Efforts to improve what children eat should begin before they even learn to walk, a series of nutritional studies has found. Taken together, the data indicate that infant feeding patterns persist far longer than has been appreciated.
"Our early taste preferences, particularly for fruits and vegetables, and on the flip side for sugary beverages, are lasting," said Dr. Elsie Taveras of MassGeneral Hospital for Children in Boston, who was not involved in the research. "These studies are suggesting that in terms of diet quality, the die might be cast in the first year."
The package of 11 studies was published in the journal Pediatrics and was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, among others. Investigators tracked the diets of roughly 1,500 6-year-olds, comparing their eating patterns to those observed in a study that followed them until age 1.
As it turns out, "when infants had infrequent consumption of fruits and vegetables, they also had infrequent consumption at 6," said Kelley Scanlon, a CDC epidemiologist and senior author of a few of the new studies.
Scanlon and her colleagues suggested that it is best to interest children in fruits and vegetables by late infancy.
It is not clear what impact breast-feeding might have on a child's later diet. A mother's eating habits are reflected in breast milk, providing a "flavor bridge" that eases baby's transition to the foods eaten while nursing.
Breast-fed infants are more accepting of new foods than babies who drank the same-tasting formula day after day, research has shown.
New York Times
