大）一项对新斯科舍省五年级小学生开展的研究证实，饮食习惯好的孩子学习成绩也比较好。

加拿大埃德蒙顿亚伯达大学的鲍尔•J•维格勒博士及其同事发现，饮食健康，摄入足量水果、蔬菜、蛋白质和纤维等营养成分的学生读写测试不及格的可能性较低。

维格勒及其同事指出，大家都想当然地认为健康的饮食对于孩子的学习成绩很重要，但实际上有关这一问题的研究却很少。为了弄清这一问题，研究人员对4589名五年级学生开展了一项“儿童生活方式与学习成绩”的研究，其中有875名学生未通过小学读写水平测试。

研究人员发现，饮食习惯较健康的学生考试不及格的几率较小，在综合考虑学生父母的收入及教育程度、就读学校和性等因素的影响后得出的结论也是如此。学生饮食习惯的健康与否主要以饮食质量的几个指标为依据，其中包括所摄入食物的量和种类。此外，研究发现，在摄入大量水果蔬菜和较少高脂肪食品的情况下，学生读写测试不及格的几率也会降低。

维格勒及其研究小组称，目前有关儿童饮食与学习成绩的多数研究主要着眼于吃早餐的重要性，以及饥饿和营养不良可能导致的后果。

研究人员得出结论：“该研究展示了总体饮食质量对孩子学习成绩的独有重要性，是对这一领域现有研究成果的进一步拓展。”

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