Ells, L.J. and Hillier, F.C. and Shucksmith, J. and Crawley, H. and Harbige, L. and Shield, J. and Wiggins, A. and Summerbell, C.D. (2008) 'A systematic review of the effect of dietary exposure that could be achieved through normal dietary intake on learning and performance of school-aged children of relevance to UK schools.', British journal of nutrition., 100 (5). pp. 927-936.
The aim of the present review was to perform a systematic in-depth review of the best evidence from controlled trial studies that have investigated the effects of nutrition, diet and dietary change on learning, education and performance in school-aged children (4–18 years) from the UK and other developed countries. The twenty-nine studies identified for the review examined the effects of breakfast consumption, sugar intake, fish oil and vitamin supplementation and ‘good diets’. In summary, the studies included in the present review suggest there is insufficient evidence to identify any effect of nutrition, diet and dietary change on learning, education or performance of school-aged children from the developed world. However, there is emerging evidence for the effects of certain fatty acids which appear to be a function of dose and time. Further research is required in settings of relevance to the UK and must be of high quality, representative of all populations, undertaken for longer durations and use universal validated measures of educational attainment. However, challenges in terms of interpreting the results of such studies within the context of factors such as family and community context, poverty, disease and the rate of individual maturation and neurodevelopment will remain. Whilst the importance of diet in educational attainment remains under investigation, the evidence for promotion of lower-fat, -salt and -sugar diets, high in fruits, vegetables and complex carbohydrates, as well as promotion of physical activity remains unequivocal in terms of health outcomes for all schoolchildren.
|Keywords:||Schoolchildren, Diet, Learning, Behaviour, Behavior.|
|Full text:||PDF - Published Version (152Kb)|
|Publisher Web site:||http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007114508957998|
|Publisher statement:||This paper has been published by Cambridge University Press in "British Journal of Nutrition" (100:5 (2008) 927-936). http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2411080 Copyright © The Authors 2008.|
|Record Created:||27 May 2009 15:05|
|Last Modified:||10 Jul 2013 09:19|
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