Poor Feeding Affects Child Brain Development – Community Health Nurse Warn

Nutrition has been called the single greatest environmental influence on babies in the womb and during infancy, and it remains essential throughout the first years of life.

Every child needs nutritious foods to grow strong and healthy. If a child does not eat well or eat foods which contains all the essential nutrients affect the child growth because in a child’s life the first two years of the child is very crucial and critical.

Miss Getrude Lakai who is a Community Health Nurse at Odumase Health Center has noted that the fetus (unborn babies) begins to form cognitive structure to form and develop brain. In the first year of the child life after six months exclusive breastfeeding, when child does not eat good food affect its brain development; cannot formulate properly partly due to lack of protein and vitamins.

She added that lack of nutrients like proteins, vitamins A, for instance meat , oranges, fish, eggs, banana, pawpaw, carrots, potatoes  affect the child performance in school, she told the host of Food Safety Nutrition and Hygiene.

Mrs. Jane Barnes Tay, Nutritionist at Atua Government Hospital also added that babies from six months should be fed with one type of food throughout the early days of feeding.

“A baby cannot eat enough, if a baby can eat one food for two or three consecutive days this will help parents know the baby is allergic to a particular food,” she said.

Feeding babies with different foods a day cannot verify the particular food the baby is allergic to. Poor feeding affects the child brain development, likely cause of learning difficulty, affects the social life among his or her peers, and becomes very timid, it also affects the physical development which leads to stunting and wasting in children. From time to time parents can balance the diets for their children.

She continued that other children suffer from kwashiorkor, anemic, marasmus are all effects of giving under/over feeding children from six months to twenty-four months.

A proper balance of nutrients in formative period is critical for normal brain development. Shortages of nutrients such as iron and iodine can impair cognitive (intelligent) and motor development, and these effects are often irreversible. Similarly, there is growing evidence that DHA, an essential fatty acid, is a key component of the intensive production of synapses that makes the first years of life a critical period of learning and development. Many other nutrients; choline, folic acid, and zinc, to name just a few have been linked specifically to early brain functioning.

Source: Nana Ama Sarfo /ritefmonline.org/amasarfo297@gmail.com