2024-02-02 08:00:00
NEW YORK — Toddlers are famous for being picky eaters, but parents could be doing their toddler’s future gut a big favor by insisting on a healthy diet.
New research shows that young children who eat a lot of fish and vegetables, and very few sugary drinks, are less likely to develop inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as teenagers. IBD includes conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, HealthDay News notes.
“These new findings are consistent with the hypothesis that diet in the first years of life, possibly mediated by changes in the gut microbiome, could affect the risk of developing IBD,” concluded the researchers led by Annie Guo, a pediatric nutritionist at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
In the study, researchers analyzed diet and health data from more than 81,000 children who participated in two large-scale studies in Sweden and Norway.
Parents completed detailed questionnaires about their children’s diet between 12 and 18 months of age, and again between 30 and 36 months.
Using that information, the researchers calculated the quality of each child’s diet using measurements of consumption of meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, dairy, sweets, snacks and drinks.
A higher quality diet had more vegetables, fruits and fish, and less meat, sweets, snacks and drinks.
Researchers then followed each child for an average of 15 to 21 years to see if their diet influenced their risk of inflammatory bowel disease.
During that period, 131 children were diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, 97 with colitis, and 79 with unclassified inflammatory bowel disease. The average age of diagnosis was between 12 and 17 years.
Results
Medium- and high-quality diets at age one were associated with a 25% lower risk of inflammatory bowel disease in adolescence, even after adjusting for other factors, the researchers found.
Specifically, high fish intake at the age of one year reduced the risk of colitis by 54%, in addition to lowering the overall risk of all inflammatory bowel diseases.
On the other hand, excessive consumption of sugary drinks was associated with a 42 percent increase in the risk of inflammatory bowel disease.
The findings were published in the January 30 issue of the journal Gut.
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