Eating for Academic Success — Spotlight on Dr. Delia McCabe
“Good nutrition is of utmost importance to brain health and functioning” — author unknown
Dr. McCabe lives in Australia and shares her extensive knowledge of nutritional neuroscience and the impact and importance of good nutrition has on student success in her interview in the Learning For Life virtual summit. Here are a few highlights and excerpts from our conversation. Enjoy!
Delia McCabe (PhD) shifted her research focus from psychology to nutritional neuroscience, while working with underachieving students, upon discovering nutritions critical role in mental wellbeing. Delia’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, she runs workshops and tailored events internationally, and her two ‘Feed Your Brain’ books are available in four languages.
Stress and mental health
Stress is now prevalent. Stress is everywhere. It’s not just confined to a particular group of people like stressed mums trying to juggle things. We now have students presenting with stress and with anxiety and depression. So understanding how stress actually works in the human brain has stood me in great stead as we move into this next phase, on planet Earth. Everybody is stressed and do not understand stress at a very deep level and how nutrients impact stress.
Mental health challenges when they start really young in people tend to continue into adulthood. That for me is a very sobering thought. And that’s because of the plasticity of the brain, which is, the good side of neuroplasticity. When you’ve had a mental health challenge once, the chances of having a second and third one is increased each time is increased. Chronic stress, and this oscillation may have led people who wouldn’t have had a mental health challenge, such as anxiety and depression, to start developing those kinds of affective disorders. If a child is in any way presenting with some kind of challenge that the parent or teacher or family member says, this could be a problem, address it quickly, rather then leaving it and hoping that it’ll clear up ourselves because that generally doesn’t happen.
Children and healthy eating
When children eat well, then they just feel better. This affects focus and concentration and learning capacities are increased. So I think that’s the one thing, just giving that knowledge to people so that they know that, because then they can take that knowledge and use it. But the other thing that I know we’ve discussed before, is getting farmers involved with schools to bring fresh produce to the schools and also taking the children to the farms, which is an initiative you told me about, which I think is awesome, because the children then find out where food is grown. They look at what food looks like when it’s in its natural state. And then they start tasting that food if the school canteen (cafeteria in the US) takes that on board as well. And that’s a wonderful foundation for children to grow up with appreciating food and actually respecting it and understanding the important role it plays in our physical and our mental well being.
If we have a look at feeding children really well, when they young and seeing that the return of investment is no mental ill health later on, I think they’d be much more excited to get involved in those initiatives.
Psychological variables to nutrition and educational success
Children pick up different things from different people in their environment, different things that support their development, that help them grow into fulfilled and happy people. When they are deprived of that, they can’t flourish. The windows of opportunity aren’t open forever. The child then ends up battling because you can’t rewind. Extra effort needs to be made for that child to then try and garner the skills and the knowledge that should have been gained at an earlier stage. I think that’s one of the reasons many children are reporting feeling anxious and even depressed. Because that process of development didn’t unfold naturally. We had all these hiccups all these blocks to what should have been a very natural process. This process has been happening for centuries. You know, children grow up in a tight knit family, then they step out, they meet their friends, they go to school, they discover a wide world. They separate from the from their parents and their siblings in a natural and healthy way.
To hear the rest of the interview with Delia, join us for the second Learning For Life Virtual Summit, March 31st and April 1st. Please take a moment to click this link to sign up for your FREE ticket to the Learning For Life Summit. Can’t wait to see you there!
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
― Frederick Douglass
The joy is in the journey!
Blessings and Peace,
Mary
