Nutrition in school-age children: a rationale for revisiting priorities.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Saavedra, Jose M Prentice, Andrew M
Copyright Year	2022
Abstract	AbstractMiddle childhood and early adolescence have received disproportionately low levels of scientific attention relative to other life stages, especially as related to nutrition and health. This is partly due to the justified emphasis on the first 1000 days of life, and the idea that early deficits and consequences may not be fully reversible. In addition, these stages of life may superficially appear less “eventful” than infancy or late adolescence. Finally, there has been historical ambiguity and inconsistency in terminology, depending on whether viewing “childhood” through physiologic, social, legal, or other lenses. Nevertheless, this age bracket, which encompasses most of the primary education and basic schooling years for most individuals, is marked by significant changes, inflection points, and sexually driven divergence in somatic and brain growth and development trajectories. These constitute transformative changes, and thus middle childhood and early adolescence represents a major and last opportunity to influence long-term health and productivity. This review highlights the specificities of growth and development in school age, with a focus on middle childhood and early adolescence (5 years–15 years of age, for the purposes of this review), the role of nutrition, the short- and long-term consequences of inadequate nutrition, and the current global status of nutrition in this age group. Adequate attention and emphasis on nutrition in the school-age years is critical: (a) for maintaining an adequate course of somatic and cognitive development, (b) for taking advantage of this last major opportunity to correct deficits of undernutrition and “catch-up” to normal life course development, and (c) for addressing the nutritional inadequacies and mitigating the longer-term consequences of overnutrition. This review summarizes and provides a rationale for prioritizing nutrition in school-age children, and for the need to revisit priorities and focus on this part of the life cycle to maximize individuals’ potential and their contribution to society.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC10251301&blobtype=pdf
Page Count	21
ISSN	00296643
Journal	Nutrition Reviews [Nutr Rev]
Volume Number	81
DOI	10.1093/nutrit/nuac089
PubMed Central reference number	PMC10251301
Issue Number	7
PubMed reference number	36346900
e-ISSN	17534887
Language	English
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publisher Date	2023-06-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Life Sciences Institute.
Subject Keyword	adolescence children growth malnutrition middle childhood nutrition obesity school age stunting
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Nutrition and Dietetics Medicine