With the beginning of the school year, parents are concerned about what food to offer their children, especially in the morning before going to school. Their diet should be healthy so as to help them study and concentrate, given the fact that some children have mainly been eating junk food during the three months of the summer vacation. Many children do have a healthy diet, especially for breakfast. Some of them are not capable of eating breakfast at home when they first wake up, says Dr Magdi Badran, PhD pediatrician and immunologist, Fellow Childhood Institute, though a healthy diet is essential for proper growth. Additionally, it prevents health problems such as obesity, dental caries, iron deficiency and osteoporosis, Dr Badran added during a recent lecture at the Sawy Cultural Centre in Cairo. He mentioned that breakfast meals are supposed to provide at least one-fourth of the daily recommended nutrients needed for children, with fewer than 10 per cent calories of saturated fats and no more than 30 per cent calories of other fats. Appropriate breakfast is vital for school children, helping them to increase their math and reading scores, as well as improving speed and memory cognitive tests and general learning abilities. Dr Badran highlighted the problems of school meal programmes largely due to insufficient funding. In addition, most school meals lack variety and do not meet the needs of different age groups. Furthermore these school meals suffer from inadequate supervision, which has led to the occurrence of cases of poisoning amongst their young consumers. Dr Badran stressed that not providing breakfast for children can lead to them eating processed food and having fizzy drinks at school. They contain too high a level of calories, which hits them with obesity and decreased learning abilities. “About 47 per cent of school children do not eat breakfast due to the lack of nutritional awareness of the Egyptian family and because of the children waking up late in the morning," stated Dr Badran. Therefore, he recommended schools to provide breakfast for schoolchildren who have not had this meal at home, taking into consideration that they should not exceed 30 per cent of the total daily energy needs but must contain one quarter of the quantity needed of proteins. Dr Badran pointed out that school canteens should play an important role but “unfortunately they have become in some schools as a means to making fast profits at the expense of the health of the school community. This has happened not only in Egypt but also in some developed countries, where decisions have accordingly been made for school canteens to offer appealing and healthy food." Some school canteens offer unhealthy foods containing preservatives and colouring and flavouring additives that are harmful and can lead to allergies and child obesity, affecting them later with hypertension, diabetes and cardiac diseases. Dr Badran recommends that children should be accustomed to drink milk and other dairy products because they provide the body with essential calcium, phosphorus and vitamin B.
