Healthy diet may boost children's reading skills: study

Parents, take note! Children who eat a healthy diet may have better reading skills in the first three years of school, a new study has claimed.
The study by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and University of Jyvaskyla in Finland involved 161 children aged six to eight years old, and followed up on them from the first grade to the third grade in school.
The quality of their diet was analysed using food diaries, and their academic skills with the help of standardised tests.
The closer the diet followed the Baltic Sea Diet and Finnish nutrition recommendations - high in vegetables, fruit and berries, fish, whole grain, and unsaturated fats and low in red meat, sugary products and saturated fat - the healthier it was considered.

The study showed that children whose diet was rich in vegetables, fruit, berries, whole grain, fish and unsaturated fats, and low in sugary products, did better in tests measuring reading skills than their peers with a poorer diet quality.
The study also found that the positive associations of diet quality with reading skills in Grades 2 and 3 were independent of reading skills in Grade 1.

These results indicate that children with healthier diets improved more in their reading skills from Grade 1 to Grades 2-3 than children with poorer diet quality.
"Another significant observation is that the associations of diet quality with reading skills were also independent of many confounding factors, such as socio-economic status, physical activity, body adiposity and physical fitness," said researcher Eero Haapala.

Parents, schools, governments and companies can improve the availability of healthy foods, researchers said.
A healthy diet seems to be an important factor in supporting learning and academic performance in children. By making healthy choices every meal, it is possible to promote a healthy diet and enhance diet quality, they said.
The study was published in the European Journal of Nutrition.