Young Adults with High Autistic-Like Traits Displayed Lower Food Variety and Diet Quality in Childhood.
Catherine Panossian, Philippa Lyons-Wall, Andrew Whitehouse and 4 others
PMID 32617793WHAT IT FOUND
Young adults with more autistic-like traits had lower childhood food variety and diet quality, especially dairy, yoghurt and citrus.
The study did not show that diet caused these traits.
Key findings
01Higher autistic-like traits in young adulthood were associated with lower total, core and dairy food variety in early childhood.
02Frequency of yoghurt consumption fell by 35% from the lowest to the highest autistic-like trait quartile, and citrus fruit consumption fell by 50%.
03Diet quality differed across trait quartiles at ages 1, 2 and 3 in unadjusted analyses, and adjusted analyses showed differences mainly between the lowest and highest trait groups or versus the study mean.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was an observational association, not a test of cause and effect, so it cannot show that childhood diet led to autistic-like traits or that changing diet would change them. Diet was measured by one caregiver-reported 24-hour recall at each age, which may not reflect usual intake, especially in toddlers. The analysed sample was not representative of the wider Raine Study: mothers were older, more likely to have completed 12 years of schooling, married, higher income and more likely to have breastfed. People with a previously reported autism spectrum disorder diagnosis were excluded, so the findings describe autistic-like traits in the general population rather than diagnosed autism spectrum disorder. Autistic-like traits were measured at age 20 by self-report, not by clinical diagnosis.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by the National Health and Medical Research Council. The supplied text does not list author conflict-of-interest declarations.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that childhood diet caused autistic-like traits, or that dietary change would reduce them. The study measured an association between adult self-reported traits and earlier caregiver-reported diet, and the differences were small.