Feed Your Brain: Best Foods for Employee Training Sessions

When planning your next employee training session, give a little extra thought to the food. Here's why:

"A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.  Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years." livescience.com

Given this new evidence maybe it’s time to reconsider the food we bring into our employee training and learning environments. Instead of candy, soda, and the occasional over ripe banana, use the tips below to enhance adult learning:

• First things first – encourage participants to eat a healthy breakfast.  Ideally it should include protein like yogurt or egg.

• Provide water (lots of it) instead of soda, juice or coffee. What, no coffee!? Okay, okay, maybe you can’t actually get away with that one, but having lots of water available is critical – the brain is composed of nearly 80 percent water.

• Encourage frequent snacking: too much time in between eating can cause loss of concentration and decreased alertness.

• Choose snacks carefully; look for low-fat, high-protein, minimally processed snacks like these: nuts, fresh fruit, carrot sticks, pre-wrapped cheese, whole grain crackers, dried pineapple, apricots, raisins, banana chips, cranberries, blueberries, fruit leather, single serving yogurt cups, pretzels with peanut butter.