3 Brain Foods For Kids: Nutrition That Makes A Difference

As a parent, you already know that nutrition plays a significant role in your child's growth and development. In addition to keeping your child from gorging themselves on sweets and other types of junk food, you also have to find inventive ways of getting your children to eat nutritious foods consistently.

While eating a broad range of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds is essential, certain foods are critical to brain development. Here are three such foods.

Dark Berries

Children love to snack, and most kids have a sweet tooth, but that doesn't mean you have to keep the candy jar stocked up with sugary treats. Instead, you should shift away from those processed snacks and provide healthier options. In particular, berries contain anthocyanins, which are responsible for giving strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries their pigmentation.

When consumed, these anthocyanins benefit the brain in a variety of different ways. They help boost overall blood flow to the brain, which improves brain functioning. They also act as anti-inflammatory agents, allowing receptors in the brain to communicate with greater efficiency.

Anthocyanins have also been found to aid in producing new nerve cells, and they help with protein expression. This means children who regularly eat berries perform better in school, retain more knowledge, and exhibit stronger cognitive functioning than children who do not eat berries regularly.

Seafood

Brain food that's healthy for children and adults equally is seafood of most types, including those rich in omega-3 fatty acids. Seafood is also rich in zinc and iodine, which are nutrients that promote better brain health. While we know that omega-3 fatty acids are needed for the everyday functioning of the brain, zinc is used to improve nerve cell production in the brain.

Iodine is also essential because it helps with the production of the thyroid hormones that play a vital role in the brain’s development. While eating seafood is essential for brain development, consuming too much fish raises the risks of mercury poisoning. This has been a concern for many generations, but recent research has found that families can sidestep this risk by limiting their seafood consumption to certain types of fish.

The types of seafood that contain the lowest levels of mercury include clams, herring, salmon, shrimp, and trout. Alternatively, you can give your child daily herbal supplements that contain the nutrients they would otherwise get from seafood. This helps ensure your child is getting the compounds that benefit brain development without exposing your child to mercury.

The best approach may be to add more seafood to your diet as you provide a supplement that makes up for the days in which your child doesn't eat foods rich in omega-3, iodine, and zinc.

Green, Leafy Vegetables

You can get your child to eat more kale, spinach, and collard greens by looking for recipes that help you prepare them in different and exciting ways. This is important because these foods are essential to healthy brain development and the physical health benefits they provide. Among the vast range of vitamins and nutrients found in leafy green vegetables, they contain carotenoids, flavonoids, folate, vitamin E, and vitamin K1.

In particular, folate and carotenoids have been found to impact cognitive functioning in children and teens positively. Children who ate more leafy greens performed better in tests than those who did not regularly eat spinach, kale, or collard greens. It was also found that carotenoids improved Macular pigment optical density (MPOD) in the eyes, boosting the functioning of the retina.

Research has also found a link between improved MPOD and increased cognitive health among children and teens. Vitamin E also helps the brain improve blood flow, ensuring more oxygenated blood makes it to the brain. Many more brain foods can help your child's cognitive and emotional health as they grow and develop.

While a bit of research can help you discover more of these brain foods, giving your child a well-rounded diet that includes a wide variety of plant-based foods is the best strategy. This will ensure they have regular access to the vitamins and nutrients they need to maintain a healthy mind and body.