Food for thought: Good nutrition, efficient storage

We all know food plays a key part in our well being, and starting at a young age with the right nutrition helps lay solid foundations for healthy growth. But can the right choice of food make children smarter too - is there such a thing as what has been called "brain food?" In Granada in Spain one school is involved in a European Union research project that aims to find out how specific nutrients affect mental development and performance of infants, children and teenagers. "We're trying to investigate and demonstrate in this project that nutrition plays an important role during pregnancy and in the child's early life," explained Cristina Martínez-Zaldívar a food technology scientist at the University of Granada School of Medicine Researchers gave food additives with different types of valuable nutrients to pregnant women taking part in the study to find out whether their children will, in average, do better psychologically than their peers. The Granada experiments are just one example from a series of complementary studies in nine countries, totaling more than 15 thousand children. The largest research project which is providing data to the joint knowledge base is taking place in Rotterdam. Researchers regularly conduct thorough medical examinations of mothers and children, taking their food habits into account. "Pregnancy is, of course, a very important period, as the organs start to develop then, but also diet during later life will be studied. That starts with the breast feeding, but also includes how much snacks the child eat, how much fizzy drink it has, and even if child can be a picky eater or not - so that's what we're also relating to the development and behavior of the brain," explained Henning Tiemeier who is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Erasmus MC. The importance of good nutrition is impossible to deny. Thankfully, nowadays we're eating rich and tasty vegetables, fruits and other foods all year round thanks to modern storage technologies. But how efficient are they? Food-related…