First Annual School Breakfast Week September 17 - 21 

School cafeterias across Florida will celebrate the first annual Florida School Breakfast Week September 17-21 with the theme “Excellence Begins with School Breakfast!”  During the week students will focus on physical activity, academic excellence, and the importance of starting each day with a nutritious breakfast.  Research shows that behavioral, emotional, and academic problems are more prevalent among children with hunger; however, academic performance and readiness are enhanced when students start their day with a nutritious meal.

Florida School Breakfast Week promotes the availability of breakfast for all students at school and the strong link between eating a nutritious breakfast and improved academic achievement and physical performance.  “Research conducted by the University of Minnesota and Harvard University concludes that students who eat breakfast are more alert, have improved memory and problem-solving skills, and perform better on standardized tests.  That is why we say that school breakfast provides a link to learning,” says Janey Thornton, MS, SNS, president of the School Nutrition Association. 

{sidebar id=1}“What we find particularly exciting is that [school breakfast] is a relatively simple intervention that can significantly improve children’s academic performance and psychological well-being,” says J. Michael Murphy, EdD, School Breakfast Program researcher, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. 

Food and Nutrition Management, the section of the Florida Department of Education responsible for the administrative and financial oversight of the federal Child Nutrition Programs in Florida, hopes to narrow the gap between the number of Florida students eating breakfast at school and the number of students eating school lunch.  In Florida, more than 488,000 school breakfast meals are served each day to students, whereas the school lunch program serves an average of 1.28 million lunch meals each day to Florida students.  Only 38 percent of the students who eat lunch also eat breakfast.

School breakfast provides at least one-fourth of the nutrients needed by a growing child, contains less than 30 percent of calories from total fat, and contains less than ten percent of calories from saturated fat.  These standards meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans set by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  According to the USDA, School Breakfast Program participation is associated with higher intakes of food energy, calcium, phosphorous, and vitamin C.  For more information about food and nutrition in Florida schools, please visit:  http://www.fldoe.org/FNM/ .

This article originally published on September 19, 2007.

Written by :

mkwestmark

 

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