Can toddlers' diets influence cognitive development?

摘要

There is a widespread assumption that what children consume in the early years has an effect on their cognitive development, but beyond the well-documented benefits of breast-milk, there are surprisingly few hard data. Long-term outcomes at age 10 are reported in a prospective cohort study from Western Australia (Nyaradi et al. Acta Paed 2013;102:1165-73). The Raine study recruited women antenatally for what was originally an investigation into the effects of repeated ultrasound scans, but the cohort data gathered proved invaluable for this very different purpose. The investigators developed an Eating Assessment in Toddlers (EAT) score, which required mothers to record everything their child had consumed in one 24-h period. This was done at 1, 2 and 3 years of age. The dietary data was analysed and scored for type and general quality of food and drink, rather than specific nutrient content. Then at age 10 years, each child performed two tests: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (PPVT-III) and the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices (RCPM), both of which have been shown to correlate well to other measures of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills respectively. The investigators went to considerable lengths to include data on potential confounding factors, and then use these in subsequent mulivariate analysis: these included breastfeeding duration, maternal age and educational level, measures of maternal mental health, presence of a father at home, family income, reading to the child, and gender.