1. Early Life Nutrition and the Role of Complementary Feeding on Later Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in Children up to 3 Years of Age
- Author
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María Gómez Martín, José David Herrero Morín, Silvia Arboleya, Sonia Gonzalez-Solares, Miguel Gueimonde, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (España), European Commission, Universidad de Oviedo, Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España), and Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España)
- Subjects
infant diet ,Mediterranean diet ,weaning ,complementary feeding ,breastfeeding ,Nutrition and Dietetics ,Infant diet ,Breastfeeding ,Infant ,Complementary feeding ,Feeding Behavior ,Weaning ,Diet, Mediterranean ,Diet ,Breast Feeding ,Animals ,Humans ,Female ,Prospective Studies ,Infant Nutritional Physiological Phenomena ,Food Science - Abstract
The first years of life represent a window of opportunity to establish proper dietary patterns and to maintain them over time. Our aim was to describe the diet of a cohort of Spanish children, from 2 to 36 months, and to identify the components that could influence the quality of the diet at 24 and 36 months of age. This was a longitudinal prospective study analyzing information from administered questionnaires about general characteristics and food frequency consumption in 97 full-term babies. At 2–3 months of age, only 53.6% of infants were observed to be breastfed. The intake of animal foodstuffs from 12 to 36 months was higher than national recommendations, and the contrary was true for fruits and vegetables. The intake of vitamin D was below European Food Safety Authority recommendations. Moreover, energy intake at 6 months was inversely associated with Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS) at 24 months, whereas vegetables intake was positively associated with MDS at 36 months. These results could be useful in the creation of future guidelines focused on the promotion of breastfeeding and healthy early-life food habits, This work was financed by PCIN-2015-233 (Project EarlyMicroHealth from the EU Joint Program Initiative HDHL) (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and by the University of Oviedo (Diet, Rhythms and Early Acquisition Microbiota (DREAMS) Project; Reference no. 2017/00001/003/005/013). S.A. was the recipient of a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva Contract (Reference no. IJCI-2017-32156) funded by MCIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. M.G-M. was the recipient of a pre-doctoral FPU contract FPU18/03393) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities.
- Published
- 2022