Necessity of dietary value in early childhood development

This report emphasizes the importance of nutrition in early childhood development and the effects of dietary choices on overall development. It discusses the significance of nutrition, enhancing children's understanding of nutrition, effects of dietary choices on development, and promoting healthy food habits. The report also includes references to various books and journals.

Necessity of dietary value in early
childhood development

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Significance of Nutrition and enhancing children's understanding of nutrition.....................3
Effects of Dietary Choices on Development and Promoting healthy food habits..................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Nutrition is an important part for the maintenance of health of an individual and an
important component assisting in the developmental stages of an individual. Better nutrition has
its impact on overall health of a person by maintaining strong immunity and preventing easy
acquiring of infections. A health diet includes elimination of saturated and trans fats and
unhealthy carbs from the diet chart and involving healthy unsaturated fats and including fibres,
proteins and vitamins in the daily diet routine. Maintaining a healthy diet is not only important in
the adult stage of the life but it is important to maintain from the very birth of an individual.
Every component of the diet we intake matters and contributes to the quality of life of a person
(Geissler and Powers, 2017). This report will include discussion on the importance of nutrition
specifically in context of children and the effect of dietary choices on the overall development of
a child.
MAIN BODY
Significance of Nutrition and enhancing children's understanding of nutrition
Nutrition being an essential component of a child's growing stages requires undivided
attention for its maintenance. From the very birth of an individuals there are specifications for
the requirements required by a new born for proper development and these requirements
continue along the life span of an individual. A healthy for an individual involves a stated
amount of vitamins, nutrients, fibres, unsaturated fats, healthy carbohydrates, proteins etc. each
and every component of a healthy diet has its own significance and role in the biological
processes going on in the body of an individual (Stephenson and et.al., 2108).
A child in the growing stages require the stated quantities of vitamins and nutrients for
proper overall development of the body. A baby within a womb takes nutrition from the mother's
body. After birth, a new born baby needs to be fed with only breast milk for few initial months
and an infant is recommended to be breast fed for 6 months to a span of 1 year continuously
along with introduction of certain semi-solid components ion the dietary routine. There are
plenty of benefits of continuous breast feeding because the breast milk provides the baby with
antibodies which help to fight and resist acquiring of various infections and protects the baby
against many diseases. Breast milk are easily digestible and helps in booting the infant's
immunity (Michaelsen and et.al., 2000). The third stage of a child's development that is toddlers,

involves variation sin day to day nutritional requirements. A toddler requires around 1000 to
1400 calories in a day for performing various activities as well as providing energy to the body
to carry out developmental processes. Healthy nutrition plays a vital role during the toddler
stage of the child's development and is important for the development of a healthy brain and
body. A toddler undergoes major brain development processes during the age of 1 to 3 years and
proper nutrition assists in proper and complete development of the brain of a child to its full
potential. Therefore, it is crucial to design a toddler's diet chart in such a way that it consist of all
the important nutrients necessary for comprehensive development of the body. As per the 2015
report of Centre of disease control and prevention, 40 percent of the calorie intake by the
children of age group of 4- 5 is through snack food. These snacks are reported to contain
unhealthy fats and carbohydrates and does not eve contain significant amount of nutrients
required by the children in toddler stages. These proves to be an hindrance in the proper
development of a child. The high sodium content and the preservative content of these snack
foods also affect the basic biological processes going on inside a child's body (Low and et.al.,
2020).
The children whose nutritional requirement are not met are most likely to being
undernourished. Unmet nutritional requirement in the first 1000 days of a child's development
period can result in stunted growth in physical as well as mental terms resulting in impaired
cognitive skills. Impaired cognitive skills can affect the overall academic and general life of the
child. Malnutrition in children is not only due poor dietary habits but can also be due to various
social reasons like poverty, illiteracy or due to some diseased condition. As per the data of 2018
by the food foundation stated that about four million children in UK are at a risk of being
malnourished.
These data and effects of nutrition on developmental stages of children emphasises on the
importance of maintenance of healthy eating habits in children. Children are required to be
informed about the importance of healthy eating habits and should be made to practice healthy
choices in term of food in their daily lives. Children should be made aware of the components of
a healthy diet and the importance of each of its components. Establishing healthy eating habits in
early stages of life will have an impact on their lifestyle choices for the rest of their lives. So
giving efforts to improve their understanding about healthy nutrition will not only ensure proper
development but will also lead to maintenance of healthy eating habits for their entire lifespan.

Children should be provided with knowledge regarding nutrition since the very base and all the
misconception should be cleared before imparting any further knowledge so that children have a
clear understanding of the concept of nutrition.
Children should also be made aware about the ill effects that various wrong dietary
choices can have on their bodies except improper development. They should also be made aware
about the diseases that one can acquire on prolonged consumption of unhealthy fats and
carbohydrates (Joseph and Jeyabarathi, 2022). Making children about the about diseases like
obesity and and other metabolic disorders and how they are related to unhealthy eating habits
and the cons related to these diseases like effects of obesity on social life of an individual etc. is
also important. This will motivate them to know more about the nutritional facts about various
food and will make them conscious about maintaining a healthy lifestyle by incorporating food
high in nutritive values in their diet on their own.
Effects of Dietary Choices on Development and Promoting healthy food habits
Each component of the items involved in diet routine of an individual has an importance
of its own. These components on their excessive intake can prove to be harmful as well.
Therefore,one should maintain the amount of each component with in limits while formulating a
dietary routine for a child.
Calorie intake: Keeping check of the daily calorie intake is very important in case of
children because the effects of surplus and or insufficient intake of calories take a lot of time to
reverse even after making amendments in the diet routine. Insufficient intake of calories can
result in major cognitive defects in children. Studies suggests that the children belonging to poor
communities and whose calorie intake have been low for a prolonged period of time have low IQ
levels and compromised cognitive skills. Such children are also at risk of acquiring behavioural
problems in the future. Reasons for insufficient calorie intake can be skipping of meals like
skipping breakfast or lunch. Consuming low amounts of calories leads to improper cognitive
functioning and subsequent depletion in cognitive skills. Low calorie intake leads to decreased
alertness in the children and requirement of comparatively more time to process things
(Manoogian, Chaix, and Panda, 2019). Surplus intake of calories is also not good for the children
unless they involve themselves in activities in which the excess calories can be consumed. If not
burnt the excess calories might lead to the child being obese which can result in various other
issues can metabolic disorders like diabetes and also leads to impaired cognitive, motor as well

as psychological growth. Also long term intake of foods highly rich in fatty acids can also result
in children acquiring vascular diseases in future due to accumulation of those fat molecules in
the blood vessels and arteries.
Vitamins: Vitamins though required in very less amounts but play an important role in
the various metabolic processes going on in the body. Children can become prone to various
growth related disorders because all the micronutrients have a crucial role in physical as well as
mental growth of a child.
Vitamin B12 plays an important role in ensuring proper development of brain and nerve
cells and on maintaining proper functioning of the brain. This vitamin also has its role in
formation of genetic material of all the cells of the body. Deficiency of B12 in developmental
stages of childhood can lead to issues regarding red blood cell formation resulting in anaemia,
poor body balance, and can even result in memory loss and reduced sensation of touch and
shortness of breath.
Vitamin D: This vitamin is linked with the development of bones in children as well as in
adults. Deficiency of Vitamin D can lead to poor bone density in children which can result in
frequent bone injuries and might even lead to the child developing rickets . Deficiency of this
vitamin is also linked with increased chances of development of mental disorder like dementia.
Vitamin C: This vitamin is linked with reducing the activity of oxidants in the brain
which cause damage to the brain tissue resulting in formation of lesions in the brain. Vitamin C
also has a role of maintaining the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine.
Imbalance of these neurotransmitters can lead to impairment in motor skills of the children.
Therefore, vitamin C is also important for the neurological well being of a child (Godswill,
Somtochukwu, Ikechukwu, and Kate, 2020).
Along with these micronutrients, macronutrients like fats, carbohydrates and proteins are
also beneficial for the healthy functioning of the brain. Carbohydrates are essential for providing
the children the energy to do various activities, fats for maintaining the BMI index within the
required range. Proteins are essential for the proper growth and development of muscles in the
body. Proteins are responsible for providing the body with the required strength to perform
various activities (Kim and et.al., 2019). Except the development of muscles, proteins also play
an important roe in the maintaining the proper functioning of brain. Proteins are formed by the
grouping of amino acids therefore, on digestion these proteins break down to yield units of

amino acid which are also the building blocks of neurotransmitters like serotonin , melanin and
epinephrine. Hence, proteins also play an important role in maintenance of healthy brain
development and functioning.
Pertaining to the disorders that the deficiency of these nutrients can lead to and their
respective role in ensuring comprehensive development in various stages of childhood, it is
important to promote healthy food habits among children. Healthy food habits will result in
better life quality of children in future. Promotion of healthy food habits amongst the children
can be done through influence of parents, media and school.
The media as per the present trends is the most significant way of influencing the young
generation. Media can therefore be used to spread awareness about the importance of healthy
eating habits and be deviated towards the same direction by influencing them with the benefits of
health eating.
Parents play an important role in the choices made by their ward. Children tend to get
influenced by the choices of their parents easily. Therefore, parents should practice healthy
lifestyle choice sin order to promote healthy eating habits in children. Parents should also make
the children aware about the importance of health eating and ill effects of unhealthy eating habits
(Baker,Morawska, and Mitchell,2019).
School is the said to be the second home of the children and thus plays an important role
in influencing the choices and actions of children. The school should promote healthy food
habits by practising healthy lifestyle practices in the school premises by laying emphasis on
physical activities, allowing students to bring lunch boxes consisting of healthy food only, not
selling any junk and unhealthy food in the school cafeterias etc. schools can also play a role in
spreading awareness about the importance of healthy food habits (García-Muñoz and et.al.,
2022).
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report the proper nutrition plays the most important
role in proper physical and mental development of children. It is also necessary to maintain the
intake of macronutrients, micronutrients and calories in required limits because they can also
have unfavourable effects when consumed in surplus amounts.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Baker, S., Morawska, A. and Mitchell, A., 2019. Promoting children’s healthy habits through
self-regulation via parenting. Clinical child and family psychology review, 22(1), pp.52-
62.
García-Muñoz, S., Barlińska, J., Wojtkowska, K., Da Quinta, N., Baranda, A., Alfaro, B. and
Santa Cruz, E., 2022. Is it possible to improve healthy food habits in schoolchildren? A
cross cultural study among Spain and Poland. Food Quality and Preference, p.104534.
Geissler, C. and Powers, H.J. eds., 2017. Human nutrition. Oxford University Press.
Godswill, A.G., Somtochukwu, I.V., Ikechukwu, A.O. and Kate, E.C., 2020. Health benefits of
micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and their associated deficiency diseases: A
systematic review. International Journal of Food Sciences, 3(1), pp.1-32.
Joseph, S.T. and Jeyabarathi, K., 2022. A Co-relational Study to Determine the Knowledge on
Nutrition and Nutritional Status of School Children with a view to Conduct Nutrition
Awareness Programme in Selected Primary Schools of Mangalore. Journal of
Community and Social Health Nursing (e-ISSN: 2582-7308), pp.12-17.
Kim, M., Basharat, A., Santosh, R., Mehdi, S.F., Razvi, Z., Yoo, S.K., Lowell, B., Kumar, A.,
Brima, W., Danoff, A. and Dankner, R., 2019. Reuniting overnutrition and
undernutrition, macronutrients, and micronutrients. Diabetes/metabolism research and
reviews, 35(1), p.e3072.
Low, D.W., Jamil, A., Md Nor, N., Kader Ibrahim, S.B. and Poh, B.K., 2020. Food restriction,
nutrition status, and growth in toddlers with atopic dermatitis. Pediatric
dermatology, 37(1), pp.69-77.
Manoogian, E.N., Chaix, A. and Panda, S., 2019. When to eat: the importance of eating patterns
in health and disease. Journal of biological rhythms, 34(6), pp.579-581.
Michaelsen, K.F., Weaver, L., Branca, F. and Robertson, A., 2000. Feeding and nutrition of
infants and young children. WHO regional publications, European Series, 87, p.288.
Stephenson, J., Heslehurst, N., Hall, J., Schoenaker, D.A., Hutchinson, J., Cade, J.E., Poston, L.,
Barrett, G., Crozier, S.R., Barker, M. and Kumaran, K., 2018. Before the beginning:
nutrition and lifestyle in the preconception period and its importance for future
health. The Lancet, 391(10132), pp.1830-1841.