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Epidemiology

Fruit and vegetable consumption and BMI change in primary school-age children: a cohort study

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 68, pages 265–270 (2014)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/objectives:

Healthy eating behaviours, such as increasing fruit and vegetable consumption (FVC), are frequently used as a target or outcome measure in obesity prevention interventions. The goal of this study was to demonstrate replacement of high-caloric foods/drinks by FVC and changes in body mass index (BMI) z-score associated with FVC.

Subjects/methods:

Anthropometric measurements of 1252 children (51.0% girls) were taken before school entrance (age 6 years) and repeated in the fourth grade (age 10 years). At the same time, parents were asked about their children’s diet using a questionnaire.

Results:

In longitudinal analysis, changes in FVC were not significantly correlated with changes of other nutritional habits, such as consumption of sweets and high-caloric drinks. BMI gain tended to be lower (nonsignificant) in children with increasing fruit consumption compared to those with decreasing fruit consumption. An opposite (nonsignificant) tendency was observed for vegetable consumption and BMI gain.

Conclusions:

Although beneficial for other health outcomes, the evidence for FVC replacing high-energy foods and thereby reducing BMI gain is weak and could not be substantiated in this study. This might be partially due to the limitation in dietary assessment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the study Group of the GME cohort. This study was supported by Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, Munich (Gabriele Bolte, Hermann Fromme, Lana Hendrowarsito and Nicole Meyer); Health Authority of the District Office of Günzburg (Tatjana Frieß-Hesse, Franziska Lang, Roland Schmid and Gudrun Winter); Health Authority of the City Ingolstadt (Christine Gampenrieder, Margot Motzet, Elisabeth Schneider, Traudl Tontsch and Gerlinde Woelk); Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (Ladan Baghi, Otmar Bayer and Rüdiger von Kries). This study was funded by the health initiative ‘Gesund.Leben.Bayern.’ of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Public Health, Munich, Germany. OB is supported by LMUinnovativ research priority project MCHealth (subproject II).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    O Bayer, I Nehring & R von Kries

  2. Department of Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology, Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, Munich, Germany

    G Bolte

  3. Department of Social Epidemiology, Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    G Bolte

Authors
  1. O Bayer
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  2. I Nehring
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  3. G Bolte
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  4. R von Kries
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for the Study Group of the GME cohort

Corresponding author

Correspondence to O Bayer.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Contributors: OB, MD, epidemiologist, designed the study, did the statistical analysis and wrote the paper; IN, nutritionist, reviewed the literature and wrote the paper; GB, epidemiologist, provided data set and revised the paper; RvK, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology, revised the paper and obtained funding that made the scientific work (analysis, writing and revision of paper) possible.

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Bayer, O., Nehring, I., Bolte, G. et al. Fruit and vegetable consumption and BMI change in primary school-age children: a cohort study. Eur J Clin Nutr 68, 265–270 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2013.139

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