The Urban Child Institute

The first few years of children’s lives are marked by rapid development that is not matched by any other period of life.¹ What children eat and its nutritional value contributes to both physical health and cognitive development, influencing their school readiness and academic success.²

Children who eat more nutritious diets are able to concentrate better and think more critically,³ while children who eat unhealthy diets tend to be lethargic and withdrawn⁴ as well as have inferior immune systems.⁵ Further, children whose families have faced food insecurity not only perform less well on kindergarten entry math scores, but they also achieve fewer gains in math during their kindergarten year.² This finding is particularly important for the children of Memphis because 26% of people in our community were food insecure at least once in 2009.⁶ The attached article, written by Will Gibbons, provides an overview of the findings about nutrition and other health factors that influence children’s kindergarten readiness and discusses practice and policy implications that have shown to positively impact children.

THE TAKE AWAY: We know that school readiness is linked to later academic success, but many Memphis children from low-income homes do not reach kindergarten ready to learn. Recognizing the link between children’s eating habits and early childhood development AND supporting opportunities for children to have regular healthy meals is necessary to ensure brighter futures for our community.