The Forgotten Variable in Educational Contexts and Sustainable Development: Learners' Life Style, Brain Functioning, and Nutritional Status in Language Learning

A danger to any field of science is to be one-dimensional, and the realm of pedagogy is not an exception. That is why such branches of study as educational nutrition have emerged. This study has made an attempt to determine if there is an association between one of the main parameters of lifestyle, which is the brain nutritional status of the university students and their achievement in learning, in general, and acquiring different language courses, in particular. The study was a correlational/cross-sectional research project carried out on 232 (31 males and 201 females) English- major students in some of the Language Departments and Institutes in Tehran. The data regarding the students' nutritional status and their language achievements was collected using a validated standardized/localized Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) (Mirmiran et al., 2009) and a Self-Evaluation scale. Unlike the reading, writing, and grammar courses, the listening/speaking data showed a high correlation (2-tailed, P<.005) with all the nutrients (with the exception of fiber). The significant correlation with the laboratory course (listening/speaking) could be due to the fact that the syllabus and rating procedure for this course were roughly the same among the university instructors unlike other courses. At the next stage of the study, the students were divided into two groups: with nutrient deficiency and without deficiency, to determine the exact percentages of their malnourishment. The final phase of the study focused on triangulating the data by checking their immune system status via the self-evaluation questionnaire, which indirectly validated the data obtained at the early stages of the data collection. The final phase of the study focused on triangulating the data by checking their immune system status via the self-evaluation questionnaire, which was an indirect way of validating the data obtained at the early stages of the data collection. The findings indicated that there was an immunodeficiency for around 70% of the students, which supported the first-stage findings. This bears some (thought-provoking) implications and implies that the stakeholders in curriculum development are required to internalize and plan some 'educational nutrition' programs in order to achieve higher levels of success and move towards sustainable development.