The Child’s Brain: The Importance of Nutrition

From The NDD Book: How Nutrition Deficit Disorder Affects Your Childs Learning, Behavior, and Health, and What You Can Do About It -- Without Drugs by William Sears, M.D.; 2009; pages 19-21

More than any other organ, the brain is affected by what your child eats.  The brain deserves the best food.  The good news is that while the brain can quickly deteriorate from Nutritional Deficiency Disorder (NDD), it can also quickly rebound.

• The brain grows faster in the first five years than at any other time in a child’s life.  The brain triples in volume by age two years and reaches 90% of its adult size by age five.  By age six, a child has more connections (called synapses) than at any time in his or her life.  After that, the brain selectively prunes unused or unneeded pathways.
• The brain is the most food-sensitive organ in the body, requiring a slow and steady supply of energy.
• The brain is 60% fat.
• The brains of growing children use more than 50% of the total energy they get from food for growth and function, much more than the 20 to 25% used by the adult brain.
• Pollutants and food additives are stored mostly in fat tissue, and the brain is mostly fat.
• The brain uses only carbs for fuel and, unlike other organs, the brain does not store sugar.
• Because the brain is so vulnerable to the effects of environmental toxins and junk food, nature has provided a protective layer of cells strategically located between the blood vessels and brain tissue, called the blood / brain barrier (BBB).  But the BBB is underdeveloped in young children.  (The younger your children, the more pure food they need.  Their brains are not designed to run on fake food.)