by Almost half of all calories consumed by young children in the UK come from ultra-processed food, according to recent research, and this number rises to 59 per cent among 7-year-olds.
“Eating patterns in the early years are important, as they help set habits that can continue into childhood and adulthood,” said senior author Professor Clare Llewellyn, from the Institute of Epidemiology and Care University College London (UCL) Health, in a statement.
Eating more ultra-processed food is associated with a higher risk of developing diet-related diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.
“This is worrying, as babies and young children who gain weight too quickly are more likely to carry excess weight into their young and adult lives,” said Vicky Sibson, director of the First Steps Nutrition Trust (FSNT ). News Week.
However, Llewellyn said News Week: “We know very little about the consumption of these foods among very young children. It is important to understand consumption patterns in this age group, as a first step before undertaking an epidemiological [observations about public health] research linking individual differences in young children’s intakes to health outcomes.”
A group of scientists, led by researchers at UCL, analyzed data from 2,591 babies born in the UK between 2007 and 2008.
These were children who took part in the Gemini Twins cohort study, whose parents had completed three-day food diaries when the children were 21 months old and 7 years old.
The scientists analyzed these diaries using the NOVA classification, the standard used to define ultra-processed foods as one of four categories: unprocessed or minimally processed foods, such as eggs, milk, vegetables and fruit; processed cooking ingredients, such as salt, butter and oil; processed foods, such as canned fish, homemade bread, and cheese; and ultra-processed foods (UPF), such as chips, store-bought cookies, sliced bread and breakfast cereals.
“A simple way to look at it is that UPFs are factory-packaged foods, usually made up of a long list of ingredients, including those you wouldn’t normally find in your kitchen cupboard,” said Sibson.
In 2023, the FSNT produced a report which said children aged 2 to 5 in the UK got an average of 61 per cent of their calorie intake from UPF, but Sibson said this number was likely to have increased since the data was collected. studies 10 years ago.
“It’s worse in the UK than in other countries,” said Sibson. “The statistic is that 61 per cent of the average total energy intake of 2 to 5-year-old children in the UK comes from UPF, compared to 58 per cent in the US, 47 per cent in Australia and only 18 per cent in the Colombia.”
The UCL scientists divided the children in their study into five groups, depending on the amount of UPF they ate.
They found that toddlers in the group that ate the lowest amount of UPF got 28 percent of their dietary calories from UPF, while toddlers at the other end ate a UPF diet of 69 per cent, on average.
Most of the UPF consumed by young children came from sources generally believed to be healthier, such as breakfast cereals and flavored yoghurt.
“These provide valuable nutrients, such as fiber and calcium, but many are also high in sugar and salt,” Llewellyn said. News Week. “More research is needed to understand what about UPFs is harmful – that is the nutritional profile of the foods, in which case some UPFs are good, or whether it is the processing itself, or the additives.”
Recent research has shown that “healthier” sources of UPF may not have the same harmful effects as more clearly unhealthy forms of UPF, such as store-bought cookies.
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However, UCL researchers found that children who ate the most UPF as toddlers were 9.4 times more likely to end up in the highest UPF intake group at age 7 – at which point sweetened breakfast cereals, white bread and Desserts are among the most common sources of UPF. .
Previous research has shown that young children’s diets can predict the foods they turn to later; Eating more vegetables in early childhood, for example, seems to be encouraged to eat more vegetables as the child grows up.
“Especially in early childhood, nutritious ‘truly processed’ food is important because—as well as getting the nutrients they need to grow, develop and stay healthy—infants and young children need to learn how to build muscles and chewing and swallowing muscles. eating capacity,” said Sibson.
“They also need to learn the taste of real foods and develop healthy choices, which is important, not just for sweet foods and drinks.
“A daily diet of store-bought baby puree, crisp baby snacks, baby desserts, etc., may go some way to meeting a baby’s nutritional needs – albeit with too much sugar with him – but that diet won’t help him or her learn the physical act of eating or prepare them for a healthy family meal that tastes like real foods.”
UCL scientists found that young children involved in the study, in all five categories of UPF consumption, were eating too much sugar – defined as more than the maximum amount recommended by the UK government : 5 percent of daily calories.
But, in the two groups where young children ate the most UPF, their added sugar intake was more than 10 percent of daily calories, on average.
“Not all ultra-processed foods are bad for our health, and the foods that the young children in our study typically eat are those that are considered quite healthy,” said lead author Rana Conway from Institute UCL Epidemiology and Healthcare in a. statement.
“However, some whole-grain cereals and flavored yogurts have high levels of added sugar and salt, and our study found that young children who also ate more ultra-processed foods had a higher intake of these ingredients.”
Seven-year-olds who ate more UPF were more likely to eat high quantities of salt and sugar, and their UPF intake was associated with eating less fibre.
Sibson said parents could improve their children’s diets by eating nutritious, unprocessed and minimally processed foods that are mostly made from scratch.
“Children want to eat more whole foods, such as fruit and vegetables, and whole grains, so it’s easier for parents to focus on this change, rather than trying to read and make sense of processed food ingredient labels. on,” said Llewellyn.
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References
Conway, RE, Heuchan, GN, Heggie, L., Rauber, F., Lowry, N., Hallen, H., Llewellyn, CH (2024). Intake of ultra-processed food during childhood and mid-adolescence in the UK: cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives, European Journal of Nutrition. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-024-03496-7
Spill, MK, Johns, K., Callahan, EH, Shapiro, MJ, Wong, YP, Benjamin-Neelon, SE, Birch, L., Black, MM, Cook, JT, Faith, MS, Mennella, JA, & Casavale , KO (2019). Repeated food exposure and food acceptability in infants and young children: A systematic review. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 109978S-989S. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqy308
