Harvard Health Blog
The crucial brain foods all children need
By: Claire McCarthy, MD, Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publications The first 1,000 days of life are crucial for brain development — and food plays an important role. The ways that the brain develops during pregnancy and during the first two years of life are like scaffolding: they literally define how the brain will work for the rest of a person’s life. Nerves grow and connect and get covered with myelin, creating the systems that