Study: Poor nutrition, chaotic home life can impair brain function

by Jacob Fuller

Lauren Dempsey, MS in Biomedicine and Law, RN, FISM News 

 

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have found that a chaotic home life and poor diet can negatively impact a child’s executive function.

Executive function is, essentially, the management system of the brain. It controls working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. A child that has difficulty with their executive function will struggle to focus, follow directions, and regulate emotions.

The university’s survey questioned 294 families as part of the STRONG Kids2birth cohort study on childhood nutrition and health. Researchers gathered data from parents on each child’s dietary habits, weight, social-emotional skills, and family relationships.

The results of the study, which were published in “Nutrients,” evaluated the impact that diet, as well as a dysregulated household, had on children between the ages of 18 months and two years old.

Knowing that nutrition is essential to optimal development, researchers evaluated children that ate sugary snacks and processed foods. They found that these children were more likely to have problems with their working memory, creative thinking, as well as planning and organizing tasks.

There was a direct connection between poor diet and “lower levels of certain indices, including emotional control, inhibition, and planning and organizing,” according to author and graduate student Samantha Iwinski. “Even at this young age, dietary intake may affect children’s executive function at multiple levels.”

The study also found that living in “an environment that is high in noise and crowding, and low in regularity and routines” was associated with poor executive function, independent of the child’s diet. The researchers wrote that young children “may not understand the signals around them when environments are noisy or disorganized, and the lack of routine and regularity might influence their attentional and emotional regulation.”

These results confirm similar research that has been conducted in adolescents which linked household chaos with behavioral problems, emotional regulation, focus, performance in school, and completing tasks.

Researchers reported that they plan to conduct a follow-up study with the families to evaluate how environmental and dietary correlations “persist or evolve as children age.”

The authors admit there were some limitations of the study due to lack of diversity. They recommended more studies with “diverse populations” be done before attributing poor diet and chaotic home life as causative factors to low executive function.

However, co-author Kelly Freeman Bost, a professor of child development and psychology, said that these findings are critical in promoting children’s best cognitive development and the importance of nutrition and healthy household environments.

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