Diet quality across early childhood and adiposity at 6 years: the Southampton Women’s Survey

Abstract

Background:
Poor diet quality in early childhood is inconsistently linked to obesity risk. Understanding may be limited by the use of cross-sectional data and the use of body mass index (BMI) to define adiposity in childhood.

Objective:
The objective of this study is to examine the effects of continued exposure to diets of varying quality across early childhood in relation to adiposity at 6 years.

Methods:
One thousand and eighteen children from a prospective UK birth cohort were studied. Diet was assessed using food frequency questionnaires when the children were aged 6 and 12 months, and 3 and 6 years; diet quality was determined according to scores for a principal component analysis-defined dietary pattern at each age (characterized by frequent consumption of fruits, vegetables and fish). At each age, children were allocated a value of 0/1/2 according to third of the distribution (bottom/middle/top) their diet quality score was in; values were summed to calculate an overall diet quality index (DQI) for early childhood (range 0–8). Obesity outcomes considered at 6 years were dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry-assessed fat mass and BMI.

Results:
One hundred and seven (11%) children had a DQI=0, indicating a consistently low diet quality, 339 (33%) had a DQI=1–3, 378 (37%) had a DQI=4–6 and 194 (19%) had a DQI=7–8. There was a strong association between lower DQI and higher fat mass z-score at 6 years that was robust to adjustment for confounders (fat mass s.d. per 1-unit DQI increase: β=−0.05 (95% confidence interval (CI): −0.09, −0.01), P=0.01). In comparison with children who had the highest diet quality (DQI=7–8), this amounted to a difference in fat mass of 14% (95% CI: 2%, 28%) at 6 years for children with the poorest diets (DQI=0). In contrast, no independent associations were observed between DQI and BMI.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Sarah Crozier: orcid.org/0000-0002-9524-1127

ORCID for N.C. Harvey: orcid.org/0000-0002-8194-2512

ORCID for K.M. Godfrey: orcid.org/0000-0002-4643-0618

ORCID for H.M. Inskip: orcid.org/0000-0001-8897-1749

ORCID for C. Cooper: orcid.org/0000-0003-3510-0709

ORCID for S.M. Robinson: orcid.org/0000-0003-1766-7269

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics