Dietary trajectories through the life course: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

Studying the dynamic patterns of dietary changes or stability (otherwise known as dietary trajectories) across the life course can provide important information about when and in whom to intervene with nutritional interventions. This article reviews evidence from longitudinal studies that describe dietary trajectories through the different life stages, covering early life, adolescence to young adulthood and from mid to late adulthood. Current findings suggest that the establishment of diet patterns likely occurs before 3 years of age and allude to other potential ‘windows of change’ in the life course such as the period of 7–9 years of age and during the period of adolescence and early adulthood. Examining diets using various diet parameters appears to be valuable in elucidating different aspects of the diet that can be changed to potentially alter trajectories. In adults, examining long-term diet trends at a population level can reveal shifts in eating patterns as countries undergo epidemiological and nutrition transitions and elucidate the longer-term impact of adherence to particular diets on the development of chronic diseases. While challenges such as the availability of adequate diet data points, consistency in the dietary assessment tools used and the limitations of statistical methods for trajectory modelling remain, integrating diet data with other lifestyle behaviours, high-dimensional biomarkers and genetics data into pattern analyses and examining them from a longitudinal approach, open up potential opportunities to gain deeper insights into diet–disease relationships and support the development of more holistic lifestyle disease prevention recommendations stratified for population groups.

Time trends and social inequalities in infant and young child feeding practices: national estimates from Brazil’s Food and Nutrition Surveillance System, 2008–2019

“…Therefore, a dietary pattern does not remain stagnant. We can speculate about the emergence of a new stage of the nutrition transition process, as a consequence of the desire to prevent or delay degenerative diseases and extend good health, with the adoption of a better quality diet and higher amount of fruit, vegetables and whole grains ( 39 ) .…”

Changes in diet quality across life transitions from adolescence to early adulthood: a latent growth analysis

“…A systematic analysis of diet-related health risks in 195 countries found that suboptimal diet, particularly high sodium intake and low fruit and whole grain intakes, contributed to substantial burdens of NCD mortality and morbidity among adults aged 25 years and above (Afshin et al, 2019). However, once individuals enter adult life, dietary patterns are fairly stable and tend to track over time (Craigie et al 2011;Chong, 2022). The developmental stage of early adulthood may therefore represent a transition from adolescence to adulthood and a window for the development of a high-quality diet to prevent NCD in later life.…”

Diet Quality Trajectories over Adulthood in a Biracial Urban Sample from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span Study

“…Throughout life, the quality of an individual’s dietary patterns can affect health in later years as well as life expectancy [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. There is also evidence that dietary patterns during selected life stages can influence eating practices later in life [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ]. For instance, food preferences early in life set the foundation for food choices and eating habits in later childhood and adulthood [ 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

“…The group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) method has been used to explore dietary pattern trajectories since 2014 [ 13 , 14 , 18 , 20 ]. This method uses longitudinal data to account for between-individual variation and describe the continuity of different behaviors of groups of individuals through time [ 21 ].…”