Healthy futures start on the plate, with a new NSW-wide collaboration set to improve nutrition for young Australians in childcare services - helping prevent chronic disease and securing their paths to stronger lifelong wellbeing.
Awarded a $4.9m Medical Research Future Fund grant through the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, the project will help the more than 90 per cent of Australian 'Early Childhood Education and Care services' struggling to meet national nutrition guidelines.
The research team will work with 10 NSW Health Promotion Units to support childcare services, which has the potential to influence the nutritional quality of more than 500,000 meals served to Australian children every week.
University of Newcastle behavioural scientist Professor Luke Wolfenden, of HMRI's* Population Health Research program, said improving children's diets early in life was one of the most powerful ways to protect long-term health.
"Diet in early childhood shapes lifelong eating habits and has a major influence on the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease and some cancers later in life," Professor Wolfenden said.
Recognising the benefits of good nutrition, many childcare services request or need support to improve healthy food provision in line with nutrition guidelines. Currently fewer than 10 per cent of Australian childcare services are providing food that fully meets these standards.
"This research is about identifying practical, real-world solutions that help services overcome barriers and consistently provide healthier food for children."
Poor diet in childhood is one of the leading contributors to future chronic disease. Despite this, child dietary intake in Australia is alarmingly poor.
By age two to three, around one-third of children's daily energy intake comes from discretionary foods - such as sugary snacks and highly processed products - and less than 5 per cent of children consume the recommended serves of vegetables.
Co-investigator, University of Newcastle's Associate Professor Rachel Sutherland, of HMRI's* Population Health Research program, said childcare settings offered a powerful opportunity to improve nutrition because many children consumed about half of their daily nutritional intake while in care.
"The project will test and refine strategies to help childcare services implement nutrition guidelines through a large-scale series of randomised trials embedded within the health system," she said.
Health Promotion Units across NSW will each undertake two improvement cycles to trial different approaches, generating up to 20 trials in total over four years.
Importantly, the strategies will be co-designed with local childcare services and health professionals, ensuring they work in different communities and settings. The collaborative model will allow successful approaches to be quickly shared and adopted across the network, accelerating improvements to nutrition in childcare services.
Associate Professor Sutherland said the project would create the largest and most detailed dataset ever collected on how to successfully implement childcare nutrition guidelines, providing critical evidence for policymakers and health agencies across Australia and internationally.
The research aims to drive equitable, population-wide improvements in children's diets, reduce the future burden of chronic disease, and strengthen Australia's preventive health system.
"Our work has found parents want support to improve their child's diet and want improvements in the quality of foods provided to children in care," Associate Professor Sutherland said.
"This research project has the potential to transform how we support healthy eating in early childhood.
"By improving the nutrition environment in childcare, we can make a meaningful difference to the health of the next generation of Australians."
*HMRI is a partnership between the University of Newcastle, Hunter New England Health and the community.
