Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Why is breakfast important for children?

Fourth grade students across Arkansas are taking required benchmark tests this week. During the week of testing, students are encouraged to get plenty of sleep and eat breakfast each day. Although test prepartion is important, making sure that a child has breakfast every day is important to building lifelong healthy habits.

It's well documented that breakfast provides fuel for school and boosts brain power. According to information provided by Midwest Dairy, eating breakfast:
  • Improves classroom performance, including better test scores and grades.
  • Increases children's ability to focus and concentrate on school work.
  • Decreases behavior problems, tardiness, and visits to the school nurse.
  • Increases attendance rate.
  • Establishes healthy habits for later in life.
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines recommends that children include three servings of low-fat or fat free dairy foods in their diet each day. Including dairy at breakfast makes perfect sense. Together,milk,cheese and yogurt play a critical role in providing nine essential nutrients, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus, in addition to 48 percent daily value of protein.

You can find more information about dairy nutrition, the importance of breakfast and great breakfast ideas at http://www.midwestdairy.com or http://www.dairymakessense.com.

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