The Real Impact of Early Nutrition

There’s a lot of information out there on the subject of early years nutrition.  You can find information on portion sizes, sugar reduction, dietary guidance and endless recipe ideas to encourage fun with food.  For nutritional therapist and author Louise Mercieca, this doesn’t go deep enough.  

In this follow up article to our popular webinar, Louise explores how the food we feed children is not just simply filling them up, but it is shaping and influencing their future health outcomes and, potentially their future relationship with food.

Developing a positive relationship with food

We all have to have a lifelong relationship with food, whether we love food, feel in control of what we eat or have a love-hate relationship with our food.  Our attitude towards food can often be traced back to our early food memories.  Formative nutrition is incredibly influential for shaping the biology of a child but it is also incredibly important in terms of shaping food habits, patterns, cravings and even, food addictions. 

Nutritional science is a fascinating and complex subject, starting at the very beginning of how we influence the health of the next generation before they even exist! Understanding this generational impact is incredibly important when we consider the direction in which health trends are going. 

We have all seen statistics around global obesity, including childhood obesity, the increase in ‘adult diseases’ impacting on children (Type 2 Diabetes for example) and perhaps most importantly, the drastic change to our food landscape which is driving this health decline. 

“We could see the first generation of children to be expected to have shorter life spans than their parents if current trends on obesity, nutrition and lifestyle continue”

Source – The Lancet Volume 371 Issue 9607

Let that sink in for a moment.  This is not the way that life expectancy trends should go, particularly not when you consider the UK has the 6th largest economy in the world and an excellent health service. You may ask, what on earth is going wrong?  

There is, alas no easy answer to that but there are many factors that contribute.  Each of the following is a lengthy discussion in its’ own right, so I’ll briefly introduce the topics here and in the near future, we will bring you a series of webinars that explore each subject in more detail.  Each of these is influential to a child’s formative health (and the health and well-being of the grown-ups too!).

A whistle-stop tour of the epigenetic imprint!

Most people assume that nutrition starts to impact a child’s health once the child has been conceived but the importance of a pre-conception diet applies to both parents as both parents pass on heritable information to the yet, unborn baby.  When we pass on heritable information it is passed on, not just to the next generation but also, the one after it.  

Epigenetics studies how lifestyle factors such as behaviours and environment can cause changes affecting how your genes work.  In short, the heritable traits we receive are both the genetic material (genes) and epigenetic effects (modifiable elements).  We inherit genes but we also inherit traits based on how our parents lived their lives, and it’s those traits that can impact our health via the epigenetic imprint. 

The epigenetic element of early (very early) years nutrition is incredibly important when we consider that quote about life expectancy.  Both obesity and Type 2 diabetes have risen significantly in the last 40 years and continue to do so.  There are now 3432 children living with Type 2 Diabetes in the UK today compared to 1 child in the year 2000.  Both obesity and Type 2 diabetes are heritable factors, if one generation has a lot of it, the next one is likely to have even more (and so on).  Whilst this doesn’t mean it is going to happen it does make it more likely.

Unlike DNA we can influence changes to our epigenome, how we live our lives, what we eat, how stressed we are, if we smoke etc are all factors that influence our epigenome and to an extent, they are factors we can change for the better.

Maternal Microbiome

One important element of maternal nutrition during pregnancy is to support the health of your gut.  Looking after your own gut health (the gut microbiome) will actually support your developing baby as nutrients that are passed on begin to populate the diversity of the neonatal gut, this supports the baby in many ways including strengthening their immune system. 

Everyone has an individual microbiome, as individual as their fingerprint.  The mix of bacteria in the gut is referred to as its’ diversity.  The gut microbiome is a truly fascinating area of the body that links to many aspects of our own and our child’s health.  

Early Taste Development

During the third trimester in particular the baby will pick up on the mother’s diet.  What the mother eats at this stage is crucial for forming a healthy and varied palate in the baby.  A babies taste buds will start to develop early on in the womb but it isn’t until around 30 weeks that they can really detect tastes.  This can then alter their taste preferences once born.

Establishing early taste preferences is key to laying down solid foundations for healthy food choices.  Once refined sugar, artificial sweeteners and synthetic flavours are introduced, the more likely the food patterns, cravings and addictions for those foods will establish.

0-3 Brain Development

Consider the brain an extremely complicated central computer that’s growing and developing at a truly astonishing pace!  A lot of the energy going to build the babies brain needs to come from fats, in fact, 40% of our brains are made up of EFA’s (Essential Fatty Acids).  The mother needs to ensure that she has enough for her and the baby as the baby will ‘pinch’ what it needs – this can often leave Mum feeling depleted or ‘baby brain’.

Once the child is born and then growing and developing at a rapid pace, EFA deficiencies can present in the day to day functioning of a child, how well can they grasp new things? Consider a child has to learn everything, absolutely everything! They need their frontal lobe to be rich in EFA’s particularly DHA to enable them to be able to problem-solve, concentrate and focus.  

The importance of formative nutrition and brain development should not be underestimated.  Even a slight deficiency can have a big impact: 

“When a baby’s development falls behind the norm during the first year of life, for instance, it is much more likely that they will fall even further behind in subsequent years than catch up with those who have had a better start.”

Barnardo’s quote from the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee – First 1000 days of life 13th report of session 2017-19

Sugar consumption in the early years

I always say to try not to introduce refined sugar too early – this can be via cakes, biscuits, chocolates or often, sugar is sneakily added into yoghurts and even savoury foods for very young children.   Sugar offers zero nutritional benefits but it does alter taste development. It may be considerably more difficult to get a baby/child to eat vegetables if they develop a likening for sweet foods, the savoury foods will simply just not be as appealing!   

Sugar affects our body in various ways but considering this stage of critical formative development, sugar brings nothing worthwhile to the party but it could cause some hidden health concerns stored away for later in life.   Remember the statistics of children living with Type 2 diabetes today compared to in the year 2000? Sugar in our food supply has changed significantly so we cannot assume we are comparing like for like with assumptions such as “it never did me any harm”.

There are huge connections between early years sugar consumption and the pleasure and reward centre of the brain.  This is often linked with food addictions, eating disorders and emotional eating.

Our Food Landscape

Our food landscape has changed beyond all recognition in the last 45 years – firstly with the introduction of ‘convenience foods’ and at a similar time, the birth of the diet industry.  Now, you may wonder how the launch of the diet industry coincides with the rise in global obesity but it does, year on year, as the diet industry has grown in market share, obesity rates have continued to rise, the very simple explanation is that dieting doesn’t work and exacerbates an unhealthy relationship with food and low self-esteem, neither of which help with fat metabolism.    

The real issue, however, is the rise in convenience foods, and in particular, a section called UPF (Ultra Processed Foods).  These foods used to make up a small percentage of our dietary intake but have slowly increased and gradually crept into our homes (and our bodies) and are now, in many cases making up a larger proportion of our diet than ‘real foods’.  

What are Ultra Processed Foods?  

Any foods (and there are a lot of them!) which contain very little in the form of real foods and a lot of artificial ingredients. 

It is always worth remembering that these foods have been designed to suit the food industry, not human health and even they (The Food Industry) state that people should eat these foods ‘in moderation’.  The problem is many are not eating them in moderation, in fact, 1 in 5 people in the UK have a diet made up of 80% Ultra Processed Foods, more worryingly is that 64% of children get more than half their daily calories from this group, rising to 68% in teens.  Here in the UK, we eat a huge amount of these foods, second only to the US.   There are many negative health associations, the most obvious being obesity, but obesity isn’t just what size your clothes are, it’s a whole load of issues going on internally and we have been seeing these health side-effects in children for some time.

This is certainly a subject that is influencing our health via subtle changes to our food landscape. 

Malnutrition

As we have seen above, the changes in our food landscape can seem to offer easy solutions to a quick meal but, these foods are almost entirely nutritionally devoid.  I refer to these foods as ‘empty calories’ calories without nutrition.  There’s a reason why obesity and malnutrition exist within the same populations.  Here’s some of what’s missing: 

Protein – does more jobs in the body than you could imagine including of course muscle growth and repair but also, fixing cells, carrying oxygen around your blood, fighting infections, creating ‘messages’ around the body to stabilise your emotions and enable you to feel full.

Fibre – as there’s no fruit, veg or wholegrains there’s also no fibre! Fibre helps you to feel full but is crucial for digestive and cardiovascular health.

Vitamins and Minerals – there’s no fix by eating a diet full of UPF’s and then taking a multi-vitamin! Vitamins and minerals do more than you think and are crucial in all ages but especially during formative development.

Food Poverty – Health and Wealth Divide

There has been an increase of 123% in the use of food banks in the UK within the last 5 years.  Recent statistics show that 4.3 children are living in poverty.  We know that there is a health and wealth divide and if we consider children living in poverty and the associated health issues, we are also potentially forecasting their future health outcomes.  Food poverty can take away independent food choices and cause a reliance on foods provided for you.  How should these foods look? 

Some food parcels analysed showed that 62.2% of energy was provided as carbohydrate and 569% of the DRV (Daily Reference Value) was provided by sugar.

If you are hungry, clearly you will eat what is provided but this isn’t how it should be.  Those in need of food parcels are also in need of optimal nutrition.  Those who need it most are being provided with food that may not support optimal health.  It’s really important to focus on the nutrients contained within the parcel rather than foods you may consider ‘nice to have’.

We can look at how to provide the perfect family food parcel to offer maximum nutritional intake.

Nutrition and Mental Health

We cannot separate physical and mental health as we simply, cannot have one without the other.  It’s important to look at the role of food and our emotions.  How the food we eat has the ability to manufacture moods (in a good or bad way) and how our relationship with food, particularly if linked to comfort and emotions is the key to having a healthy relationship with food.

These subjects are just the start, there are so many ways in which nutrition impacts current and future health.  I hope that you can see how food does more than simply fill up a child! 

When we feed a child, we also are shaping their future relationship with food.  Many adults with emotional eating issues can link this back to childhood.  We can help babies and children shape healthier food habits and a lifelong healthy relationship with food, but to do this we need to appreciate the true significance of the foods we feed them.