Kids, Brains OK With Less Fat

      Reducing children''s fat intake to prevent heart disease later in life can start before age 2 without harming kids'' brains, Finnish researchers say.

      U.S. guidelines recommend against restricting fat before age 2, largely out of concern that fat deficiency could impair proper development of children''s rapidly growing brains.

      A report from the study of 496 Finnish children who were followed from age 7 months to 5 years "goes a long way to laying that question to rest," said Dr. Gilman Grave, chief of endocrinology, nutrition and growth at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

      At age 5, children on a reduced-fat diet and those on a regular diet performed similarly on tests of speech, language, motor functioning and visual skills.

      Grave said the results could help address the nation''s "epidemic of childhood obesity."

      Other U.S. nutrition experts were more skeptical.

      Autopsies have shown that even young children can develop fatty streaks in their heart arteries. And the Finnish researchers hypothesized that limiting fat intake in early childhood might keep that from happening and reduce the risk of heart disease later on.

      But the children''s arteries were not examined, and they were not followed into adulthood. As a result, the long-term effect of their diets is unknown, said Sheah Rarback, a pediatric dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

      "They haven''t proven the necessity," Rarback said.

      Results of the study, led by Dr. Leena Rask-Nissila of the University of Turku, appear in the current Journal of the American Medical Association.

     

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