Local medical experts are calling attention of parents to their children's morning meals after a survey revealed that primary pupils are in the "good habit" of eating breakfast.
The survey, conducted by the Shanghai No. 2 Medical University and Beijing University, involved 9,000 students aged 6-11 in Shanghai and Beijing and sought to examine their breakfast habits, including eating frequency, eating location, food choice, reasons for skipping breakfast, the correlation between children's breakfast behavior and their performance at school, and an evaluation of breakfast nutrition.
The survey found 11.4 percent of local children and 25.8 percent in Beijing did not take breakfast every day.
The main reasons for skipping breakfast were lack of appetite, insufficient time, inconvenience, and other factors like dietary habits.
Some pupils sacrificed eating breakfast for "extra 10 minutes" of sleep, as many pupils stay up late and don't have enough sleep.
Some didn't want breakfast because "it's the same thing every morning" and they had no appetite for it, or they "ate too much the night before and weren't hungry," the survey said.
"Skipping breakfast confuses the dietary cycle and wastes the chance to replenish nutrients used up during sleep, which can severely harm teenagers, who are in the most critical period of physical and mental development," said Dr. Cai Meiqin, director of medical nutrition department of Shanghai No. 2 Medical University.
And those who did break fast also faced problems, such as unbalanced nutri-tion, unhygienic conditions, poor-quality food and a lack of variety.
Moreover, quite a few students - 7.7 percent in Shanghai and 15.1 percent in Beijing - ate breakfast en route to school, sacrificing hygiene for convenience.
Experts said that a healthy breakfast should include cereals, milk products, meat, vegetables and fruits.
"Some parents in town only offer high protein food, neglecting carbohydrate-rich cereals," Cai added.
(Eastday.com December 7, 2002)
