This food may harm your child's
development.
Making the right dietary choices for your children can be
difficult, especially if you are unaware of what is healthy and not for their
growth.
This is especially scary when you consider the importance of their
developmental stages and the impact that diet can play in these stages of
development, not only in terms of physical development but also in terms of
mental and behavioral development.
Junk food is the absolute worst form of diet for your child's
brain, according to a 2020 report published in The Lancet: Child &
Adolescent Health.
Continue reading to learn more about the report's findings.
The nature of the report
Three brain and nutrition researchers from Western University in
London, Ontario, looked at over 100 different studies for this report. The
studies looked into how poor diet choices can damage children and the
adolescent brain and included some of the researchers' previous work.
What they discovered
According to the report, children and teenagers consume excessive
calorie-dense junk food, which hurts their brain development.
The pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for
memory, attention, and impulse control, is still developing in the adolescent
brain.
The effect of junk food on a developing pre-frontal cortex,
according to the study, can hurt your child's ability to
"self-regulate" their food choices.
How too much junk food can impact your child's brain and future
Higher consumption of junk food is
known to lead to unhealthier eating habits in adulthood, which may contribute
to obesity later on, according to this report, because junk food may affect a
child's ability to control their eating.
Not only may it affect impulse control, but a separate cohort
study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology found that
low nutrition quality was connected to higher levels of depression in
adolescents.
In addition, according to a new study from the University of Georgia, added sugar in childhood may lead to memory loss in adulthood.
However, more research is required because this study was done on mice.
Healthy foods for your child's brain
So, with all of this knowledge, how can you make the required
dietary modifications to guarantee that your child's brain is in good hands?
According to a 2017 review, a child's healthy diet should include
lots of nutrients like protein, carbohydrates (not refined carbs), healthy
fats, iron, vitamins A, C, and D, and B vitamins.
Leafy greens, Greek yogurt, fatty fish, and eggs are all recommended as part of a brain-healthy diet by Doctors.