Nutritional Supplements For Children

by Jeffrey S Bland Ph.D.

Every parents would like his or her child to be happy, healthy and successful in school.  Unfortunately, however, many children don't receive the optimal nutrition necessary to achieve these goals.

Years ago, Dr, Ruth Harrell conducted a study in the New York school system, in which she demonstrated that school-age children who took nutritional supplements performed better in school than their peers.  Ever since that pioneering work, there has been a heated controversy over the role vitamins and minerals play in promoting proper brain chemistry and school achievement in children.

Dr. K. Michael Hambidge, a pediatrician who conducted a study through the University of Colorado School of Medicine, found that many children of short stature in Denver's Head Start program who missed breakfast and snacked on nutritionally inadequate foods throughout the day or dinner were zinc-deprived.   Zinc is an essential nutrient for growing children and, in fact, when they received adequate zinc supplementation, a number of these children experienced increased growth and development.  Zinc is just one of more than 30 nutrients which are essential for brain development and function.

The role of nutrition in children's growth and development has not been without controversy.  Most traditional medical authorities believe that as long as children consume the Standard American Diet they are more than adequately nourished with regard to vitamins and minerals and have no need for additional supplementation.

But what is the Standard American Diet?  Is it the diet that experts in the Department of Health and Human Services recommend and the US Department of Agriculture promotes in school lunch programs, or is it what children really eat?

Many children in this country derive most of their calories form "empty-calorie foods", snacks, convenience and fast foods which are high in calories but low in vitamins and minerals.

The human brain is a powerhouse.  Although it represents only six percent of our body weight, it utilizes up to 25 percent of our energy fuel, the blood sugar glucose.  The conversion of glucose in our brain to energy requires an impressive array of vitamin-derived factors.  When it is deprived of these nutrients, the brain cannot adequately produce neurotransmitters, substances that control mood, mind, memory, and behavior.  Working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Richard Waurtman, Ph.D., found the brain is not dependent upon the state of nutrition of the whole body.

Although it might not result in such overt signs of nutritional deficiency as scurvy, beriberi, or pellagra, an empty-calorie diet can result in
"less than optimal" brain chemistry, which translates into subtle changes in behavior, learning ability and mood.

In a recent study of the association between vitamin, nutrition, and learn ability, Drs. D Benton and G. Roberts examined the effect of vitamin and mineral supplementation on intelligence in school children.  Reported in The Lancet, Vol 1, p 140-143, 1988 their study demonstrated that vitamin supplementation in school age children resulted in a measurable increase in I.Q. and enhanced learning ability.  This enhanced learning ability.  This paper generated a wave of controversy and commentary among the medical and nutritional communities, including criticisms of the study methodology.  The message that emerged, however, was there might be something to the connection between children's vitamin and mineral status and their brain chemistry and I.Q.  A special British television show highlighting the implications of this study generated such interest among parents that, by the Monday following the airing of the show, it was virtually impossible to find any vitamin or mineral supplements for children in stores in England.

As a result of the British public's strong response to the Benton and Robert's work, a new research group, the Dietary Research Foundation, was established to examine, under more controlled conditions, the relationship between children's I.Q. and vitamin supplementation.  During the course of its research, the Dietary Research Foundation found improvement in test scores measuring verbal and nonverbal reasoning in school children who received vitamin and mineral supplementation (Lancet, Vol 335, p 744-47, 1990).  This study was a multi-centered trial in both Britain and the United States, overseen by Dr. Stephen Schoenthaler, a well-known nutrition and behavior expert and professor at the California State University in Turlock.

Dr. Schoenthaler and his group performed a very large intervention trial with school-age children, with some children receiving vitamin and mineral supplementation at one of three levels, and other children getting a similar-sized placebo.  All were given a battery of tests to evaluate behavior and intelligence characteristics before and after the supplementation program.  When the data were evaluated, the results were quite clear.  Children who received the multivitamin and mineral supplement had a very substantial statistical improvement in intelligence.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the study was that the I.Q.s of some vitamin- and mineral - supplemented children increased dramatically, while the effects on the I.Q.s of other children in the same group were minimal.   This would suggest that some kids are marked responders to nutritional supplementation.

At present, there is no way for parents to determine in advance whether or not their child's I.Q. might improve with nutritional supplementation.  At between one and two times the Recommended Dietary Allowance for children, however, the level of nutrients in the supplement employed by Dr. Schoenthaler and his group was not extraordinary.  Even in children whose I.Q.s did not improve, the supplements produced no adverse problems.  This suggests that parents who provide a multivitamin/mineral supplement to their children on a daily basis are implementing a "nutritional insurance" program rather than some type of nutrient therapy.

Some people have asked whether the Dietary Research Foundation study evaluated the most effective dose of nutrients to improve I.Q. in children.  The answer is no.  Individual tailoring of nutrients was not done; supplements were simply given at 50, 100, and 200 percent of the RDA.  There was no attempt to maximize the effectiveness of a supplement in this study; it only examined the effect on I.Q. of differing standard doses based in the RDA. (Personal and Individual Differences, Vol 12, p 351-62, 1991)

When he asked whether, based on this work, he believes all children should receive nutritional supplements, Dr. Schoenthaler commented, "A physician faced with a parent inquiring about supplements might respond with what has been said in the U.S. Surgeon General's report on nutrition and health.  People should make every effort to eat balanced meals without too much fat and sugar.  If they succeed, they should be able to get all of the vitamins and minerals they need from their food.  However, if they cannot eat well-balanced meals because of food preferences or a hurried schedule, for example, supplements that do not exceed 100 percent of the U.S. RDA are not know to cause any risk, and may prove beneficial for selected groups.  An increase in I.Q. seems to be one of these potential benefits." (Lancet, Vol 337, p 728-29, 1991)

You would think with all the nutrition information now available that parents were waking up to the fact that nutrition plays an important role in maximizing their children's functional ability.  You would also think that parents recognize, as a consequence of all the publicity surrounding vitamins, that a child should get optimal levels of these important nutrients every day for promoting proper brain function.  However, it appears many parents still do not recognize the importance of their children's nutrition.  Recently published polls indicate that children are not eating any better, in fact, even many nutritionally aware parents do not translate their knowledge into action in their children's nutrition.

It often takes a long time for scientific discoveries to filtered down into societal acceptance and ultimately be integrated into action.  The first reports concerning nutrition and children's intelligence were published in the 1960s; some 30 years later we are still debating the issue.  As the number of scientific papers demonstrating value in children's intelligence as a consequence of nutritional supplementation mounts, there is less and less reason for parents not to do something, particularly when the level of nutrients which is found to be effective is not extraordinary and at least does not harm.  When we examine the diets of today's American children, we can see the average fare does not contribute significantly to meeting the goals represented by the RDA.  Instead, the foods kids typically eat are the nutrient-depleted foods that contribute to the malnutrition of overconsumption/undernutrition, or too many calories without enough vitamins and minerals.   For these reasons, a daily broad-spectrum vitamin and mineral supplement based on the RDA may be very beneficial for children, not only for growth and development, but also for other benefits, including contributions to immunity, wound healing, intelligence and behavior.

Jeffrey S. Bland Ph.D. is a biochemist specializing in nutritional medicine and is the founder and CEO of HealthComm International, Inc.  Dr Bland and his staff researched and developed Ultracare for Kids, a low allergy-potential, rice-based supplemented medical medical food product designed for children with food sensitivities.