010230 Low-Fat Diet Can Be Healthy for Some Children

New York - Children with high cholesterol can eat a low-fat diet without harming their growth and development in puberty, results of a study suggest.

A reduced fat and cholesterol diet helped reduce levels of total cholesterol, LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, and triglycerides in children aged 8 to 10 years, according to the report in the February issue of Pediatrics.

Weight, height, sexual maturation and stores of vitamin A, folate, iron and zinc--indicators of growth, development and general health-- were not affected over the 7-year study.

“Diets reduced in total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol are safe for children,” Dr. Eva Obarzanek, the study's lead author, from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said. However, low-fat diets are not recommended for children under age 2, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

She said the availability of healthy foods and information on low- fat diets allows parents to develop low-fat eating plans for their children without the advice of a doctor or nutritionist. This is good news for an increasing number of children who are diagnosed with high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, a build-up of plaque in the arteries. These children may be more likely than their leaner peers to develop heart disease and other chronic disorders in adulthood.

But recommending that children follow a diet that is reduced in fat and cholesterol has been controversial, since these compounds are needed for growth, development and sexual maturation.

To investigate, researchers fed 663 children with elevated LDL cholesterol either a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet (28% total calories from fat, less than 8% from saturated fat and no more than 150 milligrams of cholesterol a day) or a regular diet.

Children in both groups grew to similar heights and girls in both groups got their first period at an average age of nearly 13 years.

Researchers measured total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol at 1, 3, 5 and 7 years later. Initially, children following a low-fat diet had lower levels of LDL cholesterol, but after 5 years, levels remained about the same.

Over time, children in the regular diet group may have improved their eating habits while those who started in the low-fat diet group became more lax about following their diet, the authors suggest.

Still, differences in cholesterol levels seen early on “indicate the potential for decreasing lifetime exposure to elevated LDL by dietary intervention,” Obarzanek and colleagues conclude.

Parents who want to trim some of the fat from their child's diet should begin by switching to low-fat dairy foods, buying lean cuts of meats, and trading in the frying pan for a broiler or steamer, Obarzanek suggested.

Also, emphasizing poultry and fish over beef and limiting egg yolks to four a week, or two a week if the child has elevated LDL cholesterol, can help reduce fat, she added.

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