Southampton researchers lead Lancet series in adolescent health and nutrition
Faculty of Medicine researchers are calling for more research into the effect of nutrition during adolescence and for more direct involvement of young people in devising and implementing health policy in the UK and internationally.
Adolescence is a time of rapid changes in both physical growth and development and cognitive and emotional capacities. Nutrition has a formative role in the timing and pattern of puberty, with consequences for adult height, muscle, and fat mass accrual, as well as risk of non-communicable diseases in later life.
Research has shown that the lifestyle choices teenagers make can have an effect of the health of their future children.
In a series of papers published in the Lancet, researchers from the Faculty of Medicine, highlight the effect of nutrition on adolescent growth and development, the role the food environment has on food choices, and which strategies and interventions might lead to healthy adolescent nutrition and growth.
Professor Mary Barker said: “There has been a lot of emphasis on early childhood nutrition research and rightly so. However, adolescence is an additional important phase of life that has direct consequences on health in later life and the health of their children.
“Yet this important age group is neglected in national and global policies that aim to improve health and wellbeing.”
The first paper in the series was led by Professor Shane Norris with Professor Caroline Fall and Dr Kate Ward and explores nutrition in adolescent growth and development.
Drs Polly Hardy-Johnson, Sofia Strommer and Susie Weller with Professor Barker contributed a uniquely large analysis of pooled qualitative data on the drivers of young people’s food choices from studies in eight countries/settings around the world in paper two. The paper reflects on how adolescents have a lot to say about why they eat what they eat, and therefore must be active partners in shaping local and global actions that support healthy eating patterns.