Nutrition, body composition, and cardiometabolic health in children

Abstract

In the research described in this thesis we studied nutrition in early life, particularly in early childhood, and its association with body composition and cardiometabolic health. Nutritional factors of interest were protein intake, fatty acid intake and blood levels, vitamin D status, and dietary patterns. Studies include systematic reviews of the literature and analyses in the Generation R Study, a population-based prospective cohort from fetal life onward in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Overall, our results suggest that diet quality and vitamin D status in early childhood are suboptimal. Furthermore, our results show that a lower protein intake in early childhood, a fatty acid pattern characterized by high levels of n-3 fatty acids during fetal life, and an overall healthy dietary pattern in early childhood may be beneficial for later body composition and for certain cardiometabolic markers. Although effect sizes were small, our findings may be important for early prevention of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases on a population level. Public health interventions and future scientific research should therefore put more focus on nutrition quality in early childhood