Children's diet key to ageing process

Diet in early life is crucial to how we cope with the ageing process, suggests an animal study out this week. A poor diet leads to lower levels of antioxidants, the nutrients which fight free radicals causing us to age.

Scientists at Glasgow University in Scotland gave zebra finches a low quality diet for just two weeks. The adults birds had shorter lives than those fed a normal diet.

Antioxidants reduce the damage caused by free radicals produced during normal metabolism. Animals cannot make these antioxidants (which include vitamins A and E and carotenoids), so must get them from their food.

The birds given the poor diet were not short of food, but the food they had was low in protein and vitamins, said the researchers. The finches all had the same normal diet after the early chick stage, and seemed to grow into apparently normal adults. However, the birds given the low quality diet early in their development were less able to use the antioxidants that they ate when they grew up, suggested the researchers. The basic anti-ageing defence mechanisms are the same in most animals, including humans, added Professor Pat Monaghan, who led the study.

"This work demonstrates a mechanism that links diet during early life to what happens much later. The reason for this has so far been poorly understood,"​ he said.

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, and also involved biologists from the Scottish Agricultural College at Auchencruive near Ayr.