Food for health and well-being

Background to date

When a child is born, breast milk can cover nutritional needs for the first 6 months. However, in situations where the mother is unable to breastfeed, other food intakes are necessary. After 6 months, other foods must be introduced into the diet of the child, who does not yet have the oral skills to consume them as is. Therefore, many nutritional and sensory adaptations are necessary for the feeding of infants.

Recent studies emphasize the importance of early learning in the development of health-promoting eating behaviors, particularly preferences for "recommended" foods such as vegetables and fruits. The major dietary determinants of children's behavior are now being studied, whether in terms of energy density, flavors, aromas or textures.

In addition, certain periods of life, such as the first two years of life, the prenatal period and even the periconceptional period, are now recognized as critical for the health of children and future adults. This is the concept of the developmental origin of disease and health (DOHaD). Initially proposed to explain the etiology of metabolic diseases in adults, it also applies to many other pathologies. Consequently, many research studies aim to propose actions, and in particular nutritional strategies, to optimize the developmental trajectories of children during these critical periods.

Finally, maternal nutrition is a major factor in modulating the early nutritional environment through the placental transfer of nutrients to the fetus and the composition of milk for breastfed children. It particularly impacts the lipid composition of breast milk, as well as its content of oligosaccharides, dietary fibers. Research on the role of fiber in the diet is in full swing, in connection with its role as a modulator of the intestinal microbiota, a key player in intestine-brain communication, immunity and metabolism.

Challenges for business innovation

Reverse engineering allows to define with more and more precision the characteristics of foods that will be appreciated by infants and that will best meet their nutritional needs. This method, which is based on the growing knowledge of the taste, smell and texture preferences of infants at different stages of development, opens up an important field of development to be explored for the development of early childhood foods. Similarly, the knowledge of ingredients that meet the nutritional needs of infants is an important and evolving field of study, to be compared with their acceptability by infants.

Another current challenge is to understand the role of the mother's diet during pregnancy and lactation on the health of the child. Fiber consumption, currently low in Europe, is a major lever in the maternal diet to promote metabolic and neurophysiological adaptations during development and later in adults. The complex nature of foods also requires a better understanding of the interactions between the food matrix, the gut microbiota and the host. These multidisciplinary studies, which rely on high-throughput methodologies (transcriptomics, metabolomics, metagenomics, brain imaging), allow us to better define preventive or interventional nutritional strategies to preserve the health of the child and future adult.

As the mother's diet influences the composition of her intestinal microbiota and her milk, and consequently the intestinal microbiota of her child, it appears crucial to define the components of the maternal diet that have the greatest impact on the dynamics of the establishment and evolution of the microbiota in the young child, in order to propose dietary strategies to the mothers that promote the optimal growth and neurobehavioral development of their child in the short and long term

Carnot's contributions to accompany them in their evolution

Taking into account the evolution of cognitive skills, Carnot Qualiment® researchers have developed the necessary methods to finely evaluate the eating behavior of infants (evaluation of taste, olfactory and consumption skills of foods of different textures, food appreciation, connected scale), or school children (evaluation of the appreciation of a product during a meal, appreciation of salty, sweet and fatty sensations, attitudes towards food).

The work applying these methods allows us to better understand the preferences and skills of children at different stages, leading to the identification of the major food determinants of children's behavior, whether in terms of energy density, flavors, aromas or textures.

The work carried out by Qualiment® researchers also allows to understand how the mothers' diet guides the child's neurobehavioral development and health in the short term, but also its behavioral, physiological and metabolic profile once adult. For example, pre-clinical studies conducted on the pig model have demonstrated the deleterious impact of an unbalanced maternal diet, rich in sugars and lipids, on the activity of the intestinal microbiota, the lipid balance, the behaviours and the neurocognitive plasticity of the piglet, as well as on the metabolism and the neurotransmission of cerebral areas involved in the hedonic circuit and cognition of the young adult. The researchers also showed that it was possible to act positively to preserve the health of the individual and to facilitate its later adaptation to deleterious nutritional environments of Western diet type by introducing fibers with prebiotic activity in the maternal diet.