Back-to-School Basics: The Best Nutrition for Growing Kids

Children grow and develop at a very rapid rate so it’s important to ensure that they have good levels of nutrients available during this critical period for their general health and wellbeing. Back-to-School with a Sound Nutritional Base  Your child’s nutritional requirements can vary widely and a balanced diet plays an important role in their healthy growth and development. Consequences of poor nutrition include failure to thrive, intellectual difficulties and childhood obesity, and a vitamin or mineral deficiency may take weeks, or even months to emerge. Children who are fussy eaters or those with food allergies or intolerances are at greater risk of developing nutritional deficiencies. Common childhood nutritional deficiencies may include:

• Vitamin D
• Calcium
• Zinc
• Iron
• Iodine and
• Omega-3’s

A good quality children’s multivitamin and mineral formula provides ‘nutritional insurance’ for children who may be missing out on important nutrients in their diet.

Back-to-School Brain health

Omega-3’s from fish play an important role in supporting brain development during childhood. Many children are not getting enough omega-3’s because they don’t regularly eat enough cold water fish. Omega-3’s are found in high concentrations in the brain, providing optimal learning ability, mental development, cognitive function and neurological development. Your body cannot manufacture these omega-3’s so you need to obtain them from your diet. Look for a good quality children’s fish oil supplement that is sustainably sourced from wild, cold water fish that have been molecularly distilled, exceeds the Australian Standards set for mercury and other heavy metals, and does not contain any artificial colourings, flavourings or sweeteners. Children usually enjoy chewable capsules as they don’t have a fishy taste or smell.

Back-to-School Immune and Digestive health

Back to school means mixing with a lot of other children so the risk of developing a respiratory infection or tummy bug is high. Your digestive tract is an open-ended system that’s continually exposed to your outside environment and more than 80% of your immune system sits within your digestive tract, placing it in an ideal position to deal with any harmful bacteria or viruses. Children need to maintain a healthy balance of digestive flora if they are to thrive at every stage of their development. Probiotics help maintain balanced, healthy digestive flora, and immune and digestive function by reducing the growth of unfriendly digestive flora and helping to re-establish friendly digestive flora. Children’s digestive or immune disturbances tend to accumulate and if left untreated may lead to health problems including nutritional deficiencies, poor immunity, low energy, failure to thrive and a tendency to allergies.