Diet quality during childhood plays a vital role in achieving the optimal growth of neural tissues and cognitive development. Evidence on the association of diet ...
ASSOCIATIONS OF DIETARY FATTY ACIDS AND CARBOHYDRATES INTAKE WITH COGNITION IN SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN
Sehrish Naveed Master's thesis Public Health School of Medicine Faculty of Health Sciences University of Eastern Finland April 2017
1 UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND, Faculty of Health Sciences Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, Public Health NAVEED, S.: Associations of dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates intake with cognition in school-aged children Master's thesis, 74 pages. Instructors: Arja Erkkilä and Eero A. Haapala April 2017 Key words: Diet, fatty acid, carbohydrate, children, brain, cognition ASSOCIATIONS OF DIETARY FATTY ACIDS AND CARBOHYDRATES INTAKE WITH COGNITION IN SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN Diet quality during childhood plays a vital role in achieving the optimal growth of neural tissues and cognitive development. Evidence on the association of diet quality and cognition in children is limited. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the associations of the quality of dietary fats and carbohydrates intake with cognitive function in school-aged children. The data for this study were obtained from the PANIC study. The participants were 487 children of age 6-8 years (250 boys and 237 girls). The dietary intakes were calculated from food records of consecutive four days taken at home, school, in afternoon care, and elsewhere outside home. Non-verbal reasoning skills as a measure of cognitive function were assessed by the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM) score, a higher score indicating better reasoning skills. The associations of dietary intakes of carbohydrates and fats with non-verbal reasoning were investigated with correlational analyses and multivariate linear regression models. The analyses of dietary factors demonstrated significantly higher daily energy intake in boys than in girls with greater consumption of sucrose, starch, insoluble fibers and fats among boys. While the intake of glucose and fructose were equal in both genders. The analyses of association of dietary intake of fatty acids or carbohydrates with RCPM score did not show correlation among girls or when boys and girls were analyzed together. However, in boys, higher dietary intakes of fructose (β = 0.23, P =
