engleski

Animal and plant protein intake in Croatian toddlers and differences between socio-economic status

Early in life particular importance should be given to proteins in the diet since healthy growth and development relies on them. For a long time, the focus was on the meeting the requirements for protein intake and this still remain the problem in developing economies. In western world where insufficient intake of proteins in children is rarely a problem, new evidence emerges regarding the association of high protein consumption and childhood health i.e. later risk for non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, it has been suggested to assess animal and plant/vegetable protein separately since their effect to health outcomes could be different. Dietary records for two non-consecutive days were collected from 103 toddlers average aged 23.1 ± 0.8 months. The nutritional value of dietary records was calculated using Croatian National Food Composition Tables and nutrition declaration of food products. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to investigate the differences between toddlers grouped considering to their socio-economic status (SES). The energy from total protein contributed for 15.2% ± 0.3% to daily energy intake. Toddlers’ daily intake of total protein was on average 3.6 ± 0.1 g/kg. The animal to plant protein ratio was 2.2 ± 0.1 (2.4 ± 0.1 g/kg animal protein vs. 1.2 ± 0.1 g/kg plant protein). Across three SES groups the energy derived from total protein was significant different (p=0.046). Also, the significant difference (p=0.011) was observed in plant protein intake and it increased with higher SES (1.1 ± 0.1, 1.2 ± 0.1 and 1.6 ± 0.1, respectively). Overall results show that the toddlers’ daily intake of total protein was higher than the recommendations and the majority of protein intake came from animal protein. Socio-economic status seems to play a role in the intake of plant proteins since the intake of plant protein increases in the groups with higher socio-economic status.

toddlers ; protein intake ; animal protein ; plant protein ; socio-economic status

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