An international team of researchers has found that children's habitual diets leave clearly distinguishable metabolomic traces in their blood. According to a study published in the European Journal of Nutrition, analyzing blood metabolites can accurately determine the quality of a child's diet, reports infohub.kz.
The study analyzed data from 421 children aged 5.5 and 8 years in the EU Childhood Obesity Project. The researchers assessed the relationship between blood metabolites and three main dietary patterns: a healthy diet (CORE), a diet high in animal protein (PROT), and a diet rich in sugars and poor-quality fats (F&S).
The analysis showed that the healthy CORE diet, rich in fish, vegetables, and olive oil, was associated with higher levels of phosphatidylcholines containing docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), as well as higher values of the Fisher index. In contrast, the F&S diet, which includes saturated fats and sugary drinks, showed the opposite pattern, lowering levels of beneficial lysophosphatidylcholines.
The association between certain groups of metabolites and fatty acid ratios remained consistent at both time points.
The authors note that objective analysis of blood metabolites helps bypass inaccuracies in subjective parental surveys and more accurately assess the impact of food on health. Although the results require independent confirmation in larger cohorts, the metabolomic profile already demonstrates high sensitivity to the quality of children's diets.