Guideline Daily Amounts for Under 5's?

What are guideline daily amounts? Why has a leading supermarket started to label their own products with GDA’s for 5-10 years olds? Should there be GDA’s for under 5 year olds. These are just a few questions raised about GDA’s that this article will endeavour to answer.

GDA’s are designed to be guidelines about the approximate amount of calories, fat, carbohydrate, total sugars, protein, fibre, salt and sodium required for a healthy diet. They are commonly found as part of the labelling system on many foods seen in supermarkets today. For adults they help consumers make sense of the nutrition information provided on food labels. Because people vary in many ways, such as size and activity levels, GDA’s are not used as targets for individuals but simply provide a benchmark against which the contribution from macronutrients per serving a food product can be roughly assessed.

A leading supermarket in association with the Institute of Grocery Distribution has developed GDA’s for 5-10 year olds and decided to feature these figures on all its own brand packaging. These guidelines will be shown for calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre and salt in a move to aid parents make a more informed choice over their children’s food. Research showed that parents and carers wanted guidance on making healthy food choices for children but found the GDA labelling on food packaging only suitable for adults. Why not use the adult guidelines? One good example of why this is not acceptable is that although children over the age of 5 require the same amount of saturated fat each day as adults, their salt tolerance levels are a lot lower. This highlights one difference between childrens needs and adults. The supermarket chose to develop GDA’s for 5-10 year olds as both boys and girls have the same requirements. It was also the age group with the biggest area of parental concern when making food choices.

So what about GDA’s for 1-5 year olds?

During the pre-school years (1-5 years) children progress from messy feeders at 1 year to the competent self feeder at 5 years. They begin to exert independence and choose foods that they want to eat. The role of the caregiver therefore is to provide a healthy variety of foods. The nutritional needs of young children can vary according to size and growth but a well balanced diet is still extremely important so as to avoid nutritional problems for example iron deficiency anaemia or rickets. Young children between 1-5 years also have small appetites, so nutrient dense foods are vitally important. Children’s energy requirements increase rapidly during this time because they are growing quickly as well as becoming more active. With all this in mind they therefore have high energy requirements for their size. To achieve this energy intake, foods which are high in energy and rich in nutrients need to be eaten as part of small frequent meals and snacks. It is also important to take into account the fact that this age group have variable appetites, related to fluctuations in growth rate and levels of activity. This therefore makes for an extremely diverse age group to be able to develop GDA’s for.

Healthy Eating Guidelines:

While healthy eating guidelines designed for adults and older children are not wholly appropriate for pre-schoolers, especially those under 2 years, they can however be used to shape the diet from an early age to ensure there is a gradual progression towards healthy eating as the child gets older. Diet in early childhood is important for setting a pattern for lifetime eating and plays an important role in the prevention of adult disease. Healthy eating guidelines developed by COMA (Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy) have developed guidelines for adults which have been adapted for children over the age of 5 years and as mentioned above are not intended to apply in full to pre-schoolers. A diet which is low in fat and high in fibre may not supply enough energy for a young child. However this age group is not too young to develop a healthy family approach to diet and lifestyle. Food preferences are also often established during this early stage of life. In order to ensure little ones start to gain an understanding of healthy eating below are some key recommendations to help achieve this.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Provide regular meal times
• Eating together as a family
• Offering a variety of foods (colours, shapes and textures)
• Offering small portions, allowing for second helpings if desired
• Not using sweet foods as a reward
• Trying to make mealtimes relaxed and enjoyable
• Keeping between meal snacks small
• Avoiding sugar and sweets except as a special treat
• Giving full cream milk up to 2 years and semi-skimmed milk from 2 years. Skimmed milk can be given to children from 5 years of age if desired.
• Encourage up to 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day (a portion being the amount that can fit into the palm of your child’s hand)