Added sugar in childhood may cause memory problems in adulthood.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Making the right food choices for your child can be difficult. Mainly, if you are not sure what is healthy or unhealthy for their development.
Reported on the page Eat This, Not That, Thursday (20/1/2022), these can be quite scary when you think about the importance of their developmental stages and the role that diet can play in this period of growth. Not only with physical development but also mental and behavior.
According to a 2020 report published in The Lancet: Child & Adolescent Health, the worst types of food for your child’s brain are: junk food. Three brain and nutrition researchers from Western University in London reviewed more than 100 different studies for this report. The study, which includes several previous studies of its own, investigates how poor dietary choices can affect children’s and teens’ brains.
The report found that children and adolescents consume fast food calorie-dense in very large quantities, which negatively affects their brain development. This is largely because a teenager’s brain is still developing its pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for memory, attention, and impulse control.
According to research, the effect of junk food on the developing pre-frontal cortex can negatively impact your child’s ability to self-regulate their food choices. This report also emphasizes how junk food can interfere with a child’s ability to control their eating. Higher consumption of these foods is known to lead to unhealthy eating choices into adulthood, which can lead to obesity later in life.
Not only that, unhealthy eating can have consequences on impulse control, but a separate cohort study of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology found poor diet quality in adolescents was also associated with higher rates of depression.
A new study from the University of Georgia finds added sugar in childhood may cause memory impairment in adulthood. However, this study was performed on mice, so further research is still needed.
With all this information, how can you make the necessary changes to your child’s diet to ensure their brain is in good hands? A review from 2017 said a healthy diet for child development includes many nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates (not refined carbohydrates), healthy fats, iron, vitamins A, C, and D, and B vitamins. Medical News Today suggest foods such as green leafy vegetables, Greek yogurt, fatty fish, and eggs as part of a healthy diet for your child’s brain.
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