Study results

Room for improvement in the diet quality of preschool-aged Finnish children

Poor childhood diet has been linked with increased risk of lifestyle-related diseases, such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases, in adulthood. On the other hand, good quality diet in childhood has been suggested to be a significant factor for the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases.

In this nationwide study conducted in child health clinics, we assessed the diet quality and its association with child’s overweight/obesity status in 766 preschool-aged (2- to 6-year-old) children (Koivuniemi et al. 2021a). Further, we examined the association between child’s diet quality and parental factors, such as income, education and self-reported lifestyle habits. Diet quality was measured with a tool developed in our study group (Röytiö et al. 2015). The tool depicts diet quality based on e.g. the consumption of vegetables, fruits and berries and the intake of sucrose. In this study, child health clinic nurses measured the children’s weights and heights.

We demonstrated that majority of the preschool-aged children had poor or moderate diet quality. However, no association was found between diet quality and child overweight/obesity status. Only one percent of the children consumed vegetables, fruits and berries five portions a day as recommended in the national dietary recommendations. Further, consumption of non-fat milk and vegetable oil-based spread was recorded in less than half of the children. We also found that 2-year-old children and children with university-educated parents had better diet quality scores compared to other children. Moreover, children of parents with self-perceived healthier diet had better diet quality scores than those with a self-perceived less healthy diet.

Based on our results, there is room for improvement in the diet quality of Finnish preschool-aged children and thus, more efficient ways to improve the majority of preschool-aged children’s diet are needed.  Especially in older (4- to 5-year-old) as compared with younger (2-year-old) children, the children of parents with a self-perceived less healthy diet as well as those of parents with a lower education level should be targeted in the lifestyle counselling of families.