(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-08-14 11:44

 A new study has found that children who are regularly
told about the benefits of healthy diets act on that advice.

If children are told how to eat right, they actually listen even if it means avoiding their favourite fatty foods, Finnish researchers said.

Regular Counselling of families and children about the benefits of avoiding saturated fats in their diet led to diets lower in fat and saturated fat, and reduced blood cholesterol levels in children up to the age of 14, they said.

There were no differences in stature between counselled children and those who were not, suggesting a low-fat diet can pay dividends from the start without affecting growth.

"We feel that lifetime habits form early in life and healthier lifestyles should be started earlier in life," said Dr Harri Niinikoski, a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of Turku in Finland.

Among the findings, counselling seemed to have a bigger impact on the cholesterol level of boys than girls. The researchers were not sure why.

Niinikoski's team said they compared 540 children assigned to a dietary Counselling group to 522 who did not get special diet advice, starting from seven months of age, the researchers wrote in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

The counselled children also ate more protein and carbohydrates than those who received no dietary advice.

"At age 14, the dietary group had a small but statistically significant lower median cholesterol level," the Heart Association said in a statement.

Families in the Counselling group received regular advice from a nutritionist and the children were counselled directly from the age of seven.

"We want to emphasise that this diet is not vegetarian or even close to it," Niinikoski said. "Our aim was not to reduce intake of cholesterol and total fat in infancy. The children were advised to use meat and fish, etc., but to choose meat and milk products lower in saturated fat."

"I would say for example that ice cream is not something that kids should eat every day," he said in a telephone interview.

Four years ago, the research team reported that diet Counselling had resulted in lower cholesterol in the children by the age of seven.

The current study indicates that the benefits persisted up to age 14 and the researchers plan to follow the children, now 15 to 17, until they are 20.