Researchers in New South Wales have received nearly $5 million to figure out how young Australians can eat better while in childcare.
A multimillion-dollar Medical Research Future Fund grant will allow researchers to improve nutrition standards in childcare centres.
Professor Luke Wolfenden, a behavioural neuroscientist from the University of Newcastle, said that improving children’s diets early in life had significant long-term benefits.
“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,” he said in a statement. “This research is about identifying practical, real-world solutions that help services overcome barriers and consistently provide healthier food for children.”
Less than 10% of Australian childcare services currently provide food that fully complies with nutritional guidelines. As part of the $4.9 million grant, researchers will work with 10 NSW Health Promotion Units to support childcare services in improving their offerings of healthy food in line with nutrition guidelines.
Each HPU will undertake two improvement cycles to trial different approaches, meaning as many as 20 different trials could be run over the four-year life of the grant.
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The approaches and strategies will be co-designed with key stakeholders, including local childcare services and healthcare professionals. The researchers hope that the collaborative model will allow the best-performing approaches to be shared and adopted across the network of childcare centres.
Associate Professor Rachel Sutherland, an implementation researcher from the University of Newcastle and co-investigator on the new grant, said childcare centres were an ideal environment to improve healthy eating in children, as many children consume around 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.
“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.
“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.”
