Good Nutrition Essential For Learning

Intellectual power is one of the greatest resources anyone could have. In our world today, intellectual resources continue to overpower physical resources in the determination of national power. Our nations are continuously compete amongst one another for first step in any new direction or area. In our nation, 20-50% of the population is intellectually compromised which shows our need to implement a better quality of life and health plan amongst our country. 

Nutrition is known to be directly related to intellectual and educational power through evidence and results. Worldwide, an estimated 1.6 billion people are iodine deficient, which has been associated with an average 13.5 point reduction in IQ for a population. This statistic illustrates the reduced cognitive functions in a school setting amongst children who obtain the deficiency. Another health defect that negatively effects cognitive performance settles with infants who are born at low birth weight. During infancy cognitive performance is extremely effected due to low birth weight, though it also is due to malnutrition within the infants. Low birth weight has been known to be associated with poor attention span in school, effecting seventeen percent of our population. These two deficiencies are unfortunate cases that we cannot have control over, however; there are other reasons for poor cognitive performance that we can have control of. Children to go to school without eating breakfast have found to decrease their performance during the regular school day by around 0.1 standard deviations. This statistic does not effect students who normally eat breakfast everyday and only skip one meal. Instead these results generate from those students who are typically malnourished as well as those who are from more unfortunate backgrounds. 

Resource: http://www.unscn.org/files/Publications/Briefs_on_Nutrition/Brief2_EN.pdf