Nearly half of all calories eaten by toddlers in Britain come from ultra-processed foods, according to recent research, with this number rising to 59 percent among seven-year-olds.
“Eating patterns in the early years are important because they help establish habits that can persist into childhood and into adulthood,” says senior author Professor Clare Llewellyn from the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London (UCL). ). statement.
Eating more ultra-processed foods has been linked to a higher risk of developing diet-related diseases, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.
“This is worrying because babies and young children who gain weight too quickly are also more likely to carry excess weight into their adolescent and adult lives,” said Vicky Sibson, chief executive of the First Steps Nutrition Trust (FSNT). Newsweek.
However, Llewellyn told it Newsweek: “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 we start epidemiological studies [observations about public health] research linking individual differences in toddler intake to health outcomes.”
A group of scientists, led by researchers from UCL, analyzed data from 2,591 children born in Britain between 2007 and 2008.
These were children participating in the Gemini twin cohort study, whose parents had completed three-day food diaries when the children were 21 months 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 fruits; processed culinary 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 cereal.
“A simple way to look at it is that UPFs are typically packaged foods that are made in factories and usually consist of a long list of ingredients, including ingredients you wouldn’t normally find in your kitchen cupboard,” says Sibson.
In 2023, the FSNT produced a report saying that children aged 2 to 5 in Britain were getting an average of 61 percent of their calorie intake from UPF, but Sibson said this number had likely increased since the survey’s data was released 10 years ago were collected.
“It’s worse in Britain than in other countries,” Sibson said. “The statistic that 61 percent of the total average energy intake of 2 to 5 year olds comes from UPF in Britain, compared to 58 percent in the US, 47 percent in Australia and just 18 percent in Colombia.”
The UCL scientists divided the children in their study into five groups, depending on how much UPF they ate.
They found that toddlers in the group consuming the lowest amount of UPF got 28 percent of their dietary calories from UPF, and toddlers at the other extreme ate an average of 69 percent UPF diet.
Most of the UPF the toddlers consumed came from sources generally thought to be healthier, such as cereal and flavored yogurt.
“These provide valuable nutrients such as fiber and calcium, but many also contain too much sugar and salt,” Llewellyn said. Newsweek. “More research is needed to understand what it is about UPFs that are harmful – i.e. is it the nutritional profile of the food, in which case some UPFs are fine, or is it the processing itself, or the additives.”
Recent research has shown that “healthier” sources of UPF may not have the same harmful effects as more obviously unhealthy forms of UPF, such as store-bought cookies.
NoelUroz/Getty Images
However, the UCL researchers found that children who ate the most UPF as toddlers were 9.4 times more likely to be in the highest UPF intake group at age 7 – at which point the most common UPF -sources sweet breakfast cereals, white bread and desserts. .
Previous research has shown that the diet of young children can predict which foods they will be inclined to eat later; For example, eating more vegetables in early childhood appears to encourage eating more vegetables as the child grows older.
“Especially in early childhood, ‘real’, minimally processed, nutritious food is important because babies and young children not only need to get the nutrients they need to grow, develop and stay healthy, but also learn to chew and eat.” swallow and develop the muscles and physical skills to eat,” Sibson said.
“They also need to learn the taste of real food and develop healthy preferences, not just for sweet foods and drinks.
“A daily diet of soft, store-bought baby purees, crunchy baby snacks, baby desserts, etc. may go some way toward meeting the child’s nutritional needs – albeit with far too much sugar – but that diet will not help him or her .she learns the physical act of eating or prepares them for the taste of a healthy family meal made from real food.
The UCL scientists found that toddlers involved in the study, across all five categories of UPF consumption, ate too much sugar – defined as more than the maximum recommended by the UK government: 5 percent of daily calories.
But in the two groups where toddlers consumed the most UPF, their added sugar intake averaged more than 10 percent of daily calories.
“Ultra-processed foods are not all bad for our health, and the foods typically eaten by the toddlers in our study are seen as quite healthy,” lead author Rana Conway from the UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care said in a study. statement.
“However, some whole grains and flavored yogurts contain high levels of added sugars and salt, and our research found that toddlers who consumed more ultra-processed foods also had higher intakes of these ingredients.”
Seven-year-olds who ate more UPF were also more likely to consume large amounts of salt and sugar, and their UPF intake was associated with eating less fiber.
Sibson said parents can improve their children’s diets by serving mostly nutritious, unprocessed and minimally processed foods that are largely homemade.
“Children would benefit from consuming more whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, and whole grains, so it’s easier for parents to focus on making this shift, rather than trying to read the ingredient labels of processed foods.” read and understand,” Llewellyn said.
Do you have a tip about a food story that Newsweek should cover? Is there a nutritional problem you are concerned about? Let us know at science@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice and your story can be included Newsweek.
References
Conway, R.E., Heuchan, G.N., Heggie, L., Rauber, F., Lowry, N., Hallen, H., Llewellyn, C.H. (2024). Ultra-processed food intake in toddler and middle childhood in Great Britain: cross-sectional and longitudinal perspectives, European Journal of Nutrition. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-024-03496-7
Spill, M.K., Johns, K., Callahan, E.H., Shapiro, M.J., Wong, Y.P., Benjamin-Neelon, S.E., Birch, L., Black, M.M., Cook, J.T., Faith, M.S., Mennella, J.A., & Casavale , K.O. (2019). Repeated food exposure and food acceptability in infants and toddlers: a systematic review. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 109978S-989S. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqy308