Scientists have linked nutrition in infancy with the cognitive development of adolescents

A large—scale review prepared by scientists at Swansea University has shown that the quality of nutrition in the early years of life can have a long-term impact on cognitive development - and these effects can be traced back to adolescence. This was reported on June 4 in the journal Medical Xpress.

The review included 48 controlled trials and 25 prospective studies involving young people aged 8 to 19 years. The key conclusion is that unhealthy diets in the early years of life — especially in infancy — are associated with lower intelligence scores in adolescence, even when adjusted for outside factors.

The authors relied on longitudinal data to track how early eating habits correlate with later cognitive and academic performance. This approach reflects the idea that subsequent abilities build on earlier stages of development. The researchers focused on iron, iodine, choline, vitamin D, polyphenols, fatty acids, cereal and multi-nutrient interventions.

The picture during adolescence itself turned out to be less unambiguous: some of the interventions showed encouraging results, but the authors emphasize that the evidence base has not yet been established. According to them, the inconsistency of the data does not mean that the diet is insignificant — on the contrary, it indicates the complexity of the interaction between the timing of nutrition exposure, the characteristics of the studied groups, the duration of interventions and the type of measured cognitive functions.

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