Metabolic programming: the power of childhood feeding

Behind the big eyes that scan your face and the tiny hand that grasps your finger, an event known as metabolic programming is unfolding in your child. Metabolic programming is the new term being used to describe the fact that foods eaten in childhood can have lasting effects on the way your child's body grows and functions.

How do foods consumed early in life exert a sex beyond the short time they are physically present in your child's body? Scientists believe that metabolic programming happens in part because growth in cell division in many parts of the body occur only in childhood. During this time individual cells are sensitive to the ability of nutrients -- in other words, the bodies basic building materials.

We know that each organ, tissue, and nerve cell within the body develops its own unique window of time, in response to complex set of biological signals arising from the body's DNA. The nutrients physically present at this crucial time for cell division and growth help determine which cell types become predominant within each tissue. The same nutrients also influence how large or small each cell within the different body components ultimately becomes, and how we efficiently and well it functions in the future. And because organ and tissue functions determine such a central body processes as hormone production and enzyme activity, alterations in normal development can have far-reaching effects. Once the cells period of sensitivity to growth signals the past, the function of each individual cell is largely fixed. In other words, it has been metabolically programmed by the food your baby, toddler, or preschooler was eating during that sells growth spurt.

You can think of metabolic programming as being somewhat like set of signals that control the switches on a railroad track. Sitting in a train in New York or San Francisco, you could go to many places. What determines which direction your train actually takes depends on the signals that set the switches on the track. If they are set right, you'll reach the destination. But if they are set wrong, especially near the start of your journey, you may end up in the wrong place or have to make a real effort to get back on the right track.

Like those signals, metabolic programming gives your child's body directions for his future. We know that first foods can have permanent effects on growth, strength, the immune system, and intelligence -- with long-term consequences for many other aspects of health and even personality. For metabolic programming, our children's whole lives are influenced by what be in their early years.

We also know, of course, the metabolic programming doesn't tell the whole story, and that genetic makeup and family circumstances are tremendously important, too. Understanding metabolic programming and using it to advantage certainly doesn't guarantee that our children will grow up to be athletes, opera singers, or doctors, or that they'll live to be 122. What it does enable us to do is help them realize their own best potential and development and health.

Is working with your child's metabolic programming something you have to start right from day one,or forfeit its benefits? In most cases, the answer is an emphatic no. Raising a healthy child involves trial and error for all parents -- ourselves included -- and we have time to make mistakes and recover from them. Health benefits, in particular, are cumulative, and the child who starts to the low only when he is five will still be much healthier in the long run than the one who doesn't begin until his teen or adult years.

At the same time, certain age is present a special window of opportunity for specific metabolic programming. Hi, or example, is metabolically program primarily during the first five years of life. When it comes to intellectual development and IQ, your child's brain is growing especially fast during the first year, and this is one food can make the difference of a lifetime. For the immune system, a major window opportunity is during the first few months.

Although metabolic programming affects virtually all aspects of our children's lives, there are five major areas where you can expect food to have an especially big impact.