Changing Landscape from Nutrients to Dietary Patterns: Implications for Child Health

Abstract

Dietary patterns (DPs) have shifted the focus in nutrition epidemiology away from being nutrient centered. Foods are consumed not as single nutrients but as a combination of dietary components interacting with each other. DPs are indicators of diet quality. Two approaches are used to derive them: the index-based and data-driven approaches, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Studies on diet-disease relationships are now concentrated on DPs. Most available studies are in adults, which emphasize the role of DPs as contributors to certain chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and certain cancers. Only few studies were conducted among children, mostly using a data-driven approach and population specific. The available studies identify associations with some diseases like obesity, neurobehavioral disorders, asthma, and cardiometabolic markers. Tracking of DP consumption from early childhood to later life stages including adulthood has been shown from longitudinal studies to predict certain cardiometabolic risk factors and adiposity that may predispose to certain diseases later in life. The influences of sociodemographic factors, most especially maternal education, have predictive effects on adherence to certain DPs, whether the "healthy" or "unhealthy" type. More studies are needed to strongly elucidate this DP-disease outcome relationship in children.