Diet quality affects the playground activities of Kenyan children

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Date
2005Author
Sigman, M
Whaley, SE
Neumann, CG
Bwibo, NO
Guthrie, D
Weiss, RE
Liang, LJ
Murphy, SP
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The present study examined the effects of a school breakfast program on the activity level, emotional state, and social interactions of a group of Kenyan schoolchildren on the playground. Five hundred forty children in rural Kenya participated in the study. The first standard (grade) classes were randomly assigned to groups provided for 21 months with school breakfasts of equivalent caloric value while families with children in the control group were given a goat at the end of the study. The study aimed to determine whether enhanced caloric intake or diet quality influenced the children's behavior on the school playground. The results indicate that supplemented children were more active and showed more leadership behavior and initiative than did non-supplemented children. In addition, children given meat showed fewer periods of low activity and more leadership behaviors and initiative than did children provided entirely with vegetable source foods. These results support our previous findings from naturalistic studies in the same community that both diet quantity and quality are important for children's development
URI
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16075570http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/15981
Citation
Food Nutr Bull. 2005 Jun;26(2 Suppl 2):S202-12Publisher
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1759, USA Cancer Research Center of Hawaii, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA: Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Nairobi
Collections
- Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) [10214]