By PRISCILLA OSAJE

A dietitian, Mrs Chioma Ezegwe, says feeding a child with appropriate balance diet will boost the child’s performance in academics, as well as keeping a child away from any form of sickness.

Ezegwe, who said this on Saturday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Nasarawa, urged parents and guardians to feed their children with nutritious meal for mental development.

“When a child takes adequate and balanced diet, it will enhance good health, help the child to grow the way he or she should grow and it will keep the child away from sickness.

“It will also enable the child to have vitality to be productive and excel in his or her academic pursuit.

“Making a healthy choice of diet as parents via the advice of diet experts is important, while choosing what to prepare for children.

“As parents, you should encourage healthy eating and active lifestyle among children by giving them variety of healthy food,” diet expert said.

According to her, it has been observed that taking a healthy diet with the advice of dieticians will stimulate the child’s alertness during class.

“I know we are experiencing hard times recently, parents should thrive to provide appropriate diet and snacks, because children can improve their academic performance by altering their eating habits to include healthy snacks in their daily routines.

“Eating a healthy diet and being physically active can balance children’s energy levels for optimal attentiveness, increase focus and improve their overall academic performance,’’ she said.

She urged parents to give their children food that contains a lot of vegetables and fruits, water and iron among others.

Mrs Nkem Olarnwaju, a parent, said that taking healthy food would make a child to grow properly and fight diseases.

Olarnewaju added that considering the hardship in the country, many parents would find it very difficult to provide the necessary meals as usual, due to the hike in food stuff.

She urged her fellow parents to try their possible best to give their children right meal, saying denying the child what he or she uses to eat before could be dangerous.

According to her, giving a child a good food and involving them in a little exercise makes him or her strong, healthy and productive.

Another parent, Mr Emmanuel Roland, said that school-age children need to eat foods from all five healthy food groups of vegetables and fruit, grain foods, dairy, protein as recommended by dieticians. (NAN)

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