Big Swedish study hints at link between bowel disease, infant diet Premium

Diet in early life can predict Inflammatory Bowel Disease risk, with fish and vegetables lowering it and sugar-sweetened beverages raising it, a large study of Swedish and Norwegian children has found.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) describes disorders where the lining of the digestive tract is inflamed. There are two types of IBD disorders: ulcerative colitis, where the large intestine and the rectum are prone to inflammation and sores, and Crohn’s disease, which usually affects the small intestine.

Researchers have reported diet, age, family history, cigarette smoking, and certain medications, among other factors, as being responsible for causing or worsening IBD.

They have also said changing diet patterns can help explain changing patterns of the prevalence of IBD. For example, a 2023 study in The Lancet attributed a higher incidence of IBD in rural Telangana to the greater availability and consumption of processed foods.

More recently, a study published in the journal Gut in January reported that the diet of infants as young as a year old could affect their chances of developing IBD in future. Researchers behind the study followed the dietary habits of more than 80,000 children through adolescence in Norway and Sweden as they consumed plenty of vegetables and fish in the first year of life, and were associated with a lower future risk of developing IBD.

Consuming sugar-sweetened beverages in this time was associated with a higher risk of IBD, they reported. According to their analysis, at three years of age, no dietary factor other than fish intake was associated with IBD risk. The researchers suspect the developing gut microbiome may be at the heart of the apparent age-dependent relationship of dietary intake and IBD.

The gut microbiome comprises a vast number and types of microorganisms that live in the human gut. According to the authors of the Gut paper, it changes significantly through the first year and stabilises by the time the infant is two to three years old.

Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, a gastroenterologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, suggested in an article accompanying the paper that infants may benefit from a “preventive” diet that includes “adequate dietary fibre, particularly from fruit and vegetables”, “intake of fish”, a minimal amount of sugar-sweetened beverages, and a preference of “fresh over processed and ultra-processed foods and snacks”.