Breakfast Consumption in Preschoolers: Satiety, Diet Quality and Memory

Plain-language summary

One important factor determining school performance is the consumption of breakfast. While research has shown that older children perform better in school after consuming breakfast, there are little data for preschool-age children. Consuming breakfasts with different macro- and micronutrient contents may have different effects on performance, which may be associated with variations in satiation and satiety during and after the different breakfasts. In addition, children who consume breakfast have better diet quality than children who skip breakfast. The investigators will conduct a community based, randomized, crossover trial in 4-5 year old children over 7 weeks to examine the short-term effect of feeding preschoolers three different intervention breakfast types: high protein, high-fiber, or high protein and high fiber compared to a usual breakfast served at the preschool. The investigators expect that the children consuming any of the three experimental breakfasts will consume less overall calories and have better diet quality and memory performance compared to children who have the usual breakfast. The investigators hypothesis is that preschoolers will experience the highest level of satiety as well as highest level of overall diet quality when they consume the combined high-protein and high-fiber based breakfast foods. This study will be conducted at Bauer Family Resources in Lafayette as these are the sites of Head Start programs, which are preschools for children from low-income families. Children from families of low income are more likely to have poor diet quality and poor school performance compared to children from families with higher incomes. Therefore, this population is most in need of this type of intervention.

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