A Unique Child: Nutrition - A Finnish first

Finland’s National Nutrition Council has issued advice on serving ‘nutritionally adequate and health-promoting’ meals and providing food education in early years settings. Advice had previously been released for higher education institutions and schools only.

Research professor and Nutrition Council member Suvi Virtanen, of the National Institute for Health and Welfare, says, ‘Finnish children eat far too few vegetables. Early years education provides an ideal opportunity to promote the use of vegetables in meal planning.’

The report says that while the majority of Finnish children enjoy high standards of nutrition, school-age children eat just one half of the recommended five portions of fruit and veg a day. Their diets deteriorate significantly after their first year at school as they start sharing family meals and consume more sugar, salt, saturated fat and animal proteins. The guidance adds that families with low incomes, little education or where the parents are very young were most likely to lead unhealthy lifestyles. It highlights the importance of early years settings in levelling out nutritional inequalities caused by family background.