School Without Breakfast? | Teen Ink

School Without Breakfast?

May 20, 2014
By Anonymous

We have all had it happen to us. You wake up for school, but you’re so tired. When you finally get dressed, the bus is already outside, leaving you no time to eat breakfast. Without a proper breakfast, your brain does not get the nutrients it needs to work to its full potential, leaving you groggy and unfocused, you might even feel hungry and in pain. While many people think a hardy lunch is the solution, it is still quite a dilemma in morning classes, which is why I think that breakfast should be provided in class.

One consequence of not eating breakfast is hunger. Hunger is an impulse that humans and animals alike, share that lets us know when it is time to find food. If a person is hungry they will feel an aching in the abdominal area caused by the contraction of the stomach or intestines (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDJ-w_5WSpU), if a person is hurting they will be focused on the pain and not their work. People who are hungry will often feel weak and sometimes barely able to stay awake.

Almost everybody knows that if your brain doesn’t get enough nutrients it slows down, and as it slows down you slow down with it, meaning the less your brain works the more tired you are. Students that miss breakfast will have a harder time staying awake due to a lack of nutrients, and if they go to sleep in class they will be even more tired when they are woken-up because of an effect called “sleep inertia”, a term used to explain the sleep cycle humans undergo every night, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6zcSFA7ymo). They will also be unfocused and easily distracted; the reason for this is that the brain is attracted to motion, and when it starts to slow down it will find any moving thing to keep it awake and alert. This is why it would be good to have breakfast provided in class.

Some say that students should just wait until lunch and that breakfast is not necessary, but that’s not true. Skipping breakfast and waiting for lunch can be unhealthy because you would be ignoring hunger, which is never good, plus most school meals are not large enough to satisfy hunger in the first place. On top of all that, there are still morning classes that students won’t be prepared for without breakfast.

I think that it would be beneficial to students to get breakfast in class. It would not only get those students focused, but it would keep them full, healthy, and awake. It would give them more time in the morning to be prepared for all classes both physically and mentally. Students would also get better grades due to their new-found focus.



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