You can think of food’s relation to the brain like a chair with four legs –

one leg is the fats that build the brain, the second leg is the proteins that unite it, the third leg is the carbohydrates that fuel it and the fourth leg is the micronutrients that defend it.⁵

Think of the brain as a muscle – use it and it remains strong and nimble, but ignore it and it atrophies.

Here are some activities to help your kids stay mentally sharp⁸:

Exercise Perception: While eating dinner, challenge your kids to use their senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. For example, what ingredients are in the food? Or perhaps ask them to describe the room around them with their eyes closed.

It’s a time-honored tradition: kids beg and plead to stay up for a few extra minutes while parents try just about anything to get them to sleep. So, can it hurt to let them stay awake a little later? Actually, yes. "Even minor changes in sleep...can impair a school kid's learning, memory, attention, concentration," says researcher Avi Sadeh, DSc, director of the Laboratory for Children's Sleep and Arousal Disorders at Tel Aviv University.²

Did you know that even while you sleep, neurons are working to repair their worn-out structural components?

To keep up with a full day’s demand, our busy brains are served by approximately 400 miles of capillaries.⁶