Nutritions Effect on Academic Performance

Nurs 110
Troy Peterson
 Nutrition is one of the most important things for the human body it is what keeps it

functioning in peak performance both physically and mentally. This however is not attainable for

all people and therefore can have fairly debilitating effects on those who do not get proper

nutrition, specifically in the realms of education. Education is one of the most important things

that people have to both increase their understanding of the world as well as increasing their own

social and economic situation so a lack of proper nutrition, especially in developing countries

where the population is more likely to experience that as well as have a greater need for

education, is an insidious burden that sabotages one from the start. Poor nutrition would also

stunt the ability to grow from both physically and mentally given that the fundamentals of

education if not understood early can set one at a disadvantage for a long time afterwards.

The general consensus of the research states that universally good and consistent

nutrition, when controlling for other factors, showed better academic performance over other

comparable groups which were not able to have consistently good nutrition, for their body type,

within their diet. However only one of the studies actually controlled for prior household

education level which could have an influence on academic performance so that is a factor to

keep in mind. More specifically the research found however that protein was very important in

academic performance stating that "Many of the students who took meat, fruits, fish and eggs did

perform better than those who did not take fish and eggs daily" (Hossain, MS; Islam, M R; MA

Ferdous; Trisha, A A; Rahman, M M; et al., 2018). Given my own experience in psychology

these findings do not surprise me as the amount of nutrients needed to power the brain is a vast

amount and inadequate nutrition would contribute to this greatly. This information should be

used to reinforce the idea of nutritious and healthy school lunches as academic performance can

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be directly linked to the adequacy of food and how available it is for children, this information

can also be extrapolated to other areas of life that involve education. If you're job or career

involves being able to think clearly and efficiently then food is an important cornerstone of being

able to properly do that job. This will also affect me because I usually take eating for granted in

certain situations, especially when I have to spend a lot of time studying I will sometimes skip

meals to fit more time in. This however will make me change that habit considering that eating

properly could probably increase my academic performance more than the studying I could be

doing instead of eating.

Future research that could be done with this topic is that there could be more focus put

into which nutrients specifically are beneficial to academic performance. This would allow for

there to be more specificity in conclusions as it would give a more complete view of what is

lacking in diets that would cause someone to struggle more academically as well as give a target

for those who wish to avoid that as an outcome. This however could have some ethical issues

given that in an experimental sense it would effectively be starving individuals of specific

nutrients however if they are closely watched in a clinical setting then the risks to their overall

health could be minimized to an inconsequential level.

Citation

Correa-Burrows, P., Burrows, R., Blanco, E., Reyes, M., & Gahagan, S. (2016). Nutritional

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