A healthy diet from childhood creates happier adults in better physical and psychological health: confirmation of this thesis comes from a Finnish study on cardiovascular risk factors.
"Let food be your medicine," Hippocrates used to say, and the discoveries to have emerged in recent times on the link between healthy eating and health speak volumes about the prophetic nature of this saying.
In particular, the role of nutrition in disease prevention appears to be even more decisive when a healthy, varied diet is introduced from an early age: a healthy diet in childhood makes for happier adults, it seems.
If children are taught to eat in a balanced way, they will in all likelihood maintain these dietary habits into adulthood. Lending support to this thesis are the results of an intervention project from the University of Turku, in Finland, published in 2020 in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
Since 1989, the Special Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project has recruited more than a thousand children at several neonatal clinics in Turku, randomly assigning half of them to an intervention group and the other half to a control group.
Children in the intervention group were invited to follow, from 7 months to 20 years of age, a dietary counselling plan to promote cardiovascular health; children in the control group, on the other hand, received only the nutritional education provided by the national healthcare and school system.
By analysing the parameters of the research participants, the researchers were able to observe first of all that the counselling had proved decisive in bringing about 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 participants had turned 26 — the study assessed data from 507 young people (243 in the intervention group and 264 in the control group) to determine whether those who had taken part in the counselling programme were still following a healthy diet. The results of the first follow-up showed that the children who had followed a heart-healthy diet had maintained this dietary lifestyle into adulthood, becoming healthier adults.
This is just one of many studies in favour of healthy eating from the earliest age. The findings, in fact, are not limited to the physical level, but extend to the psychological as well: as far back as 2018, a study published in the journal BMC Public Health as part of the European project Idefics (Identification and prevention of dietary- and lifestyle-induced health effects in children and infants) linked proper nutrition in young children with higher self-esteem, fewer emotional difficulties and fewer problems relating to their peers.
A study of 7,675 children aged between 2 and 9 from eight European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Sweden) was based on a questionnaire given to their parents, with different scores assigned according to the type of diet followed. Regardless of body weight and socioeconomic background, the children who achieved the best results were those who followed the healthiest diet, with a reduced intake of fats and sugars, greater consumption of fruit, vegetables, wholegrain cereals and fish 2–3 times a week.
A comprehensive body of literature on the subject does not yet exist, but the link between diet and psychological wellbeing is being actively studied by researchers. In particular, an article published in Nutritional Neuroscience identifies five recommendations relating to diet for preventing depression through food.
These are: following a traditional diet (such as the Mediterranean diet), increasing consumption of fruit and vegetables, pulses, wholegrains, nuts and seeds, eating foods rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, replacing overly processed foods with fresh, healthy and nutritious ones.