Now it’s the children’s turn – after the Coplant study launched last year under the coordination of the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the largest study to date on plant-based nutrition in German-speaking countries, minors are now also being included in the studies. The researchers want to find out what influence parents’ eating habits have on their children. The whole thing goes under the name “kids/family” – and the data is compiled at the Max Rubner Institute in Karlsruhe and at the BfR in Berlin.
Children are the focus of plant-based nutrition research
According to the plan, up to 200 parent-child pairs will be involved at both research institutions. To do this, the children are weighed, measured and their blood pressure and pulse values recorded. However, unlike the adult participants who have been taking part since last year, biosamples such as stool or blood values should not be taken. Children and their parents are extensively questioned – about family eating routines and nutritional knowledge, for example.
The experts hope that this will provide information about whether children follow the same diet as their parents or which social and psychological factors shape the diet, food consumption and eating behavior of children and young people of different age groups. “It will be particularly interesting when children change their eating behavior and we then find out something about the motivation behind it,” says Lydia Schidelko, project manager of the “kids/family” module.
Eleven-year-old Rebekka from Karlsruhe has her appointment behind her: weighing, measuring, filling out questionnaires. Her mother eats a vegetarian diet, Rebekah also eats meat. “There are dishes that I couldn’t do without,” she says. For example, pasta with ham sauce.
Social components also come into play
Whether the children taking part in the study are vegetarian, vegan or have a mixed diet is of secondary importance. The entire spectrum of diets will be examined – “and how they are implemented in everyday life,” according to the researchers. The scientists’ approach also has a social component: The experts want to understand how fruit, vegetables and plant-based diets are handled within a family and how this affects children and young people.
All children and young people between the ages of 2 and 17 can take part with at least one parent who is also taking part in the main Coplant study. The results will take some time to come. First, more children have to be found. “Then the analysis takes place at full speed,” says Schidelko.
The main Coplant study started last year
The main Coplant study coordinated by the BfR has been running since June last year. There and at seven other institutions in Germany and Austria, up to 6,000 test subjects between the ages of 18 and 69 will be examined over many years, divided according to diet into groups such as vegan (no animal products), vegetarian (no meat or fish, but milk and eggs, for example), pescetarian (fish, but no meat) or mixed diet. The plan is for individual findings to be published again and again.
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