Prevention from an early age, particularly through diet, plays a key role in an individual's adult cardiovascular risk factor. Children who are taught to eat in a balanced way will in all likelihood maintain these dietary habits into adulthood, reaping the health benefits. Confirming this thesis — an aspect already well established in the scientific world — are the findings of an intervention project by the University of Turku, in Finland, recently published in the journal The Lancet.

The experiment: educating children about diet from the first months of life

Since 1989, the Special Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project has recruited over a thousand children at several neonatal clinics in Turku and randomly assigned half of them to an intervention group and the other half to a control group. The children in the intervention group were invited to follow, from 7 months to 20 years of age, a dietary counselling plan for the promotion of cardiovascular health; the children in the control group, by contrast, received only the dietary education provided by the national healthcare and school system.

Habits maintained into adulthood and a healthier heart

By analysing the parameters of the research participants, the researchers were able to observe first of all that the counselling had proved decisive in determining lower levels of cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar, and in promoting a greater intake of unsaturated fats. But there was more. Six years after the end of the intervention — that is, when the participants turned 26 — the study assessed data from 507 young people (243 in the intervention group and 264 in the control group) to understand whether those who had taken part in the counselling plan were continuing to follow a healthy diet and experiencing the associated benefits. The results of the first follow-up showed that children who had followed a heart-healthy diet had maintained this dietary lifestyle, becoming healthier adults. Those belonging to the intervention group, in fact, continued to show better values for several of the most important cardiometabolic risk indicators compared with those in the control group. "Overall, the results support the idea that counselling on a heart-healthy diet from childhood has a positive impact on cardiovascular health," commented Katja Pahkala, one of the study's authors, "a positive impact that is also found after the counselling has ended."