The impact of a high-protein breakfast

When we added a boiled egg to the morning menu at twelve partner schools, we expected a small improvement in concentration. We did not expect a twenty-five per cent rise in standardised test scores.

The change was simple and cheap. A single egg, sourced from a local farm cooperative, served at breakfast alongside the usual porridge. It added roughly four cents to the cost of each meal.

What we measured

Over two terms, our monitoring team tracked attendance, concentration assessments and end-of-term test results across the twelve schools, and compared them against a control group of schools still receiving the standard menu.

The results: attendance up by nine per cent, teacher-reported afternoon concentration up sharply, and a twenty-five per cent average improvement in test scores. The effect was largest among the youngest children, whose growing brains are most sensitive to protein at the start of the day.

Why protein, why breakfast

Protein slows the release of energy from a meal, meaning children stay full and focused for longer. Eaten at breakfast, it sets the child up for the whole school day rather than just the first hour. This is not a novel insight — it is well established in nutrition science. What is novel is how rarely it is acted on in the places that need it most.

What comes next

Based on these results, we are rolling the egg breakfast out to all eighty-five partner schools over the next two years. The additional cost is modest and the evidence is hard to argue with. We would rather be slow and certain than fast and wrong.

As always, the full dataset and methodology are available in our annual impact report. We publish our results — good and inconvenient alike — because a number you cannot check is not evidence.