NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Kids who eat better perform better in school, a new study of Nova Scotia fifthgraders confirms.
Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit，vegetables，protein，fiber and other components of a healthy diet were significantly less likely to fail a literacy test，Dr.Paul J．Veugelers of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and colleagues found.
While a healthy diet is generally assumed to be important for good school performance, there has actually been little research on this topic, Veugelers and his colleagues note.To investigate，they looked at 4, 589 fifthgraders participating in the Children's Lifestyle and Schoolperformance Study, 875 (19.1 percent) of whom had failed an elementary literacy assessment.
The better a student's eating habits based on several measures of diet quality，including adequacy and variety, the less likely he or she was to have failed the test, the researchers found，even after they adjusted the data for the effects of parental income and education, school and sex.Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, and getting fewer calories from fat, was also associated with a lower risk of failing the test.
To date, Veugelers and his team say, most research on diet and school performance has focused on the importance of eating breakfast, as well as the ill effects of hunger and malnutrition(营养不良)．
“This study extends current knowledge in this area by demonstrating the independent importance of overall diet quality to academic performance.We should not only realize the importance of children's nutrition at breakfast but also that throughout the day，” the researchers conclude.
Another research from the UK is suggesting that children's diets in the preschool years affects how they perform at school later on.The researchers from the Institute of Education, at the University of London say in fact that what children were eating in those days before primary school has more of an effect than the chicken nuggets(块) they ate at lunchtime.The researchers say they have found that children who ate a diet of “junk food” at the age of three, made less progress in school between the ages of six and ten.They say children's diet at later ages appears to have less impact on their school attainment.
小题1:．According to Dr.Paul J．Veugelers, students who have a healthy diet________.
A．are more likely to fail in their school performance
B．definitely can perform better in their school work
C．usually have more of fat and less of fruit and vegetables
D．tend to perform better in their school work小题2:．It can be implied from the passage that________.
A．little research has been done on the importance of breakfast
B．most students participating in the research failed the test
C．the adequacy and variety of foods can mean better school performance
D．eating more chicken nuggets leads to good school performance小题3:．The underlined word “literacy” (in Para.2) probably refers to ________.
A．the ability to read and write
B．a guessing game
C．the art of painting
D．the ability to handle practical task小题4:．Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A．Children should have more“junk food”at lunch time.
B．Preschool diets can have more impact on children's school work.
C．A child who often has“junk food”at 3 is bound to fail in school work.
D．The older a child is，the more impact of what he eats has on school work.
