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）一項對新斯科舍省五年級小學生開展的研究證實，飲食習慣好的孩子學習成績也比較好。

    加拿大埃德蒙頓亞伯達大學的鮑爾•J•維格勒博士及其同事發現，飲食健康，攝入足量水果、蔬菜、蛋白質和纖維等營養成分的學生讀寫測試不及格的可能性較低。

    維格勒及其同事指出，大家都想當然地認為健康的飲食對于孩子的學習成績很重要，但實際上有關這一問題的研究卻很少。為了弄清這一問題，研究人員對4589名五年級學生開展了一項“兒童生活方式與學習成績”的研究，其中有875名學生未通過小學讀寫水平測試。

    研究人員發現，飲食習慣較健康的學生考試不及格的幾率較小，在綜合考慮學生父母的收入及教育程度、就讀學校和性等因素的影響后得出的結論也是如此。學生飲食習慣的健康與否主要以飲食質量的幾個指標為依據，其中包括所攝入食物的量和種類。此外，研究發現，在攝入大量水果蔬菜和較少高脂肪食品的情況下，學生讀寫測試不及格的幾率也會降低。

    維格勒及其研究小組稱，目前有關兒童飲食與學習成績的多數研究主要著眼于吃早餐的重要性，以及饑餓和營養不良可能導致的后果。

    研究人員得出結論：“該研究展示了總體飲食質量對孩子學習成績的獨有重要性，是對這一領域現有研究成果的進一步拓展。”