Kids Need Breakfast to Succeed
This guest blog is written by Ellen Dillon with Action For Healthy Kids and is part of our week-long celebration for National School Breakfast Week.
In honor of National School Breakfast Week (March 2-6), we are taking a deeper look into why breakfast is so important! We have all heard our mother say, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” She was right, but many students start their day without eating a nutritious breakfast. Action for Healthy Kids, along with NEA HIN, dedicates resources, technical assistance, and funding opportunities focused on school breakfast to increase participation in the school breakfast programs.
As a mother and former educator, I know the value of eating a healthy breakfast. Without one I am sluggish and my children drag until they are fed. During my teaching days, students came to school sleepy or complaining of stomachaches or headaches mid-morning due to lack of a nutritious breakfast. Many of you as educators know the witching-hour, around an hour before lunch, when kids can’t focus and need to see the nurse because they aren’t feeling well. As a result well planned lessons are interrupted and students aren’t able to make the most of their school day. The culprit is hunger due to not eating breakfast.
Kids don’t eat breakfast for many reasons: they don’t like to eat when they first wake up, they don’t have time in the mornings, their bus arrives too late to visit the cafeteria, and those that qualify for free and reduced price meals don’t partake because of the stigma associated with eating breakfast at school.
There is a way to combat all of these obstacles. When all children in a school are provided with the opportunity to participate in school breakfast, and it is moved out of the cafeteria school breakfast participation increases without fail.
Action for Healthy Kids’ Learning Connection report provides the science behind the connection of health and learning. It shows kids who eat school breakfast miss less days of school, have fewer trips to the nurse, do better on standardized tests and have fewer discipline issues. You can help support school breakfast: 
- Remind kids to eat breakfast every day and not just on testing days
- Learn more about alternative models of service, like Breakfast in the Classroom or Grab and Go (Check out AFHK’s new Breakfast Case Study)
- Ask kids if they ate breakfast
- Let students see you eating a school breakfast (check out this video of a group of teachers eating and promoting their school’s Grab and Go program).
- Join your school’s wellness team
- Work with others to write a grant to make changes at your school. Learn more about AFHK’s School Breakfast Grants opening this week!
In honor of National School Breakfast Week, celebrate the most important meal of the day this week and all year long!
Action for Healthy Kids is the nation’s leading non-profit and largest volunteer network fighting childhood obesity and undernourishment by helping schools become healthier places for kids to learn. Visit www.actionforhealthykids.org for more information.
Posted by Ellen Dillon
on March 6, 2015