THE COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF BREAKFAST ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS: A REVIEW

Introduction: The justification for this work was the fact that breakfast is recognized as the most important meal of the day, both for being an indispensable ally for the availability of nutrients and for contributing to the synthesis of neurotransmitters, which in turn are essential for the proper functioning of the central nervous system. This way, breakfast is believed to be favorable in terms of cognitive, impacting directly the academic performance in school-age children and adolescents. Therefore, this literature review intends to discuss and to a better understanding of the relationship between breakfast and school performance in adolescents. Objective: The objective of the study was to establish the cognitive effects of breakfast intake on academic performance in adolescents. Methodology: This article presents a narrative review of the literature based on the analysis of scientific articles published from 2010 to 2022 on PubMed, on breakfast and its association with cognitive performance on students. Two criterias were applied, titles that did not mention the thematic association between breakfast and cognitive performance and articles not written in English. After the application of the exclusion, 21 articles remained. Discussion: Indeed, children have a higher metabolic action of cerebral glucose than adults. The longer nocturnal fasting interval due to the greater need for sleep during childhood and adolescence favors the depletion of glycogen stores at night. Therefore, breakfast is essential for a continuous supply of energy to maintain this high metabolic rate, which has a very important role in the scholarly period, as the energy demand of several brain functions is greater. Thus, the first meal of the day can or cannot have domain-specific effects on areas of cognition, such as memory, attention, executive function, language and creativity. Conclusion: This study discussed the relation between the cognitive effects of breakfast and academic performance. Overall, it was evidenced that the habit of ingesting the first meal of the day has contributions to cognitive performance, it is worth highlighting the attention and the executive function. The sum of studies on such processes provides an explanation, although not yet completely clarified, of how breakfast affects the domain of language, learning, and memory.