Fasting And Cognitive Function

FASTING AND COGNITIVE FUNCTION

In 1946 the National School Lunch Program (PL 79-396) instituted food supplementation. in our

country's school systems and in 1966 Child Nutrition Act of 1966 expanded this type of program

to include breakfast and special milk programs.

My journal mainly focuses on the relationship between a good breakfast and a child's capacity

to learn and how skipping breakfast can have adverse effects on children's late morning

problem-soloving performance.

There were two designed experiments- one conducted in Massachusetts Institute of Technology

CRC ( Cambridge, MA) and the second was conducted in the Texas Children's Hostipal/Baylor

College of Medicine CRC ( Houston, Texas). The subjects were middle-class children aged

from 9 to 11 years old. There were 23 girls and 9 boys in the first study and 20 girls and

19 boys in the second. The children were admitted twice to each respective CRC at seven

day intervals. On the evening of each admission all children were provided with dinner

at 5pm. It was randomly chosen to feed breakfast on first morning. Breakfast was served

from 8 to 830. Behavioral testing was done from 1115 to 1145 am. Both studies included an

assessment of IQ: The peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the Slossom Intelligence Scale

in studies 1 and 2 respectively. It also included the Matching Famliar Figure test and

the Hagen Central Incidental Test. The psychologists observing the children were blind

to the BR or NBR status of