The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet is considered a healthy dietary pattern that is associated with lower blood pressure, reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and related cardiometabolic risk factors in adults. However, research into the cardiometabolic benefits of this dietary pattern during childhood and adolescence is scarce, especially from large studies following-up children into adulthood.
We plan to use dietary data collected in ALSPAC when the children were 7 years, 10 years and 13 years old to assess how closely their diets aligned to a DASH-style dietary pattern. Apart from being low in salt, this dietary patter is high in fruits and vegetables, nuts and pulses, wholegrains, and low-fat dairy products and low in red and processed meat, sweetened drinks and saturated fat. We will explore whether the children with more DASH-style dietary patterns during childhood have better overall cardiometabolic health when they are 17 years and 24 years old, and if so which aspects of cardiometabolic health are benefited most. Overall cardiometabolic health will be measured using a Cardiometabolic Risk (CMR) score that takes into account each participants’ glucose, insulin, triglyceride and cholesterol levels, blood pressure and body composition.