Importance of childhood nutritional status in their cognitive development

Abstract

The nutritional status of children is a priority issue for many national and international institutions. Despite efforts to improve their condition, there are still cases of malnutrition, due to excess and deficit of macro and micronutrients. Diseases associated with this condition, whether communicable or not, have a direct impact on the physical and psychological health of infants. This article presents the relationship between appropriate nutrition and optimal cognitive development during the early life stages . For this purpose, information was consulted from various sources such as SciELO, PubMed, Scopus, Hinari, university repositories, and reports from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization. These sources state that malnutrition and hidden hunger in children is the cause of alterations in cognitive processes, since the daily diet provides the substances necessary for brain metabolic processes.