Diet during adolescence is associated with cardiometabolic risk scores in young adulthood

Earlier life-course stages are hypothesized to play a role in diet and disease relations: adolescence represents a critical phase for establishing dietary behaviours, whereas young adulthood is increasingly recognised as an important age for the development of cardiometabolic disease risk. Still, studies in these vulnerable age groups are scarce. We examined the association between food group intake in adolescence and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), cardiovascular diseases (CVD), type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in young adulthood employing disease risk scores (DRSs).

In 354 participants from the DOrtmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed (DONALD) cohort study, we investigated the association between habitual intake of 23 food groups during adolescence (females: 9-15 years, males: 10-16 years), assessed via repeated three-day weighed dietary records (median: 7, range: 2-7), and disease risk in young adulthood (20-47 years), using seven hypothesis-driven DRSs and one data-driven DRS ("comparably high-risk" vs "comparably low-risk" cluster). Multivariable linear regression models were used for the hypothesis-driven DRSs and multivariable logistic regression models for the data-driven DRS. Food groups were analysed as continuous variables and as sex-specific tertiles.

In females, a higher intake of refined grain products was positively associated with CHD risk using the Framingham Risk Score - Adult Treatment Panel III, while high-fat dairy intake was inversely associated. In the total cohort, an inverse association between the intake of eggs and egg dishes and the data-driven DRS was observed.

Intakes of specific food groups during adolescence were associated with cardiometabolic risk scores in young adulthood.