School Breakfast and Cognition Among Nutritionally At-risk Children in the Peruvian Andes

In 1993, in Peru, the Institute of Nutritional Research conducted two studies in Huaraz in the Andean region to evaluate the educational and nutritional impact of the government's School Breakfast Program. The school breakfast included a small cake and a glass of Amilac (similar in taste and color to milk), which provided 30% of each child's energy requirements, 60% of recommended dietary allowances for minerals and vitamins, and 100% of dietary iron needs. A case control study examined the effects of breakfast on cognition among 54 elementary schoolchildren 9-11 years old. It found that the school breakfast did not have a significant effect on the children's performance in the Number Discrimination, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Raven Progressive Matrices, or Reaction Time tests. Children nutritionally at risk who received the placebo had significantly slower short-term memory scanning than their counterparts who received the breakfast. The no-risk placebo group exhibited more rapid discrimination between visual stimuli than the no-risk breakfast group. A field evaluation of the program in 10 rural schools, which were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition, was conducted. In terms of energy, protein, and iron intake, the children in the case and control conditions were not significantly different. The children tended to be either very stunted or overweight. School attendance increased 0.58 points in the experimental group, while it decreased by 2.92 points in the control group (p 0.05). When both groups received the breakfast, attendance rates increased significantly in both groups (p 0.05). Vocabulary was sensitive to the effects of the breakfast. Specifically, the greater the child's weight, the higher his/her vocabulary test scores (p 0.05). These findings suggest that the brain is sensitive to decreases in the short-term availability of nutrients, and that an overnight and morning fast produces a physiological state accompanied by changes in brain function, especially working memory, particularly among nutritionally at-risk children.